Nugent: Gun Free zones are a recipe for disaster!!

[EL TIBURON]

I'm with Ted 100% on this one!!!

Ted Nugent April 20th 2007
Zero tolerance, huh? Gun-free zones, huh? Try this on for size: Columbine gun-free zone, New York City pizza shop gun-free zone, Luby's Cafeteria gun-free zone, Amish school in Pennsylvania gun-free zone and now Virginia Tech gun-free zone.

Anybody see what the evil Brady Campaign and other anti-gun cults have created? I personally have zero tolerance for evil and denial. And America had best wake up real fast that the brain-dead celebration of unarmed helplessness will get you killed every time, and I've about had enough of it.

Nearly a decade ago, a Springfield, Oregon, high schooler, a hunter familiar with firearms, was able to bring an unfolding rampage to an abrupt end when he identified a gunman attempting to reload his .22-caliber rifle, made the tactical decision to make a move and tackled the shooter.

A few years back, an assistant principal at Pearl High School in Mississippi, which was a gun-free zone, retrieved his legally owned Colt .45 from his car and stopped a Columbine wannabe from continuing his massacre at another school after he had killed two and wounded more at Pearl.

At an eighth-grade school dance in Pennsylvania, a boy fatally shot a teacher and wounded two students before the owner of the dance hall brought the killing to a halt with his own gun.

More recently, just a few miles up the road from Virginia Tech, two law school students ran to fetch their legally owned firearm to stop a madman from slaughtering anybody and everybody he pleased. These brave, average, armed citizens neutralized him pronto.

My hero, Dr. Suzanne Gratia Hupp, was not allowed by Texas law to carry her handgun into Luby's Cafeteria that fateful day in 1991, when due to bureaucrat-forced unarmed helplessness she could do nothing to stop satanic George Hennard from killing 23 people and wounding more than 20 others before he shot himself. Hupp was unarmed for no other reason than denial-ridden "feel good" politics.

She has since led the charge for concealed weapon upgrade in Texas, where we can now stop evil. Yet, there are still the mindless puppets of the Brady Campaign and other anti-gun organizations insisting on continuing the gun-free zone insanity by which innocents are forced into unarmed helplessness. Shame on them. Shame on America. Shame on the anti-gunners all.

No one was foolish enough to debate Ryder truck regulations or ammonia nitrate restrictions or a "cult of agriculture fertilizer" following the unabashed evil of Timothy McVeigh's heinous crime against America on that fateful day in Oklahoma City. No one faulted kitchen utensils or other hardware of choice after Jeffrey Dahmer was caught drugging, mutilating, raping, murdering and cannibalizing his victims. Nobody wanted "steak knife control" as they autopsied the dead nurses in Chicago, Illinois, as Richard Speck went on trial for mass murder.

Evil is as evil does, and laws disarming guaranteed victims make evil people very, very happy. Shame on us.

Already spineless gun control advocates are squawking like chickens with their tiny-brained heads chopped off, making political hay over this most recent, devastating Virginia Tech massacre, when in fact it is their own forced gun-free zone policy that enabled the unchallenged methodical murder of 32 people.

Thirty-two people dead on a U.S. college campus pursuing their American Dream, mowed-down over an extended period of time by a lone, non-American gunman in possession of a firearm on campus in defiance of a zero-tolerance gun ban. Feel better yet? Didn't think so.

Who doesn't get this? Who has the audacity to demand unarmed helplessness? Who likes dead good guys?

I'll tell you who. People who tramp on the Second Amendment, that's who. People who refuse to accept the self-evident truth that free people have the God-given right to keep and bear arms, to defend themselves and their loved ones. People who are so desperate in their drive to control others, so mindless in their denial that they pretend access to gas causes arson, Ryder trucks and fertilizer cause terrorism, water causes drowning, forks and spoons cause obesity, dialing 911 will somehow save your life, and that their greedy clamoring to "feel good" is more important than admitting that armed citizens are much better equipped to stop evil than unarmed, helpless ones.

Pray for the families of victims everywhere, America. Study the methodology of evil. It has a profile, a system, a preferred environment where victims cannot fight back. Embrace the facts, demand upgrade and be certain that your children's school has a better plan than Virginia Tech or Columbine. Eliminate the insanity of gun-free zones, which will never, ever be gun-free zones. They will only be good guy gun-free zones, and that is a recipe for disaster written in blood on the altar of denial. I, for one, refuse to genuflect there.

[Mr. Bill]

Armed Miss America 1944

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18237342/from/ET/

[apnea_beast]

i dont think stricter gun control is the answer here. i think better mental health procedures at schools is what we need. maybe every kid should have a psych evaluation before entering middle school and high school. or maybe every kid should have a number of one on one mentoring/counseling sessions during middle school or high school. it couldn't hurt and would probably help some of the troubled kids. the key would be not singleing kids out to make them feel even more isolated. the tricky thing would be figureing out a way to deal with the "bad eggs" that don't respond to counseling, without infringing on people's rights.

[Gradyman]

The only thing needed for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing...

I don't believe restricting gun laws are the answer because then only the lawless will have guns!

[jfjf]

I'm with Ted 100% on this one!!!

Ted Nugent April 20th 2007....

People who refuse to accept the self-evident truth that free people have the God-given right to keep and bear arms.......


I especially liked this part.... Now God wants us all to have guns!

[Bill McIntyre]

Armed Miss America 1944

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18237342/from/ET/

Thanks. I saw that in the LA Times this morning and meant to post it, but I forgot. What a hoot.

[Bill McIntyre]

I especially liked this part.... Now God wants us all to have guns!

Yep. That's what prayer has taught me too.

Its in the Old Testament, but of course He had to use code because no one had heard of a gun back then, so it takes careful bible study to understand it.

Some of the main stream protestant denominations and the Catholics have lost the ability to see that in scripture because the gospel of Jesus Christ is no longer at the center of their faiths, but the Evangelicals still have the power to read the scriptures and get what they want from them.

They know that Jesus belonged to the NRA.

[Bill McIntyre]

We are properly grief-stricken because 32 people died. In Bagdad Wednesday, over 170 people died as the result of one car bombing, and I think 32 would be a below average daily toll for the country.

So I guess the problem in Iraq must be that they don't have enough guns?

[Oldsarge]

Either that or Americans don't have enough bombs? The trouble with laws is that they only apply to law-abiding people and, except for lawyers, law-abiding people are no problem. They can get annoying occasionally, but they don't deliberately do bodily harm.

Sea Beast has it right. Seong-ho Cho didn't happen in isolation. If I have my numbers right, the FBI calculates that 1/2 of one percent of any given population is deranged. That means that in an elementary school of about 500 there ought to be 2-3 seriously disturbed kids. Folks, the teachers know who they are but can we do anything about it? Oh my, no! That would interfere with the parents' right to be in complete denial about the little darling and so violent and sexually inappropriate behavior begins in kindergarten and doesn't go away. Eventually, it gets so bad that the little miscreant is expelled but all that does is hand the problem off to some other set of educators who simply aren't equipped to deal with the complete nutcase. Meanwhile the little bomb keeps on ticking . . .

I dream of the day when we care enough about each other to step in and actually be our neighbors' keepers without being sued by some self-righteous ALCU type who would rather blame the chunk of steel than the mind behind the trigger finger. If you really want to kill a lot of people quickly, remember Oklahoma.

[Vandolin]

Quote:
Originally Posted by EL TIBURON
I'm with Ted 100% on this one!!!

Ted Nugent April 20th 2007....

People who refuse to accept the self-evident truth that free people have the God-given right to keep and bear arms.......


I especially liked this part.... Now God wants us all to have guns!

This is a reference to our Constitution. You wouldnt want to let your religious beliefs interfere with your freedoms would you? :scratch:

[jackpine savage]

Funny thing is the state of MA has the strictest gun laws and the lowest murder rate. Is there a correlation or is it just luck?

[NOTANX]

Funny thing is the state of MA has the strictest gun laws and the lowest murder rate. Is there a correlation or is it just luck?
that is a general comparison. you would have to compare how their justice system operates versus another state. we have the correct gun laws in place. i cant think of what other gun laws we could create that would make us any safer against armed criminals that dont already exists. the only thing that will protect a citizen against an armed criminal is a legally owned gun. a felon is not even allowed to own a firearm in florida. they are criminals, do you think they care if they are not allowed to own a firearm? if we enforced the ones in practice now it would make a difference. maybe MA is sticter at enforcing their gun laws than other states.

[jackpine savage]

I agree that the laws on the table need to be thoroughly enforced, we dont need new ones

[Bill McIntyre]

I agree that the laws on the table need to be thoroughly enforced, we dont need new ones

I saw an interview the other night on the PBS News Hour with one gun control advocate and one gun control opponent.

What was surprising was that both of them agreed that we didn't need more laws, but needed to enforce the ones we have. What the control advocate added was that we needed a lot more resources devoted to enforcing the ones we have.

He used Cho as an example. Having been judged a danger to himself, he should have been in the database of people who couldn't buy guns. But at least according to this guy, its damn hard and damn expensive to educate every magistrate in the country on what should be entered in the database and how to get it done.

[Oldsarge]

I fear that it wouldn't even be legal in the current situation to put someone like Cho into the database. Until he was hospitalized against his will as a "danger to self and others" he wouldn't even fit the requirement. " . . .its damn hard and damn expensive to educate every magistrate in the country on what should be entered in the database and how to get it done." And in California, the Ninth Circuit would do its damnedest to prevent it ever getting done, at all.

[NOTANX]

this type of person has an agenda. if he couldnt have bought them legally, he would have just picked them up on the street illegaly (probably cheaper). i think the only way to prevent this type of action from happening in the future is to make the law abiding citizens in this country more confortable with the idea of allowing responsable people to carry. i have a hard time understanding why this is such an issue.

[firefyterx]

Question: What type of victims do homicidal maniacs like Cho Seung-Hui prefer?

Answer: Unarmed ones.

[jackpine savage]

more guns to deter violence. I dont know sounds a little odd to me. How about we execute anyone who commits a crime with a firearm. No appeal nor 15 years of tying up the legal system. You commit any crime with a gun you die.

[Oldsarge]

Florida turned out to be a good example. When they passed the "shall issue" law for concealed weapons the crooks quickly switched from robbing their fellow citizens and started picking on tourists. Why? They knew they were unarmed. This required the Florida legislature to require rental cars to be unmarked to reduce the tourist-predation. When you don't know if your victim is armed, you get cautious.

[NOTANX]

more guns to deter violence. I dont know sounds a little odd to me. How about we execute anyone who commits a crime with a firearm. No appeal nor 15 years of tying up the legal system. You commit any crime with a gun you die.
not more guns, plenty of guns out there. people are afraid to carry them for fear of getting in trouble. i think that if you asked most gun owners why they have a gun, they will tell you "for protection". then ask them where it is and you will get the response that they are "at home" or "locked up" or" in the trunk". not doing much good there.

[aaron proffitt]

not more guns, plenty of guns out there. people are afraid to carry them for fear of getting in trouble. i think that if you asked most gun owners why they have a gun, they will tell you "for protection". then ask them where it is and you will get the response that they are "at home" or "locked up" or" in the trunk". not doing much good there.


Well said...

[Bill McIntyre]

You people that think that we get safer as more people carry guns must have a lot more faith in the judgement and emotional stability of the average citizen than do I.

There have been times, for instance, when I unintentionally cut in front of someone at the supermarket checkout line, or at least some idiot thought I did, and based on the reaction, I am glad he or she wasn't carrying.

And then don't even get into fender-benders in the parking lot.

[aaron proffitt]

You people that think that we get safer as more people carry guns must have a lot more faith in the judgement and emotional stability of the average citizen than do I.

There have been times, for instance, when I unintentionally cut in front of someone at the supermarket checkout line, or at least some idiot thought I did, and based on the reaction, I am glad he or she wasn't carrying.

And then don't even get into fender-benders in the parking lot.


Good point,Bill. However,it's not the average citizen carrying who concerns me.It's the Chos' and Klebolds' of this world who are gonna be carrying without regard to laws and with intent to do harm that I worry about. :eek:

Furthermore,consider that if someone is pissed enough over those occasions that you mentioned enough to go lethal,than whether or not they have a firearm is simply a matter of details.Anything will do if they are that unstable to go postal over a space in line.

[Wayward Son]

I said it back when we had the last school shooting:

We will not do anything. We will continue to ban law abiding adults from legally carrying guns on school grounds no matter what. And later, when we have the next mass shooting at a school, we will be back here in this forum wringing our hands & pissing about the tragedy, continuing to refuse to entertain the notion that just maybe some people should be able to choose to use their skills & training & be equipped to in fact do something about it when it happens.

Now we have another 32 dead & here we are, with the same people who can't stand the idea still not able to stand it.

Swami WS says that history will repeat & there will be another day in the future when we will have the same discussion, for the same reasons, with the same outcome. How many innocent, helpless people have to die for people to realize that such a situation isn't going to be worse than it is the way we're doing things now?

[Mikerotch]

How about we execute anyone who commits a crime with a firearm. No appeal nor 15 years of tying up the legal system. You commit any crime with a gun you die.

Not to get off based with a discussion of capital punishment, but I doubt that it would have much effect on the majority of "school shooters" as most, if not all, end up committing suicide anyway.

Mikerotch, Advocate Of Shooting Their Ass First, Instead Of 20 Years later

[jackpine savage]

I have been listening to all the so called experts from both sides of the debate arguing what to do because of VT. Not once have I heard anyone begin to ask why do children in this country feel that taking a gun to school and killing their classmates is the answer to what ever is wrong. Until we can come up with some explanation why kids in this country, and it is in this country where it is a problem, are doing this then we will have more killings in the future. Concealed weapons laws may have prevented him from killing 32 people, maybe he would have only killed 6 or 7. What it doesnt do is prevent the next one from happening. What is so f**ked up about our country that we do this to ourselves, and remember this is all a recent, last 20 years, phenomena.

[NOTANX]

You people that think that we get safer as more people carry guns must have a lot more faith in the judgement and emotional stability of the average citizen than do I.

There have been times, for instance, when I unintentionally cut in front of someone at the supermarket checkout line, or at least some idiot thought I did, and based on the reaction, I am glad he or she wasn't carrying.

And then don't even get into fender-benders in the parking lot.
goes back to strictly enforcing the gun laws. you misuse the right, you get it taken away. put the guns in the hands of "responsable" citizens.

[Bill McIntyre]

goes back to strictly enforcing the gun laws. you misuse the right, you get it taken away. put the guns in the hands of "responsable" citizens.

I'm sure that will comfort my wife if someone guns me down in the parking lot because I creased his fender. Taking his gun away will be a bit late for me.

[Wayward Son]

Jack, this was a college. There ain't no children going to school here. Most are young adults, but you have to be 21 to legally buy a handgun anyway, as well as to get a CCW in every state that issues them.

You can enlist in the service at 17 & fight for your country. If the libs don't agree with the mission, those young adults, mostly from age 18 & up, are called "children". When they're man & woman high & going to college, they're "children".

Somehow, when it was a "child" of this age getting in trouble with Clinton, Monica was an "adult" capable of making her decisions & we should leave her alone.

Once again, it's a moving standard.

*I* could be one of those students on campus. At 45, I'm hardly a child & I've been carrying a handgun habitually for over 20 years now. I'd say my personal track record stands as evidence that I can in fact be trusted to do so without making stupid mistakes or doing anything wrong. If not, I'd already have lost my ability to legally carry a gun.

I'm just sick of goddamned people who are not where I am, who will not be there when the shit hits the fan & have no way of knowing how, when or where that might be, having th gall to decide in advance that because they're somehow afraid to fight for themselves that they should have the ability to use the law to force me to be an unarmed victim.

Somehow, we're supposed to be afraid that if some citizen had a gun & fought back it might be worse. At the same time, those opposed to us being armed like to accuse those of us who do of being afraid.

Which one of us is afraid? And someone please tell me how an armed adult in that situation could possibly have been worse than what actually did happen last week? I have one hell of an imagination but it beats the shit out of me to come up with a way that it could have been. So enlighten me, please.

[jackpine savage]

Wayward-True this was a college but most of these shootings occur in high schools. You didnt even address the issue as to why this happens and why does it seem to only happen here. I realize there has been a shooting of this nature in both Scotland and australia, but only one in each country. Here in the US it happens all the damn time. Before we can address the problem we have to get a grip as to why the hell it happens in the first place.

[jackpine savage]

Also, if you dont think that a lot of the 20 year olds in this country arent still children you havent been around many of them lately. Seems like each new generation pushes childhood further into their adulthood.

[Wayward Son]

Why do they happen in high schools? Part of the reason is because it's a safe place for them to do it. They know that no one will be able to shoot back, with the possible exception of a cop. Most schools do not have a bunch of cops on campus. They might have one or 2. Those usually have a fairly set routine & pattern, easy to plan around. Some schools have no cops.

None of us have ever, I think, suggested that kids carry. What we have said is that adults who are legal to do so should not be barred by law from carrying on school grounds. People who hold CCW's are not going to go shoot up a school, but they may stop some nutjob kid from doing so, or cut his efforts short.

[jackpine savage]

Again the idea of adults being armed to deter this thing isnt addressing the "why". I agree with you that something needs to be done to make our schools a safer place and to protect them from this type of thing. However I am still waiting for one of our national leaders to begin asking how does this happen. What happens to our kids that make them shoot up a school. Its not because its full of unarmed people. Until we as a nation have a serious dialogue on this and try to come up with a solution that addresses the problems before they turn deadly, then we are screwed

[Wayward Son]

I dunno what it's going to take to solve the why. What I do know is that I want to put an end to this madness of stacking up massive body counts because we're too afraid to let the adults who are willing to do something do it.

Saying I can't carry someplace bc a kid can't is like telling me I can't have a steak for dinner bc baby doesn't have his teeth yet. It makes no sense at all.

We used to not have these restrictions & we didn't have these kinds of incidents. Cause & effect? Dunno, but maybe. I think it just about has to play a part in the problem.

[Oldsarge]

Why? Because 1/2 of 1% of the population is psychotic and you never know when you're going to run into one.

[Spearooo]

Some tidbits
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55288

http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/04/01/13/lang.htm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting

[chuam]

Some tidbits
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55288

http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/04/01/13/lang.htm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting

As far as the school of applachia shooting goes yes, more people were saved because some people were able to get guns and stop him. The problem was people were killed before they were able to stop him. How do we stop that?

If someone is crazy or mad enough then they will kill people. We may be able to limit the amount killed but people were still killed by the person with their gun.

[firefyterx]

Crazy people do crazy things. You can't make sense of thoughts from an insane mind. These things will continue to happen, if not with guns then with some other weapon. We need to find a way to identify these people before they go off. You can't take away the ability to kill by taking away guns.

[Bill McIntyre]

Crazy people do crazy things. You can't make sense of thoughts from an insane mind. These things will continue to happen, if not with guns then with some other weapon. We need to find a way to identify these people before they go off. You can't take away the ability to kill by taking away guns.

Yes, we do need to identify them and keep them from getting access to guns. But then why did I get an email from Gun Owners of America today, saying that I should help them stop a bill that would appropriate more money to improving input of names like Cho's into the database? They cast it as a matter of privacy and individual rights, and cautioned that all of us would end up being denied our God Given right to carry guns.

They can't have it both ways.

[Wayward Son]

One big part of they why may be the behavioral drugs we routinely put our kids on. There has been documented a great commonality in these shootings that the shooters were on ritalin or some other psycho active drug.

If only 1% of people taking these drugs react badly & become homicidal, that's still a LOT of kids at risk for doing that.

[phlipper]

These shootings are done by punk kids who feel that they have been dealt the ultimate blow. Public ridicule, perhaps an ass whooping, or just some good old fashioned harassment by a few other punks, who only choose to fight with their mouths and perhaps their fists. For the well armed punk, the school is a perfect target of opportunity. To this day no one ever expects anyone to ever make an attack at a school. Think about that for a minute. How many times has this happened already yet we still think it will never ever happen again. Current school security policies will never do anything to change this yet we are somehow surprised when it happens AGAIN. The Israelis have a different view based on their own unique experiences. Clearly what we have now isn’t working nor will it EVER. These are punks after all and punks will always take the path of least resistance. What might we try to change it? Here’s something they tried last fall in Utah after their Supreme Court ruled that their University’s ban on guns was a violation of state law (http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,650191904,00.html).

Gun class for Utah teachers
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,650198346,00.html

Free concealed-weapons session is offered today
By Ben Winslow and Jennifer Toomer-Cook
Deseret Morning News

More than a dozen teachers and public school employees will spend part of their UEA weekend in a classroom — learning how to use a gun.
Clark Aposhian is offering a free class today to public school employees seeking to get their concealed- weapons permit.
"It is self-defense," he told the Deseret Morning News on Thursday. "But because teachers and school administrators and custodians are typically surrounded by students all day, any threat to any individual with a firearm would also be a threat to those students."
The concealed-weapons instructor's offer was met with opposition from some teachers and union representatives at the Utah Education Association's conference in Salt Lake City.
"We've always resisted the idea of arming school employees," said Susan Kuziak, executive director of the 18,000-member teachers union. "Though the intentions may be good, ultimately, the potential for harm is too great."
A handful of teachers interviewed at the UEA convention agreed. Some said the idea of guns in schools, even when toted by trusted colleagues, makes them nervous.
"Who's to say a kid couldn't take a gun from me or another teacher?" said Darren Dickson, a teacher at Altamont High in Duchesne County. "It's too much of a risk."
Aposhian said the recent school shootings across the nation prompted him to offer the free training. In addition to being a concealed-weapons instructor, he is the owner of FairWarning Firearm Training, the chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council and the husband of a schoolteacher.
"Teachers are always complaining that they don't get support from the community," he said. "Here we are."
School districts have long grappled with the guns-on-campus issue. Federal law bans weapons — real or fake — from school property. But Utah law now makes clear schools can't prevent people with concealed-weapons permits from carrying firearms on campuses. Granite School District's policy, for example, allows permit holders to keep their gun "readily accessible for immediate use," but bans teachers from leaving their weapons in a desk drawer or coat closet.Law enforcement officers never have to give up their guns at the school house door.
Aposhian said he does not want teachers to suddenly become "heroes" in the event of a school shooting. In fact, he said, they should continue to follow school lockdown procedures, which include teachers locking doors and remaining in classrooms.
"We discourage teachers from roaming the halls looking for the intruder," he said. "We're not trying to turn them into law enforcement in any way."
But the teachers union says that's how it feels.
"The knee-jerk reaction is, 'Let's scare the bad guys off,"' Kuziak said. "But people who have committed these acts are not stable and normal in their thinking," considering they've been willing to kill themselves, she said.
Still, that doesn't mean more can't be done in terms of firearms training for teachers, some say.
One suggestion is to offer that training to public school employees through the Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Council. During a radio call-in show on Wednesday, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he would be open to presenting that idea to POST.
However, Shurtleff's office insisted Thursday that despite broadcast reports, it was not an initiative of the Utah Attorney General's Office.
"The idea deserves public scrutiny to see if it has any merit," spokesman Paul Murphy said Thursday.
The UEA for one doesn't believe it does.
Yet there are teachers interested in Aposhian's invitation. So far, about 2 dozen teachers and public school employees have signed up for his class. Included with the free class is fingerprinting and photography for the concealed-weapons application. Public school employees will still have to pay a $59 application fee to the state.
Despite the UEA's opposition to the idea, Aposhian said he has not heard any detractors. He sees only an additional layer of school security with teachers legally and lawfully carrying concealed weapons.
"A shooter going in there may pause to reflect," he said. "Because they may find a teacher carrying a firearm for self-defense."

[jackpine savage]

I lived in Israel for a long time and never did an Israeli kid walk into a school and shoot other Israeli kids. To compare Arab on Israeli violence with what happens in our schools is incorrect. Our kids are killing their fellow citizens. What we need to be able to do is identify this type of behavior amongst kids before it manifests itself into violence. How we do this I dont know, we have a dozen idiots running for president at the moment and none of them have even tried to address this issue.

[Wayward Son]

In the long term it would be great to figure out why & how to actually fix it. Not an easy thing to do as there isn't a single factor to be fixed.

In the short term, I personally want to see what such people can do when the decide to act reduced to an utter minimum. Shutting them down at the outset seems like a good way to do that.

I do not understand people like Cho. I do understand what to do about them once they pull out a gun & start shooting people & it's not "hide & hope they don't find me". Our present set of laws & attitudes prevents this response & that needs to change, or one day we will all be meeting here & discussing the new record holder who managed to kill more than 32.

[mnguy]

I've been mulling over the arm the populace and prevent or cut short alot of the whackos idea. One thing that came up in my mind was, if they are indeed psychotic and were deterred from shooting up say a school because adults with CCW permits were carrying, what is to stop them from switching to bombs or something more covert in nature?

In fact, couldn't the argument be made that having adults carry would cause the psychos to move from overt methods of lashing out(getting guns and going on a rampage) to covert ones? It makes sense to me anyways, make a psycho kid paranoid about its ability to pull off a slaughter with guns and, if it's bent on slaughter, it'll probably seek another method to get the blood of those that it so desires.

[aaron proffitt]

I've been mulling over the arm the populace and prevent or cut short alot of the whackos idea. One thing that came up in my mind was, if they are indeed psychotic and were deterred from shooting up say a school because adults with CCW permits were carrying, what is to stop them from switching to bombs or something more covert in nature?

In fact, couldn't the argument be made that having adults carry would cause the psychos to move from overt methods of lashing out(getting guns and going on a rampage) to covert ones? It makes sense to me anyways, make a psycho kid paranoid about its ability to pull off a slaughter with guns and, if it's bent on slaughter, it'll probably seek another method to get the blood of those that it so desires.


And couldn't the argument be made that if the psychos couldn't get their hands on guns,then wouldn't they just use something like ,say, propane tanks or automobiles ? A determined person will find a way to wreck havoc.

[FredT]

Yes, we do need to identify them and keep them from getting access to guns. But then why did I get an email from Gun Owners of America today, saying that I should help them stop a bill that would appropriate more money to improving input of names like Cho's into the database? They cast it as a matter of privacy and individual rights, and cautioned that all of us would end up being denied our God Given right to carry guns.

They can't have it both ways.

Our history the last 230 years have conclusivly proven that any law that CAN be abused WILL be abused, generally within 30 years of passage. GOA indicates the bill as proposed can be very easily abused as written, but as i haven't hit Thomas yet to read the current version I can't say if the congresscritters have fixed it. Currently the "definition" of a mental problem that might, depending on the agency interpretation, remove the right to a firearm tosses a rather wide net. Most of those caught will NOT be in the class the bills proponents say they are targeting. Something as simple as seeng a shrink for a single visit because your soon to be X has emptied your bank account, stolen the furniture and your kids, and the bill collectors are driving you nuts could be interpreted as a "qualifying event". Chrisis interventions of a transient nature is NOT the intended target advertised, but very well could be.

BTW under the Lautenburg ammendment the restraining order routinely granted in divorce cases also rips away that right to own firearms witout you ever seeing a judge.

Increased funding is a good thing, provided the congresscritters do their due dilligence and provide clean unambiguous definitions of just what conditions are invovled in permanently removing a constitutional right. The descriptions involved so far are pretty vague. Also as far as current law is concerned there is nothing to return that right once it has been properly or improperly removed for a "mental illness". It's kind of like being put on the "no fly" list by default with no mechanism for appeal.

OTOH in the the 30+ years I've watched them fairly closely they have yet to do proper due dilligence on ANYTHING!

Better the status quo than more "unintended consequences" that never seem to get fixed.

[Wayward Son]

I've been mulling over the arm the populace and prevent or cut short alot of the whackos idea. One thing that came up in my mind was, if they are indeed psychotic and were deterred from shooting up say a school because adults with CCW permits were carrying, what is to stop them from switching to bombs or something more covert in nature?

In fact, couldn't the argument be made that having adults carry would cause the psychos to move from overt methods of lashing out(getting guns and going on a rampage) to covert ones? It makes sense to me anyways, make a psycho kid paranoid about its ability to pull off a slaughter with guns and, if it's bent on slaughter, it'll probably seek another method to get the blood of those that it so desires.

Anything's possible. Explosives are more problematic for the user as well as the target. It can be difficult to make them actually work (remember Columbine? They had made & rigged explosives to blow up the entire school & they all failed). They also pose a risk to the maker, so our psycho goblin may well blow himself up in the process of making one, saving us a lot of trouble.

We can play what if all we want & never reach an end. What if I have a gun & he happens to shoot me 1st, before I can use it? Well, that sucks for me, but I fail to see how I'd be worse off than if I didn't have a gun & he shot me.

What if i have a gun & I'm not the 1st or 2nd shot? Odds are favorable that he won't get much more done that day.

What if he knows some adults might have guns, so he chooses to try & rig explosives? Dunno, but I can think of 6 or so ways that could go, not all good for him.

The things that I know for certain is that the way we do it now, we guarantee him an easy environment in which to do whatever he wants with relative ease & that if I'm armed I stand a much better chance of surviving & putting a stop to it than if I'm not armed. I also know that I pose no more of a danger to people on a campus if I'm armed than I do if I'm sitting in my living room. So long as no one presents a malicious risk of death or serious injury to me or other peaceable people in my presence, I'm no more dangerous to anyone than a marshmallow. Raise that threat level & all bets are off.

[jackpine savage]

I still want to know what is it about our society that makes these things occur. Why don't they happen in other countries at the rate they occur here. Is it over medicating of children? Or is it the violence that the average child is exposed to on a daily basis? I wish I knew because arming the adult population wont change the fact that we are producing people intent on killing large numbers of their fellow citizens.

[Wayward Son]

I think, really really do think, that the drugs are a real factor in this. I have no idea if other countries use ritalin & such at anywhere near the rate that we do.

I think that the media plays a part. For some outcast with a grudge against the world, he sits there & sees the press & attention paid to these people. In some of them, they simply have to be thinking "I can make a mark in history. They don't like me, but by damned everyone will know my name"

Some of them likely see a challenge in trying to rack up a bigger body count in the process.

We have a large population. A percentage is going to just be nuts, period. Combine that with these drugs, the levels of violence in popular music, videos, movies, the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family, the changes that occurred in our handling of mental problems dating back to the 60's, etc, it's not a simple matter.

[jackpine savage]

I agree with that Wayward, I was in high school in late 70's -early 80's and dont recall this type of crap occuring then. Hell if someone had a problem there would be a fight and you would get a few days detention, now they come in to class heavily armed.

[Wayward Son]

and to be clear, it's not just TV media. Now we have the net with lots of extra news sources, blogs, etc. Someone does something like this, they may well expect to die but they also know that they're going to achieve instant world wide fame.

Hell, it might make a difference if these reporting sources, all of them, simply agreed to not report the perps name. Not once, not ever. let the next time it happen they get up & report it & say "We are not & will not report the persons name who did this. If they expected some sort of twisted fame to result, they are not going to get it." & just take that away from the next wanna be.

[mnguy]

I still want to know what is it about our society that makes these things occur. Why don't they happen in other countries at the rate they occur here. Is it over medicating of children? Or is it the violence that the average child is exposed to on a daily basis? I wish I knew because arming the adult population wont change the fact that we are producing people intent on killing large numbers of their fellow citizens.

Basically, this is what I was trying to get at in my earlier post. I'm just a little retarded sometimes.

[MSatt]

They put guns in cockpits of airplanes now....why not give the teachers guns?

I would not be a good teacher. I would definately shoot some smart ass kid and get that ten seconds of feeling better before the guilt/arrest occured.

[jackpine savage]

teachers have more than enough to do without having to carry a gun, ask someone you know who teaches. Plus they have to interact with the kids on a daily basis, earn their trust and respect. Is that possible knowing in the back of your mind you may have to kill one of the kids?

[Wayward Son]

How is that worse than having in the back of your mind that one of the kids may one day kill you?

I keep coming back to the fundamental concept of choice: It should not be your choice or my choice to make for them, it should be up to each adult to make up their own damned mind what they think they should do & then do it.

[jackpine savage]

We just has a science teacher arrested and jailed for child porn. He was a teacher for 18 years and up to his arrest has a spotless record. Do you want him armed in the classroom with your kids?

[Wayward Son]

Hell, he was already in the classroom with the kids. What difference would a gun make?

You need to come to grips with some basic facts. Most teachers will never carry, just as most people do not. Make it legal & at absolute best you will see 5% actually do it. Those 5% have time & again, nationally, proven to be among the most law abiding citizens out there. CCW holders have lower arrest & crime rates than uniformed police do.

The other fact is that by refusing to even consider change, you are guaranteeing the next mass shooting. Someone will go over the edge & make the decision to do it with full knowledge that there will be no one to stop him.

By projecting your fears onto every one else, including those who do not share them, you are playing your role in enabling the next one & the one after that & the one after that.

That's reality. Not "what of", not "maybe", but it's what's going to happen, as predictable as yesterday's sunrise.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over & over but expecting different results. You're not going to get them.

Aside from teachers, not all adults on school grounds are teachers. You have administrative staff, maintenance workers, grounds keepers, parents picking up kids or volunteering for something, etc. Every last one of these people are required by law to be completely unarmed, not even allowed a gun secured in a vehicle if it's on school grounds.

It's a guarantee of a target rich environment in which to operate with impunity. Unless this is changed.

People like me have been arguing for change for YEARS only to have it fall on deaf ears. So far as I'm concerned the blood is not only on the hands of the shooters, it is on the hands of those who refuse to allow people the tools by which to defend themselves, protect other people & stop the shooters.

[Wayward Son]

And it's not just kids here, either. A couple of evil chicks from Oz:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21607426-1245,00.html


Girls 'just felt right' murdering friend

By Liza Kappelle

April 23, 2007 07:34pm
Article from: AAP

TWO teenagers who wanted to experience murder told police it "felt right" to strangle a friend and bury her body in a shallow grave beneath her West Australian home.

The 17-year-old girls, who cannot be named due to their age, today faced a sentencing hearing in Perth Children's Court after pleading guilty to murdering Eliza Jane Davis in the small coal mining town of Collie on June 18, 2006.

As the girls sat stony-faced in court today, Prosecutor Simon Stone said they had confessed that after partying with Eliza on the Saturday night they decided to kill her.

"Sunday morning me and (her) woke up, and we were just talking, and for some reason we just decided to kill her," one of the girls told police in her interview.

"We just did it because we felt like it, it is hard to explain," the other girl said.

"I knew we had wanted to kill someone before.

"We knew it was wrong, but it didn't feel wrong at all, it just felt right."

The girls planned their attack and changed into old clothes.

One of them snuck up behind Eliza as she was reading, wrapped speaker wire twice around her throat and quickly tightened it as the other held her down, trying to press a chemical soaked cloth into her mouth.

"She started not being able to get her breath, and we just kept going," one of the girls said.

"She was just yelling at us `What the f**k, what are you doing' .. `Oh you freaks, what's wrong with you psychos."

Mr Stone said they chose to strangle Eliza because one of them had to return to Perth that afternoon and they wanted a quick and "non-messy" killing.

"As our friend, we did not really want her to suffer," one told police.

"We didn't really expect to get away with it.

"We were willing to take the risk."

The girls regretted the fuss the killing caused but neither felt remorse for their dead friend, Mr Stone said.

"If she had died another way it probably would have bothered me ... but it just did not," one girl said.

The girls reported Eliza missing after they buried her and pretended to help her family look for the dead girl.

The girls turned themselves in several days later, walking into separate police stations and directing authorities to where they buried her body.

Mr Stone told the court the girls had no remorse and were holding back on the reason behind their cold-blooded, premeditated, sadistic killing.

"It is a mystery your honour, what happened."

He said the girls had discussed killing someone else and one had prepared for homicide by killing two kittens.

"Whilst together (they) will continue to pose some risk to others in custody."

Mr Stone called for sentences of life in prison.

The hearing continues tomorrow.

[jackpine savage]

Wayward, I am not altogether against having armed adults in our schools, hell both the jr high and high school here have armed cops. I am just pointing out that it won't be easy and there will be opposition. I believe that the attitude towards school shootings needs to change on a national level. There needs to be a fundamental reassessment in how we as a nation treat mental illness. Some people need to be locked up for their and our safety. Having a few armed adults in a school is also a start. A nation-wide mental health data base that is part of a weapons background check needs to be a must. I am sure there are privacy rights advocates who would oppose this but like the 1st amendment, privacy rights cannot supercede the public safety. Just as one cannot yell fire in a crowded theatre, a person who is considered a threat to themselves and others cannot own a gun and their mental health record should be open to background checks.

[MSatt]

I am just pointing out that it won't be easy and there will be opposition. I believe that the attitude towards school shootings needs to change on a national level. There needs to be a fundamental reassessment in how we as a nation treat mental illness. Some people need to be locked up for their and our safety.


This will never happen until after someone has already committed an offense.

You just can't always tell weather or not the guy next to you is ****ing nuts until he pulls a spoon out of his pocket and starts gouging peoples eyes out. You could do a lot more about it if you had a gun (not in your car, home or safe but actually on you). Then you wouldn't have to worry about locking some of them up for there own good. There will always be people who slip through the nets and they are the ones that will ALWAYS shock us. I am not sure that anything can ever be done to eliminate this sort of thing.

[Smudge]

Here's what I know. If I were armed with my personal weapon and I was in one of those fateful VT classrooms, Cho would not have had an opportunity to move on to another classroom and harm another student. I know this because of my personal convictions, my familiarity with my firearm and my willingness to use it to protect myself, my family and my fellow man.

What caused Cho to do this? We'll never know. What could we as a society have done to prevent Cho from snapping? We'll never know.

According to the latest reports there is no rhyme or reason for his rampage. In fact they have been unable to find any connections between Cho and any of the victims. He was insane. As far as I know, I did not make Cho insane. I'm also positve that I could not have stopped him from causing harm. But if I were there, and armed, I am very sure I would have stopped him from causing further harm. I am an excellent shot, I have the medals to prove it, I'm a very cool headed operator under duress, and I am very familiar and versed in the safety and operation of my firearm. This is what I know.

I don't think more firearms laws, or more guns is the answer. I think better enforcement of current laws is needed, and review of current gun laws with clarification is needed.

[MSatt]

And it's not just kids here, either. A couple of evil chicks from Oz:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21607426-1245,00.html


Girls 'just felt right' murdering friend



I will definately not drink so many beers next time that I am in the land down under.

[Wayward Son]

The whole mental health side of it is a can of worms, too. I've often heard claims that Reagan was to blame for turning the head cases loose, but that may not be entirely true. Consider this article:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009977

Bedlam Revisited
Why the Virginia Tech shooter was not committed.

BY JONATHAN KELLERMAN
Monday, April 23, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

I was in graduate school, studying clinical psychology when they began shutting down the asylums. The place was California, the time was the early 1970s, and "they" were an unprecedented confederation of progressives, libertarians and fiscal conservatives.

From the left marched battalions of self-styled mental health "liberation activists" steeped in the writings of Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing. Though he denied being opposed to his own profession, Laing's notion that madness could be a reasonable reaction to an unjust society, or even a vehicle for spiritual transformation, helped fuel the anti-psychiatry movement of the post Love-In era. The most radical of Laingians carried revisionism one step further: Not only wasn't psychosis a bad thing, it was evidence of a superior level of consciousness.

The libertarians were fueled by Thomas Szasz, an iconoclastic psychiatrist who was, and remains, an outspoken foe of virtually every aspect of his chosen specialty. Hungarian-born in 1920, and witness to vicious state exploitation of medical practice by the Nazis and the communists, Dr. Szasz pushed an absolutist dogma of individual choice, finding ready converts among members of the Do-Your-Own-Thing generation. Though his early essays offered much-needed critiques of the Orwellian nightmares that can result when autocracy corrupts health care, Dr. Szasz devolved into something of a psychiatric Flat-Earther, insisting in the face of mounting contrary evidence that mental illness simply does not exist. Currently, he serves on a commission, cofounded with the Church of Scientology, that purports to investigate human rights violations perpetrated by mental health professionals.

Accepting the arguments of the liberationists and the libertarians at face value led to the assertion that no matter how bizarre, disabling or life-threatening a person's hallucinations and delusions, involuntary treatment was never called for. And to the assertion that violation of that premise created yet another class of political prisoners.

While moderate members of the anti-asylum movement were willing to concede that psychosis might pose difficulties for a few individuals, they insisted that society had no more right to force psychoactive drugs upon mental patients than it did to hold down diabetics for insulin injections. If treatment was to be offered, it needed to be consensually contracted between caregivers and care-recipients on an outpatient basis. That fit perfectly with the sensibilities of conservative scrooges searching for ways to cut the state budget, and all too happy to dismantle a massive state hospital system denigrated as inefficient at best and inhumane at worst. The replacement chosen was an untested, less costly treatment model: the community mental center.

How nice that everyone agreed.

Everyone, that was, except for many families of hospitalized, hopelessly-decompensated, often self-destructive and occasionally violent psychotics. They'd lived with the reality of severe mental illness and wondered what "freedom" would bring. But there weren't enough of these families to matter.

Were the state hospitals wretched nightmare-palaces straight out of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"?

A few were. But many were well-run institutions for patients in wretched circumstances, providing optimal care within the limitations of what constituted psychiatric treatment at that time: a handful of poorly understood psychotropic drugs and supportive talk-therapy. Perhaps more important, they offered clean beds and three squares a day, which led to them being belittled as warehouses. But the protective environment of the best state hospitals has yet to be improved upon, or even matched.

No matter, this was baby-and-bathwater time.

When I entered graduate school in 1972, so pervasive was the push to deinstitutionalize that a newly minted course was added to the mandatory curriculum: Community Psychology, a cobbled-together travesty that stood apart from all my other coursework due to its emphasis on polemics and aversion to science.

The basic premise of Community Psych--that severely mentally ill people could be depended on to show up for treatment voluntarily--never made sense to me. The core of the most common and debilitating psychosis, schizophrenia, is degradation of thought and reason. So the idea that people with fractured minds could and would make rational, often complex decisions about self-care seemed preposterous.

One day, I voiced that opinion in class, questioning if any mechanisms were being set in place to prevent a flood of schizophrenics from ending up on the streets, homeless, helpless, victims of crime and, in some cases, victimizers. The Community Psych professor--one of the liberationists--responded with a patronizing smile and a folksy account of the success of a program in rural Belgium or some such place, where humble working folk created a therapeutic milieu by volunteering to house psychotics in their humble homes and everything ended up peachy.

I didn't challenge what amounted to flimsy anecdotal data, but I did question its relevance to the plight of thousands of severely mentally disabled individuals set loose in vast urban centers. The professor's smile tightened and he changed the subject; and I resolved to get through this joke of a prerequisite and concentrate on becoming the best psychologist possible.

By the time I received my doctorate in 1974, the doors to many of the locked wards had been flung open and the much vaunted community mental health centers were being built--predominately in low-rent neighborhoods. A few years later, government funding for these allegedly humane treatment outposts had been cut, as yet more fiscal belt-tightening was inspired by findings that they didn't work.

Because crazy people rarely showed up for treatment voluntarily, and when they did, the treatment milieu consisted of queuing up interminably at Thorazine Kiosks.

And now we had a Homeless Problem.

And everyone was astonished.

Estimates vary but there's no doubt that a significant percentage of people living on heating vents, pushing their belongings in shopping carts, squatting in city parks and immersed in the squalor of tent cities suffer from severe mental disease. And their psychosis is often exacerbated by drug and alcohol abuse--what is, essentially, a regimen of self-medication that should make a Szaszian proud.

Many of these unfortunates end up as victims of violent crimes. A few become victimizers and when they do, watch out. For though it is true that schizophrenics are responsible for a proportionally lower rate of violent offenses than the general population (because many forms of the disease engender passivity and physical inactivity), when crazy people do act out the results are often horrific: bloody spree killings ignited by paranoid thinking and the angry urgings of internal voices.

Which brings us to outrages such as the Virginia Tech massacre.

Diagnosis from afar is the purview of talk-shows hosts and other charlatans, and I will not attempt to detail the psyche of the Virginia Tech slaughterer. But I will hazard that much of what has been reported about his pre-massacre behavior--prolonged periods of asocial mutism and withdrawal, irrational anger and hatred, bizarre writing and speech--is not at odds with the picture of a fulminating, serious mental disease. And his age falls squarely within the most common period when psychosis blossoms.

No one who knew him seems surprised by what he did. On the contrary, dorm chatter characterized him explicitly as a future school-shooter. One of his professors, the poet Nikki Giovanni, saw him as a disruptive bully and kicked him out of her class. Other teachers viewed him as disturbed and referred him for the ubiquitous "counseling"--an outcome that is ambiguous to the point of meaninglessness and akin to "treatment" for a patient with metastasized cancer.

But even that minimal care wasn't given. The shooter didn't want it and no one tried to force him to get it. While it's been reported that he was involuntarily committed to a "Behavioral Health Center" in December 2005, those reports also say he was released the very next morning. Even if the will to segregate an obvious menace had been in place, the legal mechanisms to provide even temporary "warehousing" were absent. The rest is terrible history.

That is not to say that anyone who pens violence-laden poetry or lets slip the occasional hostile remark should be protectively incarcerated. But when the level of threat rises to college freshmen and faculty prophesying accurately, perhaps we should err on the side of public safety rather than protect individual liberty at all costs.

If the Virginia Tech shooter had been locked up for careful observation in a humane mental hospital, the worst-case scenario would've been a minor league civil liberties goof: an unpleasant semester break for an odd and hostile young misanthrope who might've even have learned to be more polite. Yes, it's possible confinement would've been futile or even stoked his rage. But a third outcome is also possible: Simply getting a patient through a crisis point can prevent disaster, as happens with suicidal people restrained from self-destruction who lose their enthusiasm for repeat performances.

[Wayward Son]

-continued-

At the very least, in a better world, time spent on psychiatric watch could've been used to justify placing the Virginia killer on a no-buy gun list. I'm not naïve enough to believe that illegal firearms aren't within reach for anyone who really wants them, but just as loud dogs deter burglars and crime rates drop during harsh weather, sometimes making life difficult for a would-be criminal is enough.

But all this remains in the realm of fantasy. Penning up and carefully scrutinizing the killer was never an option. Not in Virginia or California or any other state in the union. Because in our well-intentioned quest to maximize personal liberty, we've moved conceptual eons away from taking the concept of dangerousness seriously.

The best predictor of future violent behavior is past violent behavior, yet we regularly grant parole to murderers, serial rapists, chronically assaultive individuals and habitual pedophiles. Even when we do attempt to segregate low-impulse multiple offenders with effective tools such as with three-strikes laws, liberationist clamor never ceases.

Talk to anyone who's tried to commit a dangerously violent child or parent for even a few days: A stranger with a law degree will show up at the hearing and paint you as a fascist. So it's far too much to expect anything resembling a decisive approach to those whose level of threat remains at the verbal level.

Given the excesses of the past--husbands committing troublesome wives, involuntary sterilization of those judged defective--extreme caution is warranted. But like drunk drivers, we sway from one side of the legal road to the other and find the sensible center lane elusive.

Unless we confront the unpleasant fact that the brains of a small percentage of our citizens incubate dark, disturbed thoughts that can blossom into vicious behavior, we can look forward to repeats of last week's outrage.

Dr. Kellerman is clinical professor of pediatrics and psychology at USC's Keck School of Medicine and the author of 27 crime novels and three books on psychology, including "Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children" (Ballantine, 1999). His current novel is "Obsession"(Ballantine, 2007 ).

[Wayward Son]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110009988

Blacksburg's Silver Lining
Maybe this time the status quo will change.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Thursday, April 26, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

In the wake of an event such as Virginia Tech, our system moves heaven and earth to figure out what went wrong and how to make sure it doesn't happen again. This of course is what we did after September 11 and after the botched response to Hurricane Katrina.

Here's what's really unnerving about this inevitable "process": In June 2000, the Bremer Report of the National Commission on Terrorism described virtually everything we needed to know about preparing for the kind of attack that occurred in September 2001. Similarly--and you can guess what you're about to read--in 2002 the Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative, conducted by the Secret Service and the Department of Education, told us virtually everything we need to know to prevent a Virginia Tech.

The good news here is that we are not as stupid as we seem. We have it within our power to assign smart people to look at a manifest public problem and offer sensible fixes. (To be sure, not all commissions do.) Still one must ask: Why do we refuse to take our own best advice?

After the Blacksburg murders, one of the first words uttered in awful memory was "Columbine." Well, Columbine was among the main reasons for the Safe Schools effort. Also Springfield, Ore., West Paducah, Ky., and Jonesboro, Ark.--all sites of widely publicized school shootings. In all, the study investigated 37 such attacks in schools from 1974 to 2000.

Most interesting, the study was led by the Secret Service. Why? The study doesn't quite put it this way, but it was because the Secret Service's main job in life is preventing the nuts from killing someone. Simply, the study's goal was to try to figure out what is "knowable" before an attack.

One of the Safe School report's most relevant findings, for the purposes of stopping another Virginia Tech, is that the 37 school attacks weren't typically carried out by severely ill, unhinged psychotics like Cho Seung-Hui. This is not to say they were happy campers (the study interviewed 10 perpetrators in depth). Though few of them would get off by reason of insanity, they were all mentally very unhappy campers; and what is more, other people knew that. And in nearly every case, someone knew they were planning the attack: "In nearly two thirds of the incidents, more than one person had information about the attack before it occurred."

Among the reasons widely adduced for not doing something about Cho's violent proclivities are HIPAA and FERPA, the confidentiality laws for health records and college students' records. Well, there's no FERPA for high schools. There is merely the weird cultural refusal to turn in bad actors to adult authority. In one school attack, so many students knew it was coming that 24 were waiting on a mezzanine to watch, one with a camera. The enemy is us.

Prior to the studied assaults, some 93% of the attackers behaved in ways that caused concern to school officials, teachers, parents, the cops or other students. "In one case, the student's English teacher became concerned about several poems and essays that . . ." well, you know the rest.

Psychological flameouts were indeed present in virtually all the attacks--depression (61%), prior suicidal attempts or thoughts (78%), a sense of loss, feelings of being persecuted or in fact bullied.

A lot has been made of the police failure to apprehend Cho for two hours. Fair enough, but that's not typical. In the Safe Schools 37 incidents, most of the attacks were stopped by administrator or teachers, largely because half didn't last longer than 15 minutes. The cops stopped only 25% of the attacks--an argument for deputizing and arming someone in the schools. (In testimony this week to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the head of the association for all campus cops explained the "safety issues" that mainly keeps them distracted: "At the top of the list are issues related to high-risk drinking and the use and abuse of illegal and prescription drugs.")

After September 11, we learned from the 9/11 Commission that the left hand of the CIA didn't know what the right hand of the FBI was doing, that they wouldn't talk to each other, or under Justice Department rules, couldn't talk to each other. But before all that, the Bremer anti-terror report in 2000 described "complex bureaucratic procedures" that hampered the CIA and an FBI suffering from "bureaucratic and cultural obstacles (my emphasis) to obtaining terrorism information."

Cultural indeed. Over time we have accreted a culture in the United States--of rules, laws, liability concerns and mindsets--that adds up to no-can-do. Or, Attorney may I?

After 9/11 the consensus that we had to do something sank quickly in the swamps of partisanship; wiretapping and incarcerating terrorists became mainly a debate game for politicians and newspaper writers. If there is a sliver of silver lining in the Virginia Tech aftermath, it is that there seems to be a willingness to look hard at the status quo--no matter what assumptions pre-existed about rights, privacy, stigma, coercion, security or whether we can blame it on Karl Rove. On Tuesday, for example, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece by a professor titled, "Why It's OK to Rat on Other Students." Here, as with the message screaming off the pages of the Safe School report, the exhortation is to do something, no matter what the intimidations of the law or received wisdom.

What this means is that some college presidents, and their lawyers, rather than rolling over before those confidentiality laws, should tell some aggrieved student who is refusing to take the medication prescribed for his psychosis: So sue! Let a judge decide whether 32 deaths warrant a reconsideration of these restrictions.

As well, there is no hope unless a light goes off in the collective socket of our elected politicians, which illumines just how much their oh-so-needed laws siphon time and energy out of the daily lives of institutional leaders who a long time ago had the common sense and personal authority to chuck out a Cho Seung-Hui.

At the Homeland Security Committee hearing this week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I) remarked, "We want to respect the privacy of the individual, yet ultimately I think we have a greater responsibility to protect the safety of the community." Sound sensible? If embraced by our politics, that notion would overturn 40 years of jurisprudence and conventional wisdom that, of late, has turned deadly. After Blacksburg, it could happen.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Thursdays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

[phlipper]

You beat me to it this am Wayward so I’ll offer up this little tidbit from Neal Boortz Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2000, 364 days before everything changed, or so we thought.


Did you know that prior to 1969 virtually every New York City high school had a shooting program for students?

These students would bring their guns to school and leave them with a homeroom teacher or shooting instructor until time for the shooting class. Then they would carry those guns home at the end of the day.

Back then these students, and children elsewhere in the country, could buy guns through mail order or at their local hardware stores or gas stations. Talk about an easy availability of guns!

Now it is illegal for a teenager to even purchase a gun, much less take one to school. Shooting courses or competitions in schools are virtually unheard of. The availability of guns is far more restricted now than it was in the 1960s.

Now we have school shootings! And what do the politicians and anti-gun crowd blame those school shootings on? The "easy availability of guns"! Does something just not sound right here?

When we had scores of kids legally carrying guns to school every week, there were no shootings. Now guns are absolutely forbidden in schools – even administrators and teachers can’t have them – and we do have shootings. And the left is blaming this on "easy availability of guns."

Sorry, doesn’t compute.

Since we’re talking about guns in schools, let me relate three different incidents to you.

Pearl High School in Pearl, Mississippi – 1998

After killing his mother, Luke Woodham took a gun to Pearl High School, where he shot and killed the girl who had broken up with him a year earlier. He killed two at that high school and injured seven.

Assistant Principal Joel Myrick heard the first shot and saw Woodham with a gun. Myrick had a .45 in his pickup truck parked a quarter-mile away, off school property. You see, federal law said he couldn’t bring that gun onto school property.

Myrick sprinted to his truck and got his gun. He got back to the school in time to confront Woodham as he was trying to leave in his mother’s car. He later said he was headed to the middle school to shoot more people.

Myrick put the .45 in Woodham’s face and ordered him out of the car and on the ground. He held him there for the cops, saving lives.

A Lexis-Nexus search for the 30 days following the shooting showed a total of 687 articles. Only 19 of those articles mentioned Myrick. Only 10 of those said that Myrick used a gun to stop the attack. So, less than 1 1/2 percent of the articles on the Pearl High School shootings mentioned that the attack was stopped by an assistant principal with a gun.

Edinboro, Pennsylvania – 1998

Fourteen-year-old Andrew Wurst opened fire on an eighth-grade graduation dance. The dance was being held at a privately owned ballroom. The owner of the ballroom, James Strand, grabbed a shotgun out of his office and confronted Wurst. Wurst dropped his gun. One teacher killed, two wounded. Who knows how much worse it would have been if Strand had not been there with his shotgun.

I couldn’t find one media story which revealed that Wurst was stopped by a man with a gun. The articles all said he was "subdued" or "persuaded to surrender."

The problem here is clear. The leftist media in this country absolutely refuse to tell the whole story when a civilian uses a privately owned gun to stop a shooting.

Why? Because this does not support or promote the anti-gun agenda of the left. There is no objectivity here. The media has a clear agenda, and liberal media reporting will promote that agenda if at all possible.

Israel – 1997

In times past there were many terrorist attacks on Jewish children in Israeli schools. Finally some of the teachers and administrators started carrying guns. The shooting stopped. Flat-out stopped.

Stopped, that is, until 1997 when a group of Israeli schoolchildren was scheduled to visit the "Island of Peace" along the Jordanian border. Teachers were told that they had to leave all firearms behind because this was a place of peace. They did. The terrorists didn’t. Arab gunmen killed seven children and wounded six more.

Clearly guns can be a deterrent to school shootings. Right now depraved teenagers know that if they carry a gun into a school they will be the only person in that school with a gun!

What happens when someone in a position of authority actually suggests that we might want to discuss arming teachers or administrators?

Ask John Varis. For 13 years he was the district school superintendent in Reading, Ohio. He did a good enough job to win several awards and commendations.

Varis was engaged in a meeting inquiring into ways that schools might be made safer. He suggested that a study should be made of the possibility of allowing guards or teachers to be armed.

Columnists went into hysterics. The anti-gun crowd was just beside itself. Finally Varis was hounded into retirement! He lost his job because he suggested that schools might be safer if some teachers or administrators were armed!

That’s not all. The hysteria continued in Reading, Ohio. Some parents actually started a movement to have Varis’ pension revoked!

Can you believe this? This is the type of mindless hysteria the left has created over the issue of guns! A man can dedicate his life to education; win awards for his work, and then lose his job and possibly the pension he worked for decades to establish – all because he suggests that armed guards or teachers might prevent school shootings.

Do you remember those three kids in San Diego walking to school when they spotted a handgun lying in the grass? One of the students picked it up to see if it was real. It was. He immediately put the gun right back where they found it and went on to school. When they got to school they told a teacher about the gun. The police went to the location and retrieved it.

So, what happened to the students? Suspended. The student who picked up the gun and put it back into the grass was kicked out of school under the school’s zero-tolerance policy because he was in possession of a firearm on the way to school.

A San Diego politician was so outraged over this nonsense that he collected $500 in reward money to give to the kid for "doing the right thing."

With this type of left-wing hysteria clouding the debate, rational and logical discussion is impossible.

[one shot]

Crazy people do crazy things. You can't make sense of thoughts from an insane mind. These things will continue to happen, if not with guns then with some other weapon. We need to find a way to identify these people before they go off. You can't take away the ability to kill by taking away guns.


Spoons make me fat! I thought it was because I ate too much and dove too little! Thank you, I feel so much better now! :lol: :lol:

As for me and my house................