20k foot view of school shooting

[slickpoppa]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In my three years, I never met a non law enforcement person who carried a concealed weapon.

[/ QUOTE ]

That you know of.

I remember the night when three of the people at my home game discovered that the other five of us were all packing heat. It was pretty funny.

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL. Elaborate?

[/ QUOTE ]

There were 8 of us, and I was open carrying on my hip. Everyone that comes to my game knew that I had a gun on me at all times, explicitly for advertising purposes. We always had not-insignificant amounts of cash at the game (several thousand dollars), and I wanted anyone who had the idea of hitting my game to pick another.

Anyway, a new guy was sort of shocked to see the gun, and asked if he could look at it more closely. I said yes, removed the magazine and ejected the round in the chamber, locked the slide back and handed it to him (butt first, of course). Next thing you know, there's 4 more guns stripped and on the table, and all the gun nuts are passing them back and forth oohing and ahing. My friend Jerry's eyes practically popped out of his head and he almost spit milk out of his nose, even though he hasn't drank milk in 2 decades.

If I remember correctly, there was a 9mm Baretta, a .38 Chief's Special, some sort of Smith & Wesson snub-nose revolver, and some other thing I can't recall.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds like a bizarro version of the scene in Jaws where they all compare their scars. Did you start singing "Show me the way to go home" afterwards?

[timotheeeee]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In my three years, I never met a non law enforcement person who carried a concealed weapon.

[/ QUOTE ]

That you know of.

I remember the night when three of the people at my home game discovered that the other five of us were all packing heat. It was pretty funny.

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL. Elaborate?

[/ QUOTE ]

There were 8 of us, and I was open carrying on my hip. Everyone that comes to my game knew that I had a gun on me at all times, explicitly for advertising purposes. We always had not-insignificant amounts of cash at the game (several thousand dollars), and I wanted anyone who had the idea of hitting my game to pick another.

Anyway, a new guy was sort of shocked to see the gun, and asked if he could look at it more closely. I said yes, removed the magazine and ejected the round in the chamber, locked the slide back and handed it to him (butt first, of course). Next thing you know, there's 4 more guns stripped and on the table, and all the gun nuts are passing them back and forth oohing and ahing. My friend Jerry's eyes practically popped out of his head and he almost spit milk out of his nose, even though he hasn't drank milk in 2 decades.

If I remember correctly, there was a 9mm Baretta, a .38 Chief's Special, some sort of Smith & Wesson snub-nose revolver, and some other thing I can't recall.

[/ QUOTE ]

Funny. My games usually involve me misreading the board and losing a $10 pot.

[Shoe]

[ QUOTE ]
1) He didn't "choose a gun free zone". He chose to do it in his environment, and attack the people that wronged him or however he viwed it.

[/ QUOTE ]

But if even a quarter of the people on the campus carried a gun, he would not have been able to get off more than a few shots before he himself was dead. If enough law-abiding citizens were armed, there is a good chance that would be enough deterrence for him to even go through with the thing.

[iron81]

This is a really weak argument.

1. You honestly think the gunman chose this building because guns weren't allowed? Don't you think it might be because he was a student there?

2. According to this account, the first officers on the scene immediately smashed windows to gain entry to the building in order to confront the shooter. There was no cowering.

3. There is no "gun free area" in areas with adequate police protection.

[Shoe]

[ QUOTE ]
3. There is no "gun free area" in areas with adequate police protection.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can't honestly think this is true? There are millions of areas where it will take the police several minutes to respond while you are pretty much free to go on a rampage as much as you want until they get there (I don't think this is a good thing -- but unless you want to pay 100% taxes there is no way around it other than letting law-abiding citizens carry their own guns for protection).

True, we have decent police protection that prevents hundreds or thousands of people from being killed in a shootout, but for a motivated individual, the situation like we saw in VT would be fairly easy to repeat (and I am not trying to take away from the tragedy here -- I think it is tragic, but there is just not an easy solution to this).

[John Kilduff]

[ QUOTE ]
3. There is no "gun free area" in areas with adequate police protection.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's interesting that there is really no such thing as "adequate police protection". The police cannot prevent most crimes and will never prevent most crimes, nor be there to stop violence immediately in most cases (be it a mugging, a fistfight, or the rare mass shooting).

The only thing that could even approach being "adequate protection", would be for a large percentage of responsible adults to carry guns. Even then, some incidents would slip through the cracks, but a mugging or a mass shooting would have a much better chance of being stopped (or better yet, deterred).

[iron81]

[ QUOTE ]
3. There is no "gun free area" in areas with adequate police protection.

[/ QUOTE ]
I regret posting this.

[PLOlover]

[ QUOTE ]
2. According to this account, the first officers on the scene immediately smashed windows to gain entry to the building in order to confront the shooter. There was no cowering.

[/ QUOTE ]

Then they deserve a lot of credit and deserve to be respected as police officers. The police at columbine do not.

I guess I was mistaken thinking that since the first shooting was around 7 and the last around 10.

[Huh?]

i believe that the first police went in after the shooter had killed himself..though they werent aware at the time

[BearHustler]

Dropped in on politics because of recent events, and have a few quick thoughts:

- the main argument of the pro-gun posters seems to be that if more citizens were armed, they could stop more crime from happening. The main problem with this is of course that you are essentially giving your citizens permission to shoot and kill each other, based on personal judgement. I don't know if that's a situation you want to be in.

- a lot of people are saying something to the effect of: if we outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns. What they fail to see is that the "law obiding citizens" speak of turn into the evil villains themselves sometimes. Girl cheats on guy, guy shoots girl + lover. College student returns home unexpected, dad shoots him because he thinks it's a burglar. Guy goes from party-animal to drug user to broke junkie and starts holding up drugstores...

It almost seems that this is a common mistake you Americans make: to divide the world into "evil states" that are part of an "axis of evil", where "terrorists" live, while "criminals" are making your streets unsafe. It's all just people. People make mistakes. There is no "good" and "evil", only a society with a culture that creates both, and where all people have the capacity for both.

When people have guns at hand when they make these mistakes, the consequences get worse.

Arming people to stop gun crime is like starting a war to create peace. It will never work.