Friday, February 15, 2008

On the Illinois shooting

There was another shool shooting recently, this time in Illinois with a total of six fatalities, including the gunman.

Somehow, this is starting to become a "what, another one?" type of event, I started out this blog by stating that school shootings were a very rare event. If the current trent keeps up, that may soon be different.

Moving on: how do people react to this?
There will always be the "it's the guns and the bullets's fault all over again", people profoundly believing that this issue can be dealth with by banning guns. For what it's worth: yes, the removal of guns from societty will rule out these shootings. (note: removal must include law enforcement as well) This will of course not prevent school bombings, or mass stabbings. It also leaves people with obvious mental problems untreated.

Some people (like me) use these tragedies to take potshots at "gun free zones". This has been a very strong trend since the vonmaur mall shooting, where the management removed, and then replaced the gun free zone signs in the wake of the shooting.

It's difficult to say who's right here. If anything, we should recognise that people abusing guns are a real problem that has to be dealth with. We should also recognise that instituting gun free zones does not work.
Maybe metal detectors/a guard at the entrance could have prevented this, maybe he would just have been the first victim, but that would have sent out ample warning to evrybody in the vicinity as well, buying them time to escape.

Could an armed person inside the lecture hall have stoped the threat? Jeanne Assam did a pretty good job in her Colorado house of worship, would the same be possible here? I do believe that in the time someone could shoot over 20 people in a single room, a teacher would have been capable of returning fire.

If not saving lifes directly by preventing additional people from getting shot, this would at least allow paramedics to get to the injured victims immediately upon arrival at the scene with the threat removed. It won't be long untill one of these deranged kids figure out that they can triple the body count by holding emergency response away from the injured in a few hours worth off standoff before commiting suicide. That issue is at least as real as the threat from .50 rifles IMO.

4 comments:

The Duck said...

Well, since all the sheep dove under desks, or hit the floor, it seems one or two sheepdogs in the room would have had a clear field of fire. Interview after interview, the sheep, just tried to get small & hide.
But this all started with the 68 GCA, & the coddling of the bad guys.
We now reap what we sow.

Anonymous said...

Regarding the recent plethora of incidents about which to blog, the "copycat effect" cannot be discounted.

Many of these disgruntled perpetrators are seeking nothing more than to assuage their lust for attention. Every time the press grants the wishes of one such narcissist, they encourage similar actions by others.

As long as acts like these allow them to achieve the notoriety that they crave, and as long as the target rich environments that enable them still exist, incidents such as these will continue to occur, and probably with ever increasing frequency.

Ryan said...

The way arab and palestinean terroists target ems response could be emulated with real bad results.

The Duck said...

Very good read here:
http://buckeyefirearms.org/node/5437