Friday, December 27, 2013

The only kind of gun control that works

From the Christian Science Monitor:
As they investigate the latest school shooting in the United States – Friday at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colo. – one thing is clear to law enforcement officials there: The presence of an armed deputy sheriff on regular duty at the school was the key factor in preventing more deaths and injuries. 
As soon as he heard the first of five gunshots, that officer and the two school administrators he was talking to raced toward the commotion shouting their presence and ordering students and staff to follow the school’s lock-down protocol. 
As a result, Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said at a briefing Saturday afternoon, the heavily-armed shooter realized he was about to be confronted by an armed officer, and he took his own life. 
“We believe that that action was absolutely critical to the fact that we didn’t have more deaths and injuries,” Sheriff Robinson said. The whole episode – from the time the shooter entered the school until he shot himself – lasted just one minute and 20 seconds. 
In the years following the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., the public and school officials have debated whether it’s right to turn schools into what some critics call “armed camps.” Arapahoe High School with its 2,229 students and 70 classrooms is an open campus with no metal detectors, although it does have that armed deputy on duty every day classes are in session.
 Of course, Colorado's new post-Newtown gun laws were worthless.

This socialist murderer (the 17 year old girl has died) took his own cowardly life ninety seconds after entering the school, because and only because he knew a good guy with a gun was running down the hall toward him. A single armed officer in the school obviously saved many lives, without even firing a shot.

Imagine how Newtown would have been different if an armed guard had run down the hall toward Lanza seconds after he shot his way into the building. It makes me sick to think of all those kids being killed because of liberals' idiot "gun-free zones".

Face it: gun-grabbers kill people. They impose worthless moral-preening policies that are a mass-killers' best friend.

The only gun control that works-- and it really works-- is when a good guy controls a gun. 

15 comments:

  1. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyDecember 27, 2013 at 7:04 AM

    Doc: "A single armed officer in the school obviously saved many lives, without even firing a shot"

    And that is precisely why the story was immediately spiked. It doesn't fit the Proglodyte "narrative".

    Leftists will hide the truth and let you die to support their absurd social notions. While they hide behind a phalanx of guns.

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  2. We need to keep guns out of the hands of opinionated socialists.

    Ass-ploding irony: the opinionated socialist who embarked on this shooting spree was a strong proponent of gun control.

    Joey

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  3. Leftists will allow armed guards in banks to protect money but not in schools to protect children.

    That tells us a lot about their scale of values!

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  4. A pretty badly made straw man, Mike. I am in favor of gun control and see nothing wrong with arming police officers. In fact, that's how things are in New York City. Have you been there lately?

    Hoo

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    1. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyDecember 27, 2013 at 8:52 AM

      Speaking of strawmen, the post was not about arming police officers. That's a done deal in this country. Has been for well over a hundred years.

      Delete
    2. Grandpa, lemme clue you in. Here is a sentence from the opening post:

      The presence of an armed deputy sheriff on regular duty at the school was the key factor in preventing more deaths and injuries.

      A deputy sheriff is a police officer.

      Hoo

      Delete
    3. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyDecember 27, 2013 at 9:17 AM

      The point was the presence of a gun in a school, nominally a "gun-free zone".

      In a press conference reflecting on last week's massacre in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre today called on Congress to put armed law enforcement agents in every American school, insisting that guns in schools -- not tougher gun laws -- would most effectively protect children from school shootings....

      On Twitter, Senator-elect Chris Murphy, D-Ct., called LaPierre's comments "the most revolting, tone-deaf statement I've ever seen."

      --- CBS News (12/2012)

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    4. As I have already said, I do not object to the presence of police officers in schools. What the fuck are you complaining about, Grandpa? Can't find your teeth this morning or something?

      Hoo

      Delete
    5. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyDecember 27, 2013 at 9:30 AM

      Hoots Toots: "I do not object to the presence of police officers in schools"

      Complain? I think that's wonderful! You should join the NRA! It's the largest grassroots organization in the world, and you'd love the nice folks who attend the annual convention.

      Of course, you'll need to leave your ill-bred bigotry and mockery of the poor elderly and disabled at home. You'd get your skinny, pencilnecked ass kicked for that.

      Delete
    6. It looks like the teeth have been located and Grandpa is not that grouchy anymore. Yay! Try not to fall off your rocker, my dear old fart.

      Hoo

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    7. Grandpa,

      There are about 100,000 schools in America. To put armed police officers in all of them, assuming it costs $50,000 per officer per year (the officers' salaries wouldn't be the only expense - you'd need to train them and maintain their training periodically, besides replacing officers periodically as they get bored with the tedium of the job), it would cost $5 billion dollars a year.

      And that's just assuming one officer per school, who would be the first target if any assailant is sufficiently determined.

      I've previously noted that if I wanted to kill a lot of school children quickly, I'd attack a school bus. And promptly someone did. Would you also be proposing that police officers should be riding shotgun on school buses too?

      Delete
  5. 'Gun control' and the 'gun rights' debate is a canard.
    A straw man.
    It's simple: Guns do not have rights. Citizens do.
    Guns are not people having these rights curtailed or withdrawn. Citizens are.
    The controls are placed on law abiding people, not the guns. Not criminals, not the inanimate material objects themselves - the citizens who want to legally own a weapon.
    Real controls for weapons come in the form of proper, secure storage in the form of lockers and trigger locks. Guns that are not held in ready for use need to be properly stripped and stored. They also need decent maintenance.
    The methods are cheap, easy, and common.
    No controversy there. Certainly not among responsible fire arms owners. No more controversial than suggesting kitchen knives should be kept in a drawer or power tools locked in a shed.

    The controversy is about disarming individuals while at the same time vastly increasing the control / power of the internal civilian 'security apparatus' in almost every way imaginable - including fire power.

    The real debate here is not about guns, but about the constitutional, natural right to keep to bear arms. To defend ones self and others from acts like those being discussed above and worse still.
    Do these rights still stand as reasonable and desirable? If yes, then honour them.
    If not, call a constitutional convention, put it to the vote, and rescind those amendments concerned.
    If that route is not taken then the federal constitutional rights of civilians are currently being restricted in certain states. (As if that is any sort of news...)

    Imagine the nations as a series of castles or fortresses. Now imagine yourself in one of the biggest and most opulent ones ever built. The envy of many of the other castles, and with a remarkably free society where the right of each citizen to carry arms to defend themselves is sacrosanct. Where the right to privacy is held very dear.
    Yours is a big, wealthy, free castle that keeps many of the smaller, more ambitious castles more honest than they would be otherwise.
    Now imagine you wake one day to find many of the cannons turned inward, all the spy grids designed to watch the other castles are instead watching the 'homeland' intently; you notice that the guards extremely heavily armed and well supplied - better than the military - and all the while at the same time the crowds are being disarmed 'for their own safety'.
    Only a fool would not be concerned.

    As for the comments about police: I know quite a few decent cops, personally. I am quite pro police. Many have a very tough job. I also think it's only sane to arm the police of an armed society. That said, the inference made by the commentary about police being armed is that all police are good guys or that 'all good guys become cops', combined with the idea that the police will always be there when we most need their force of arms.
    This police stuff is obviously unrealistic, totally pronoid, and irrelevant to the issue of rights.

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  6. Crusader Rex,

    The idea that Americans can prevent their country becoming a totalitarian state by arming to the teeth is just so AE Vogt 'Weapon Shops of Isher' thinking.

    The answer is to have a healthy democracy, with a free alert press and an independent judiciary. The police and other security bodies need to be under close supervision to prevent abuse of process.

    Being able to criticise politicians, and if necessary to vote them out of office, is more important than being able to shoot them. I personally prefer living in a country in which the state has the virtual monopoly on force. Because the ruling government can easily be dismissed at the next election. And the mass media mostly does its job (Murdoch press excluded).

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  7. Bach,

    "The idea that Americans can prevent their country becoming a totalitarian state by arming to the teeth is just so AE Vogt 'Weapon Shops of Isher' thinking."
    I am all for a bit of scifi, especially homegrown stuff - but we do not need to fantasize about this, bach. History is our guide here, not fiction.
    Both my own nation and the USA have averted conquest and deterred invasion by the mere presence of a largely armed population.
    We exist as nations in the form we do directly because of these most basic ideas.

    "The answer is to have a healthy democracy, with a free alert press and an independent judiciary. "
    This is the fruit of the tree, not the fertilizer. Blood of tyrants and invaders, old boy. Even the Romans understood that much.

    "The police and other security bodies need to be under close supervision to prevent abuse of process."
    Sure. Obviously. By whom and with/by what force will that oversight be backed? If those people begin to warn of an imbalance and are ignored, what then?

    "Being able to criticise politicians, and if necessary to vote them out of office, is more important than being able to shoot them. "
    Criticism is certainly preferable to violence, but what happens when it is violence against YOU being done BY the politicians? Who do you call and criticize then?

    "I personally prefer living in a country in which the state has the virtual monopoly on force."
    So, apparently, do most people these days. I do not find myself in agreement with them.... at least with their definition of what 'force' is, anyway. Perhaps that is because I have seen, lived, and worked beyond that thin red line? Maybe it's because I know what a fragile balance we exist in? Talk about scifi, sometimes when I discuss these matters (specifically with academic minded people), I feel like Logan 5 with a clear crystal. 'You don't have to die! You can live, LIVE!'

    " Because the ruling government can easily be dismissed at the next election."
    Again, this is reliant on the all the previous conditions being balanced. They are increasingly becoming imbalanced. The fruit will no grow when the tree begins to wither.

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    1. Crusader Rex,

      The politicians are only able to exert force on you if they have control of both the military and the police. If they do, then no mater how many guns you possess, you will be outgunned.

      Political vigilance is the only remedy to prevent the development of a totalitarian state.

      Delete