Shooting

It appears the 54yr old resource officer at the school hid outside the building. This is why he never engaged the shooter. Of course, he was outgunned by Cruz given the officer's standard issue pistol vs an AR-15.

Will the next argument be that we need to arm these school security officers with semi-automatic rifles?

This also brings up another issue in the "arm the teachers" idea. It seems the expectation is that these teachers will run into the fire to engage the shooter. I fear for the safety of the teacher that has a gun and chooses to remain in their room leveraging the gun only for self-defense. Not sure we are willing to pay teachers enough to add to their job description "willing to sacrifice your life".

 

Well... more than all but 487 other organizations, anyway. But hey, why quibble?

 

2016 election cycle
The NRA spent $50 million.
Unions spent over $1.5 billion.
If the NRA is buying off politicians, then liberals have more than enough money to buy them back.

 

The immediate knee jerk reaction from the hard left was that this program would require that all teachers carry a firearm. I do not see how we are supposed to have "a conversation" with people this dumb.

 

As crazed as the anti-gun crowd is getting I may join the NRA too. Scary stuff. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/v...n_hall_if_i_didnt_have_a_security_detail.html

 

One of the things always interesting about these events is the speed with which the gun control crowd is able to mobilize. While most Americans are in shock and grief, the left immediately hits the ground with highly organized community organizing efforts, with seemingly endless funding. It showed in this case with quick rallies with repetitive slogans, and also with how students how were not willing to have their questions re-written for the town halls were dis-invited.

But as the dust settled, people had a chance to catch their breath, some troubling facts began to emerge
-- The FBI did not act on multiple tips
-- Local police were called on the shooter 39 times
-- The assigned school protection officer hid in a safe zone when shooting happened

When can we expect the national town hall to confront the failures by law enforcement at all these different levels?

 

From what I've read, pretty much every mass shooter with a rifle that has been taken down has been taken down with a pistol. Just because the rifle looks scarier doesn't mean it automatically trumps someone who's actually trained and proficient with a pistol.

BTW, should we also argue that since the resource office was useless, we shouldn't have resource officers? Since the police were unable to get there in time to stop killing, should we just stop calling the police? Is that the standard we're going to set?

No one is asking this. As far as I've heard, not a single person has advocated mandatory arming, or the expectation that if you do bring a firearm, you will be forced to give your life for your student.

The coach who shielded his kids and gave his life... do you think he might have liked to have been armed at the time, if he chose?

Guns and gun owners are not a homogenous group. Some are brace, some are timid. Some will step up and some will hide. But I've heard way too many stories of gun owners who have risen to a threat and stepped in to help to simply say that if anyone at the school had been armed, they would have simply done what this guy did.

 

Seattle,

I am sorry, but gun control rests on a basic premise that the police will keep us safe. If the person who hid with a gun was a teacher or staffer, your argument would be logical. However, the person who hid was an active duty police officer with 30 years of experience. The police relied on to protect unarmed people in a GUN FREE SCHOOL ZONE failed. This does not support the argument that teachers should be armed. It DOES support the NRA’s argument that you cannot rely on the government, police or the law to protect you and you should have the freedom to carry a gun to protect yourself.

I am not anti-new regulations or even anti-gun regulations. I think in the wake of this we need massive reform to gun laws, mental health, police procedures, FBI background checks, etc. That said, if you think the armed cop doing nothing to stop a mass shooter in a gun free zone supports a gun control argument, your logic is flawed. All the government failures, ESPECIALLY THE FAILURE OF THIS POLICE OFFICER TO ACT, strongly support the NRA’s arguments.

 

When I typed that I did not realize the guy is a Broward County Sheriff’s deputy. If you were wondering how this story can get even worse, there it is.

On top of that,

“In November, a tipster called BSO to say Cruz ‘could be a school shooter in the making’ but deputies did not write up a report on that warning.
It came just weeks after a relative called urging BSO to seize his weapons ....

Two years ago, according to a newly released timeline of interactions with Cruz’s family, a deputy investigated a report that Cruz “planned to shoot up the school” ​

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article201636649.html

No matter how hard we try, we cant keep Broward County out of the news.

 

No wonder the sheriff was so animated in his approach to the town hall the other night. His department has a lot to answer for on this.

 

I wonder if the relative who called the the BSO about the weapons had a conversation with the foster family about it.

 

Gun control is not the only potential action to mitigate danger, however appealing it may seem at first glance.

I am all for voluntarily arming certain teachers. Besides the obvious issues of training and firearms competency, we might have to have some guidelines and steadiness and emotional stability. Not sure how it would be worded, but in today's public schools, administrators see teachers tested by rude and unruly students every day and would have a good idea who is worthy to carry weapons in a school and who is not. Putting that knowledge to paper may prove problematic.

The standard for competency for teacher/administrator carry should be higher than for a standard concealed carry permit.

Equally difficult may be limiting a Constitutional right of weapons ownership to someone simply because others perceive them as emotionally unstable and dangerous. I think plenty of people knew Cruz should not have been armed ... but until he shot up the school did we have sufficient grounds to limit his gun rights? Would the NRA and other gun rights lobbies be cool with limiting weapons access for many who have similar profiles to the pre-massacre Cruz, but no felonies or incidents of domestic violence?

 

I find this detail that the school protection guy who was there was an armed deputy who hid outside hard to get past. It staggers me. If there was ever a time to charge into the breach, this was it. It's an anecdotal definition of the job. Protecting the vulnerable is the primary duty. I have to believe that 99 of 100 deputies in that county would have. Somehow this school got the 1 in 100.

 

That CNN town hall was another predictable example of political theater on the issue of gun control. I have no idea why any gun rights supporter would subject themselves to that level of abuse.

 

Makes you wonder how many kids lives were lost because of him, doesn't it? I'm sure he isn't sleeping well at night.

 

We are going to have to look at a variety of solutions here, including some reform on guns. There is no single magic bullet law that will fix this problem. I think something will have to be looked at on known mentally unstable people buying guns, as difficult as that may be.

Most immediately, all the various institutional failures need to be looked as this was preventable under our current laws. The man made too many threats. After 9/11, we improved communication between various defense agencies and have not suffered another major terrorist attack since. I know it will be difficult and cost money, but I guarantee we can get better coordination among local and federal law enforcement where reports of someone making continuous open threats for two years pop up on someone’s radar.

 

This guy?



Here, he quotes Tywin Lannister -

 

He'll eat a bullet eventually or drink himself into oblivion. Sad for all.

 

https://www.statista.com/chart/12943/is-it-time-to-bring-back-the-assault-weapons-ban/

 

This is active shooter 101. If it's a hostage situation they are told to hold and wait but if you hear gunshots you are supposed to move to the sound of the gunfire and engage. At the very least this makes the shooter hunker down and keeps them from freely engaging targets. This deputy failed on so many levels.

 

Here is her version of what happened at the CNN event, if interested

http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/23/dana-loesch-heres-real-story-happened-cnns-garbage-town-hall/

 

I watched her for a little bit at the town hall. Almost respectful and almost polite. Smash cut to CPAC the next morning and she was Cruella. And, while Dana is a twisted individual, I don't think she's in the universe of sick people who were calling anyone crisis actors in this instance or, more importantly, Sandy Hook.

 

Show me the numbers.

 

That's the part that worries me most about armed teachers, in an era when student have basically no respect for authority in some locations. You have to be concerned about a big student attempting to overpower a teacher to take the gun - which I can't imagine would happen in MOST areas, but it's certainly at least something to think about.

I think if you made clear guidelines, this might be possible. I suspect the NRA would probably balk, because it's definitely a slippery slope, but if you had a law to the effect that if you post clearly threatening images or statements on social media, you are subject to being placed on a "no-buy" list. But then, of course, what constitutes threatening? And will it even work? I wonder whether these guys are emotionally stable enough to consciously stop making those types of statements on social media knowing they have to keep a lower profile.

 

update --

The Sheriff (Israel) clearly knew of all of this failure by his own office at the time he went on CNN and blamed the NRA and Dana Loesch

"When Coral Springs police officers arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14 in the midst of the school shooting crisis, many officers were surprised to find not only that Broward County Sheriff's Deputy Scot Peterson, the armed school resource officer, had not entered the building, but that three other Broward County Sheriff's deputies were also outside the school and had not entered, Coral Springs sources tell CNN. The deputies had their pistols drawn and were behind their vehicles, the sources said, and not one of them had gone into the school....."​

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/23/poli...-school-shooting-broward-deputies0437PMVODtop

 

What I saw of him speaking he implied that there would be consequences to his staff if negligence was found. I inferred that to mean that it was coming. This was no shock to me. Marco also said some of what he knew about the details of the investigation were likely going to lead him to change his mind on high capacity magazines.

 

Well it's a legislative NRA triumph to bring back what Clinton called assault weapons when banned in 1996. However in this instance, like at the Pulse Night Club, cops were reluctant to charge in the face of a hail of high velocity rounds that can penetrate bulletproof vests. I'd like to think I'd be a hero, but I've never had to do something that made me fear for my life or that would result in the death of someone else. Ask military trainers. It's a hard job to prepare people to face deaths or take a life.

 

What if you had one or more children in that school at that time?

 

Turns out the 4 armed deputies never went inside the school at all. Even after the shooting had stopped, and kids were bleeding out.

It is no coincidence that this information was released late on a Friday afternoon.