Another horrific mass shooting has reignited the bitter recriminations that always follow such events.
Shocking claims about inaction by the police that day are turning up, which I’d rather not say anything about that before further investigation, but it doesn’t look good so far.
Predictably the calls to “Do something!” line up along the left-right axis from “Take the guns away” to “Harden the targets.”
The middle ground both sides agree on is “invest in mental health treatment.”
Though that’s a worthy goal for any reason I don’t think it’s likely to impact the problem. These murderers are evil, not sick. But at least it’s not likely to do any harm.
Gun bans and confiscation, the high-cost option, aren’t going to fly. There are more guns than people in this country, most of them unaccounted for. The people who have them are not willing to give them up and the price of taking them by force would be more than most of us are willing to pay.
Hardening the targets is in every way a more realistic alternative. It wouldn’t prevent mass killings. It would make the would-be killers go elsewhere to wreak harm, but if it’s not the school my child is in I can live with that.
But there’s a problem with this too, nobody wants to do it and when they do it’s not taken seriously. Early reports claim the murderer entered the building through a door a teacher had propped open, quite against school policy.
Remember the Parkland shooting in 2018? When that was going down I was sitting where I am now, following the news and looking out my office window at the school across the street my daughter attended.
The school was on lockdown because there was a barricade situation a few blocks away. Sheriff’s deputies had attempted to serve a warrant and the idiot served grabbed a gun and fled to an outbuilding.
It was resolved without harm eventually and I tell you an armored vehicle has never looked so good to me.
Now take a break and look up the book “Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created The Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students” by Andrew Pollack, Meadow’s father.
Pollack details the godawful mess that preceded the events in Parkland, and how nothing has been done about it since.
Subsequently I and a friend who is also a martial arts teacher whose focus is on personal security rather than sport attended a meeting at school to discuss security issues. We were received politely, and never contacted again.
Later I contacted local school officials and volunteered to donate copies of “Survive a Shooting: Strategies to Survive Active Shooters and Terrorist Attacks” by my friend Alain Buresse.
Alain is a martial arts teacher, trained as an Army sniper, who teaches the habits and awareness you need to stay safe. His book is the result of years of research and is the best information resource to date.
I was thanked and ignored. School libraries don’t want it and I was told on the QT no teacher would be seen with it on their desk.
For God’s sake why?
According to the National Center for Education Statistics there are 130,930 K-12 schools in America. The highest number of active shooter incidents in schools to date was 11 in 2018.
You do the math. Do you think your local school officials want to address an ugly and controversial subject on a one-in-13,000 chance they’ll have to face such a situation?
That’s why. They figure it won’t happen, until it does.
Uvalde
Another horrific mass shooting has reignited the bitter recriminations that always follow such events.
Shocking claims about inaction by the police that day are turning up, which I’d rather not say anything about that before further investigation, but it doesn’t look good so far.
Predictably the calls to “Do something!” line up along the left-right axis from “Take the guns away” to “Harden the targets.”
The middle ground both sides agree on is “invest in mental health treatment.”
Though that’s a worthy goal for any reason I don’t think it’s likely to impact the problem. These murderers are evil, not sick. But at least it’s not likely to do any harm.
Gun bans and confiscation, the high-cost option, aren’t going to fly. There are more guns than people in this country, most of them unaccounted for. The people who have them are not willing to give them up and the price of taking them by force would be more than most of us are willing to pay.
Hardening the targets is in every way a more realistic alternative. It wouldn’t prevent mass killings. It would make the would-be killers go elsewhere to wreak harm, but if it’s not the school my child is in I can live with that.
But there’s a problem with this too, nobody wants to do it and when they do it’s not taken seriously. Early reports claim the murderer entered the building through a door a teacher had propped open, quite against school policy.
Remember the Parkland shooting in 2018? When that was going down I was sitting where I am now, following the news and looking out my office window at the school across the street my daughter attended.
The school was on lockdown because there was a barricade situation a few blocks away. Sheriff’s deputies had attempted to serve a warrant and the idiot served grabbed a gun and fled to an outbuilding.
It was resolved without harm eventually and I tell you an armored vehicle has never looked so good to me.
Now take a break and look up the book “Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created The Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students” by Andrew Pollack, Meadow’s father.
Pollack details the godawful mess that preceded the events in Parkland, and how nothing has been done about it since.
Subsequently I and a friend who is also a martial arts teacher whose focus is on personal security rather than sport attended a meeting at school to discuss security issues. We were received politely, and never contacted again.
Later I contacted local school officials and volunteered to donate copies of “Survive a Shooting: Strategies to Survive Active Shooters and Terrorist Attacks” by my friend Alain Buresse.
Alain is a martial arts teacher, trained as an Army sniper, who teaches the habits and awareness you need to stay safe. His book is the result of years of research and is the best information resource to date.
I was thanked and ignored. School libraries don’t want it and I was told on the QT no teacher would be seen with it on their desk.
For God’s sake why?
According to the National Center for Education Statistics there are 130,930 K-12 schools in America. The highest number of active shooter incidents in schools to date was 11 in 2018.
You do the math. Do you think your local school officials want to address an ugly and controversial subject on a one-in-13,000 chance they’ll have to face such a situation?
That’s why. They figure it won’t happen, until it does.