Like Ed Kilgore says, with the bar for this administration set so low they needed a tunnel borer to put it in place, I’m surprised we didn’t hear at least one pundit solemnly declare yesterday that “Donald Trump became president of the United States,” given that he managed to appear concerned and mostly avoided overtly cloddish statements and behavior. Mostly.
If the coach had a firearm in his locker when he ran at this guy — that coach was very brave. Saved a lot of lives, I suspect. But if he had a firearm, he wouldn’t have had to run; he would have shot and that would have been the end of it.
And this would only be, obviously, for people that are very adept at handling a gun. And it would be — it’s called concealed carry, where a teacher would have a concealed gun on them. They’d go for special training. And they would be there, and you would no longer have a gun-free zone. A gun-free zone to a maniac — because they’re all cowards — a gun-free zone is, let’s go in and let’s attack, because bullets aren’t coming back at us.
And if you do this — and a lot of people are talking about it, and it’s certainly a point that we’ll discuss — but concealed carry for teachers and for people of talent — of that type of talent. So let’s say you had 20 percent of your teaching force, because that’s pretty much the number — and you said it — an attack has lasted, on average, about three minutes. It takes five to eight minutes for responders, for the police, to come in. So the attack is over. If you had a teacher with — who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly.
For fuck’s sake. That’s Charles Bronson’s Death Wish as public policy, escapist alpha-male fantasy as response to a reality that this alleged tough guy/winner obviously has no clue about.
A major point, if not THE major point, of universal public education was/is that it’s a way to socialize each generation into civil society. Assuming some sort of armed cohort among the faculty is needed or required seems like an implicit rejection of this mission…and a troubling sign generally. Besides, I doubt most teachers want to add that burden to what’s already a challenging profession.
Coolly blasting bad guys to smithereens looks easy in movies. But movies aren’t real life.
“According to a 2008 RAND Corporation study evaluating the New York Police Department’s firearm training, between 1998 and 2006, the average hit rate during gunfights was just 18 percent. When suspects did not return fire, police officers hit their targets 30 percent of the time. The data show what any police officer who has ever been involved in a shooting can tell you–firing accurately in a stressful situation is extremely hard.”
But one shot from a coach will take care of things. OK, then.
http://nation.time.com/2013/09/16/ready-fire-aim-the-science-behind-police-shooting-bystanders/
We’re gonna have to figure out what we want to fight for, in this nation.
If we don’t want to arm citizens, we’ve got to have more, and better, cops.
So they’re NOT an hour away the next time some nut job parks a rental truck full of AMFO in front of a daycare center, or some other nut job fills a school full of dynamite, or some other nut job takes a theater hostage to his personal grievance with the lack of women in his life.
So they’re NOT an armored force invading, or barely holding onto, urban neighborhoods.
So they’re people we know, live around, work around, go to school board meetings or the church’s administrative council sessions with, see at the library or taking an extra evening class.
So we trust them.
And they’re not afraid to be around us.
Actually, the Dumpster deserves 2 out of this 3: The Bad & Ugly.