Quit harshing HD’s buzz.
It is what you want it to be, I guess.
In this context it could have been much worse, if not for an intervention.
So, one dead, 2 hospitalized, and a bunch of kids left with a memory they could easily have done without. Swell.
It’s all part of the American high school experience…according to NRA spokespeople who think that Unforgiven presented a positive message about the merits of armed conflict and that if we just armed all teachers we’d live in a polite society like Andy Griffith.
Even though Andy Griffith didn’t carry a sidearm.
Stranger
Sounds reasonable.
Typo removed.
It will be interesting to see how this story plays out. Not apparently political nor religious, not terrorism, minor using a gun, and the governor of the state has proposed $125M on security and another $50 million on armed police in schools before this happened. (He is a Republican). Maybe the students at the school can march to support those initiatives.
Regards,
Shodan
Not that easy to just bleat “We need better mental health care and intervention!” this time, is it?
They’ll probably check to see if he was playing violent video games, since that scapegoat’s been making a comeback.
If the students want to march to support those initiatives, then no one should stand in their way.
But I doubt it. They can see just as well as anyone else that schools are merely one category out of many categories of places where a shooter might open fire. Churches, movie theaters, nightclubs, shopping malls, amusement parks, restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes, museums…the list of places where a shooter might strike just goes on and on and on.
So our idiot governor has proposed spending $175M, in our small-to-medium size state, to protect schools. Maryland has 8 Congressional districts, so that’s nearly $21,875,000 per district. There are 435 Congressional districts in the U.S., plus we should count DC as one CD. If the same amount is spent in each CD to protect schools, that’s a tad over $9.5 billion. To protect just one kind of place. Fortify Sandy Hook? The shooter could have just as easily mowed down that many kids, probably more, in the local Chuck E. Cheese. How many hundreds of billions would we have to spend to defend ourselves against shooters at all places where people regularly congregate?
Maybe we should just do something about the guns.
And we were just told, weeks ago, that it was unreasonable to expect the Parkland school resource officer to confront the shooter when armed with only a handgun.
Because the two situations were exactly the same, right? :rolleyes:
We were? By whom? Can you be specific? (It’s easy to bullshit people via the passive voice. Try giving that sentence a subject.)
Which strawman told you that?
Stranger
Here you go.
The last time I checked, news articles were saying the shooter had a single handgun and that there had been a connection between the shooter and one of the victims. So not the same as trying to confront a guy with automatic rifles with a pistol.
I forget which early article used the phrase, but this may end up being considered a shooting at school rather than a school shooting.
Yep, I did say that. And while I am grateful this resource cop successfully took advantage of an opportunity presented to him, I stand by my original thought.
So do you think the police at Columbine took the right approach (waiting until SWAT arrived)?
Or do you not think those shooters’ weapons (semi-auto long gun in at least one case) counted as “big guns”?
HD: I really don’t recall the specifics on Columbine. I remember there were two guys executing a reasonably well-planned attack using a diversity of firearms as well as prepositioned explosive devices. Further, their episode was unprecedented in its intensity and scope which pretty much confounded law enforcement protocols for school shooters at the time. Whether or not LE knew exactly how involved their operation was as it was unfolding I can’t say, but if they did then they would have understood the school had effectively become a combat zone and, yes, SWAT was the most appropriate resource.
I’m not sure what your point is. I’m pretty slow, so maybe if you spell it out for me. FWIW in this sort of situation–I’ll be happy to allow ANY long gun or shotgun or firearm of greater lethality as “big gun”. Pretty much, anything significantly more dangerous than a pistol.
Your conclusion (that they should have waited for SWAT) is pretty much the opposite of the conclusion most law enforcement took away from the aftermath of Columbine. Generally, the guidance today is: you go in and don’t wait for backup / SWAT because every second you delay, the spree killer can be harming more people.
Here’s a cite - CNN: How Columbine changed the way police respond to mass shootings
In other words, I think your original thought (“once someone breaks out the big guns, it’s SWAT time. A resource cop with his little pea shooter is just another casualty.”) is wrong. It’s certainly not the regular instruction for law enforcement today.
Well, then it’s a good thing I’m just some opinionated douche on a message board and not someone in law enforcement who might make the wrong call. My own experience suggests what I originally implied: cop walking alone and blind into an active shooting armed only with a pistol is just another target unless he gets very lucky. And I say this knowing full well I am thoroughly ignorant about whether or not perpetrators are generally competent users of their weapons. Maybe the gamble that they aren’t is part of the calculus leading to the instruction you refer to.