With the terror attack on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish deli in Paris, the inheritors of the benefits of the enlightenment in one of the seats of western civilization have been, reluctantly, forced to reconsider our glaring vulnerability to asymmetric tactics. All open societies are particularly vulnerable, but in the age of Obama, where illegal entry into the nation is not only ignored, but encouraged, and where the National Command Authority not only refuses to name our intractable enemy, but embraces the foremost state sponsor of Islamist terrorism, it’s only a matter of time before the most horrific forms of terror are visited on us, and in large numbers . . .
Islamists have, for decades, understood the horror of attacks on schools and children. They don’t value the lives of children, except when taking them as props in their jihadist terror theater. While we haven’t had a major terror attack since 9-11, we have experienced a steady number of smaller, less destructive attacks, and that tide will soon turn toward attacks on schools.
What would provoke greater fear and revulsion? Where is there a softer target that offers hundreds, even thousands of helpless victims? What, in 2015 America, do we defend less and where else do we advertise the helplessness of potential victims as with gun-free school zone signs? Where else can so few kill so many so quickly without fear of (immediate) resistance?
In a recent article, It’s Happened Before, It Will Happen Again, I wrote a fictional account of a school attack. Circa 2015, most school administrators and school boards in American continue to refuse to allow willing, qualified teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns to preserve their lives and the lives of the children under their care. Fortunately, such attacks remain rare, but even such anti-gun legislators as Senator Diane Feinstein have recently admitted that there are terrorist sleeper cells in America. Innumerable terrorists, many identified with specific terror organizations such as ISIS, have been caught sneaking across our southern border. They are not here to sell Girl Scout cookies.
With that in mind, consider that the odds have fallen against you and the worst-case scenario has come to pass. A small group of terrorists has attacked the elementary school where your daughter is in third grade. Because your daughter’s teachers are unarmed, there was no deterrence, and no chance the attack will be stopped before lives are lost. It will take a very long time, each minute potentially costing innocent lives, before the police can respond. Who, exactly, will be responding? Does your daughter have a chance?
If you are like most Americans, you are served by a local, municipal police department, and secondarily, by the Sheriff’s office in the county where you reside. Both agencies are always understaffed—sometimes badly–and are able to field barely enough officers to cover the streets on a daily basis. Both agencies employ the usual mix of experienced, seasoned officers and new, learning officers, along with everything in between. Virtually every community is served by the state highway patrol, but a single officer commonly covers 200 square miles or more of territory and works — on paper — only eight hours a day. An HP officer might be available within a reasonable amount of time, but it’s not a good idea to count on it.
Terrorists will attack during the day when school is in session. Your daughter’s situation is desperate from the start because law enforcement agencies assign most officers when they are most needed: the afternoon and midnight shifts. Few are on the street during the day. There will be administrators and detectives working at police headquarters, but it will take them longer to respond to any emergency.
Chances are there will be no SWAT team of any kind — that’s the case in much of American — but if there is, it will almost certainly not be a full-time, dedicated team of officers whose primary or only duty is to train and operate as a SWAT team. Such teams exist only in a few major cities.
If there is a SWAT team, it will probably be staffed with a combination of local police officers and sheriff’s deputies. This not only lessens, or at least spreads the liability for each unit of government, it theoretically provides a broader base of experience and ability from which to choose team members. It also lessens the significant costs to each agency of equipping, training and maintaining a team, which costs, for most small to medium-sized agencies, are prohibitive. However, it also inevitably causes problems: who commands the team? Who are the sub-team leaders? How many from each agency are selected for the team? How are the financial burdens divided?
The selection of top tier teams like SEAL Team 6, Delta, the SAS and the FBI HRT is extraordinarily rigorous, and candidates are as likely to be rejected for psychological as physical issues. Selection for the local SWAT team is an entirely different matter. In some cases, officers with a reputation for aggression rather than calm deliberation and accurate judgment are preferred. Personal relationships and local politics often count for more than competence, ability and experience. For decades, relatively few police officers had military experience, fewer, combat experience. Due to 9-11 and the conflicts that followed there are more combat vets in police uniforms, but that doesn’t mean local agencies recognize or take advantage of their experience and training.
It’s not unusual to find a man who has gone through hundreds of doors in combat manning the farthest reaches of a loose perimeter, or making coffee and donut runs for a “command post.” One local team familiar to me chose as its designated sniper a detective whose only experience with firearms was his department-issued handgun, which he virtually never carried off-duty. He had never before owned or fired a rifle. There were far more experienced and capable people available.
Ideally, those with the most experience and ability should be assigned as trainers, supervisors and leaders. Practically, those positions will be given to people holding them in their daily work. Firearm trainers, first line supervisors, and administrators will be given positions at the same levels in the SWAT team. Sometimes this is not a serious problem. More often, it is.
The training the team receives will be sporadic and brief. Training an entire SWAT team is very expensive and time-consuming. Either experts are brought in, or entire teams are sent to them. Officers must be removed from their regular duties and overtime authorized for others to replace them, which stresses those replacement officers and lessens their readiness and performance. As a result, in a given year, the team available to save your daughter will probably have trained together only a day, perhaps two, at most. The skills they need to succeed, if they have actually been developed, are perishable.
Their training will not, in the least, be adequate to prepare them for an assault by terrorists employing military weapons and tactics, particularly if, like most jihadists, they expect to die and to take as many innocents with them as possible. The SWAT team will be marginally prepared to take on one or two common criminals, armed with the kinds of weapons criminals commonly carry. They will not be prepared to deal with booby traps, explosives, or coordinated offensive fire.
Their equipment will not be standardized and will be a mixture of agency-owned gear and personal gear. The agencies may own a few submachine guns, such as the H&K MP5 or AR-15 pattern weapons, and will likely provide just enough very expensive high-threat-level body armor for a small entry team. The agencies will also likely provide a bullet-resistant shield, and perhaps standard military helmets.
Most agencies will not have radio gear, including radios and headsets, apart from that used daily by their street officers. In SWAT and/or combat operations, this is a dangerous, limiting factor. It means not only will the SWAT team likely have too few radios, they will not have dedicated channels, and the equipment available will be substandard for their needs. Their communications will be hampered at best, and next to useless at worst.
The SWAT team members will have their agency-issued handguns, but apart from that will have to provide virtually everything else. If they have a carbine, it will most likely be a personally owned, semi automatic AR-15 type. Any optics and/or laser sights will be personally owned and selected and not standardized. Their sights may or may not be accurately aligned, as the photo of a SWAT troop with a holographic sight mounted backward on his carbine that headlines this article so hilariously and dangerously illustrates.
There will likely be little or no specific training in rifle or submachine employment, marksmanship and tactics.
Top tier tactical teams shoot as much ammunition in practice in a month, or even a week, as most law enforcement agencies do in a year. To attain and maintain the necessary level of proficiency, this is mandatory. Unfortunately, that’s not true of our hypothetical SWAT team. Most police officers — even SWAT types — aren’t gun guys and girls. They shoot only when they have to: yearly qualifications with generous passing scores and multiple opportunities to pass. They clean and maintain their issued weapons even less often.
Where a top tier team will be issued their weapons, will be exclusively responsible for them, and will regularly practice and qualify with them in realistic circumstances, circumstances mirroring what they will be most likely to encounter, our fictional team will be fortunate to have two qualification shoots per year on a common range with fixed silhouette targets at known ranges, none of which are obscured, behind cover, or moving.
The local team member wielding a department-owned MP5 may have last fired it a year ago, or may have never fired the weapon in his hands as he approaches your daughter’s elementary school. The officer who usually carries that weapon may be out of town when called out, or he just couldn’t be reached. The man carrying his MP5 may have no idea where its sights are fixed or who last fired the weapon or adjusted its sights. He may have no idea when it was last cleaned—if it was cleaned–or by whom. When he pulls the trigger, he may have no idea precisely where the bullets will strike. He may be frighteningly unfamiliar with his primary weapon, and even less familiar with its ammunition.
What this means is that the local SWAT team can’t be counted upon to be capable of the accuracy necessary to save lives. Top tier teams have a saying, “it sucks to be a hostage,” because even for people of their level of training and skill, the deaths of hostages are common. Well-meaning police officers dressed up like top tier teams and using similar weapons will surely do worse, and even in situations where there is no actual danger, make deadly mistakes, as in the Jose Guerena case, where a team comprised of four local agencies, fired 71 rounds in a panic, striking Guerena only 22 times, but ventilating his home from exterior wall to exterior wall and from floor to ceiling, as well as perforating the surrounding neighborhood.
The local team will not be called to the school for a very long time, most likely at least an hour. Officers may be ordered to meet at a central location such as the nearest police headquarters, or may be sent directly to the school, but nothing will likely be done until the various SWAT commanders can assemble and confer. Few, if any, will have any actual tactical leadership experience.
Current police doctrine calls for the first officers on the scene of a school attack to immediately enter the school, seek out and engage the attacker(s). This will likely have been done, and those officers killed, wounded, or repelled. By the time a local SWAT team can be fielded, terrorists will likely have already done all the damage they’d planned to do and killed themselves in the process, or they will have set multiple booby-traps, and will be well prepared to repel any attack.
I am not disparaging the local SWAT team or the efforts of local police agencies that do their best to protect the public. Most of those involved will be well intentioned and serious about their responsibilities. Unfortunately, they will be also likely be poorly and incompletely trained, poorly and incompletely equipped, inexperienced, and unprepared to meet the challenges they face. Worse, they will not have the experience to know what they don’t know, and will tend to resist competent advice from outside their sources.
School attacks must be, first and foremost, deterred. Knowing they will be likely to face immediate and effective armed resistance, criminals and terrorists will be highly likely to attack other, softer targets. Ironically, this is a primary reason many school districts continue to resist arming willing staff: they know that if the school district next door allows it, every surrounding district will have no choice, and it will spread like wildfire across the nation. The greater irony is such cynical decisions leave children and teachers helpless in the face of armed threats.
Where deterrence fails, only immediate and effective force, applied when and where an attack occurs, can save lives, as it did at a 2008 attack on an Israeli high school.
It’s possible that armed teachers may not be able to stop an attack, but they can slow it, allowing more innocents to escape. Some armed resistance is far better than none, or as one school district has tragicomically proposed, storing canned vegetables in classrooms to be issued to students to throw at armed attackers.
As useful as a well-manned, well-equipped and well-trained SWAT team may be in many situations, in any kind of school attack, and particularly in organized terror attacks, they will all too often be too little and too late. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Mike’s Home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
OFWG’s with a big glass of milk.
Until and unless we get rid of all the liberal collectivist gun grabbers in all positions of authority and decision making in the United States we are doomed. This means those at the very top level, mid and lower levels of federal, state, and local government. Then we have to continue on to the municipal level in our schools, school boards and principles. The lefty looneys are incapable of thinking out of the box. They think that if they just ban all guns nobody will have one and we will all be magically safe. These individuals are a waste of oxygen and are too stupid to be allowed to be in positions of authority. I take my personal security very seriously I keep 1000 rounds of 7.62X51 ammo on hands at all times and a M305 along with a 338 Lupua and a military grade sniper scope on top.
I’m counting on Jesus to save me.I’m glad my kids are grown and grandkids are home schooled. Most schools are woefully underprotected especially for suicide scum…
When you pray move your feet.
I have never understood the rationale behind schools being “gun free zones”. It does nothing but signal to the bad guys that its ripe for the picking.
“Guns SCARE me!” That’s what it comes down to.
A very accurate description of what faces pretty much most communities and “law enforcement” organizations if we start seeing these kinds of attacks. The way this thing works here, is that there will be several such events, horrific in concept and execution, and that is when our lords temporal will begin implementing the first “solutions” that occur to them. Imbeciles and incompetents that they are, it will probably be ramping up more phony SWAT robocops and then in desperation, firing up martial law and sending in military troops. They did this before, which some of us here remember from the 1960s, when, as Pat Buchanan has said, there were urban riots that make the recent events in Ferguson and NYC look like afternoon cookouts. They’ve shown they have little imagination or sense of history and thus I fear the worst when it comes to terror attacks on schools, churches, sporting events and shopping malls, which we have so far managed to avoid.
“Imbeciles and incompetents that they are, it will probably be ramping up more phony SWAT robocops and then in desperation, firing up martial law and sending in military troops.”
I had the exact same thought without even thinking of the riots of the 1960s.
Kinda glad my kids go to a school that is literally across the street from our police dept.
Sorry to burst your bubble Chris. Won’t help in the least. Read the article again.
We put armed guards in banks but not in schools. Does that tell you where our priorities are?
Yes.
John E.
“We put armed guards in banks but not in schools. Does that tell you where our priorities are?”
Not necessarily. It tells us a great deal about where criminals’ priorities are. When police asked bank robber Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, his priceless reply was, “because that’s where the money is.”
Friend of mine has a carry permit in Maryland. He’s not authorized because he wants to protect his wife and kids. He’s “allowed” to carry because he’s a business owner.
It’s apparently ok to protect your money; just not your family.
And if local PDs do get serious about equipping and training their SWAT teams to a level appropriate to this threat? The cries of police militarization will sound all the louder.
I’m not trying to say it shouldn’t be done, or that it should be. However, I think it is important to recognize the dichotomy here between how we want our police forces to look and be in “everyday life” vs how we want them equipped, armed and acting in “crisis mode.”
As a simple instance, how do you break in your gear and learn how best to carry it? How to be be confident and sure of it in action when you need it in an emergency? Carry it and wear it daily. So how to do that when you don’t want the public perception of police dressing up as an assault team?
It doesn’t do much good John L. to have all the Swat Teams all dressed up for the party when the party is over before they can show up.
What would have made the difference with Charlie Hebdo and what will make a real difference if/when our own schools/malls/theatres/public places are attacked are to eliminate all GFZ’s and encourage the law abiding citizens to carry weapons where ever they are in public and being willing to use them to stop the bad guys with violence of immediate action.
For me. I OC and I train twice a month in different scenarios. I shoot better than most, not as good as some.
The cries of police militarization are due to misuse of equipment and tactics not the existence of equipment and tactics.
Oh so what you’re really saying is, a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, should not be infringed. Got it.
Seems like this potential problem has already been solved, ages ago.
It used to be that Americans would read such stories in horror and become dumbfounded by the Gov’s absolute lack of action…Anymore we expect imbecilic policy if any policy at all…And this used to be a one-party problem now surpassed and compounded twofold…Thank the Lord above for our ingenious Founding Fathers and their prescient understanding of Checks and Balances which, to this day, STILL delegates much autonomy to the States, absent which, I do not believe that TAG etc. exists…
http://i.imgur.com/O6p7sL2.jpg
I don’t understand the point of these theoretical fear mongering articles. Unless you are suggesting a clear solution or plan of action this serves no purpose.
It creates dialog.
Finally, somebody said it! Thank you.
Unless you have credible evidence that our schools are under direct threat of a terrorist attack, this is just far-right agitprop fear-mongering.
How about we stick with the proven threats and not make up more boogeymen?
“this is just far-right agitprop fear-mongering.How about we stick with the proven threats and not make up more boogeymen?”
Take your pick of proven ACTIONS, FLAME DELETED
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=list+of+muslim+terror+attacks+on+children
Um, you mean we should discount this scenario because it is unlikely to happen? So, is it more or less likely to happen than say jets being hijacked and flown into buildings? Or, is it more or less likely than a couple of terrorist blowing up pressure cookers at the finish line of a marathon in some big city like Boston?
Removal of “Gun Free” zones, allowing teachers to CCW if they so choose, and all around encouraging people to prepare for the worst and take responsibility of their own safety seems to be a pretty good COA. Funny how those are things that TTAG constantly encourages.
Here is a solution. Pretty much what we POTG have been saying for awhile. And the NRA.
http://10news.dk/interpol-allowing-citizens-to-carry-guns-in-public-is-most-effective-way-to-prevent-terror-attacks/
Here is how the Israelis have been doing it for some time.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/12/30/armed-teachers-guards-key-to-school-security-in-israel/
This also works for lone crazy gun-men, which is happening, often enough to justify being prepared for it, Grind.
Deflecting from the point of the conversation by ad hominems and hysterical accusations about motivations,
is jr troll tactics, or an MDA level of truly dumb spin… You are not a troll are you?
According to one national trainer of police, with impressive credentials, who I heard speak to this issue at a seminar, the number one concern in the fusion centers was a Beslan scenario.
Well that’s just depressing. Some cops do like guns and carry them all the time. However, just like Sandy Hook, many police officers will wait for backup to enter a school active shooting so they can use a 2-4 man team. Should 3-4 (or more) terrorists attack a school with long guns, I suspect most cops will wait for backup.
I would probably go in solo with an AR and extra mags that I carry. I say probably because I’m not walking into a bloodbath. If I can engage at a distance that would be useful.
The reality is that a concerted attack against a “Gun Free Zone” could not be met quickly with any sort of effective resistance.
My affluent little town installed 8 ft bar fences around all the schools after a school shooting, in which the two rescuers, a pair of guys installing a cement sidewalk, and a nearby homeowner who jumped the 4 foot chain link fence, after grabbing his .45,
tackled and disarmed the crazy guy who was fumbling his reload…
The PD headquarters is two miles away. Not sure actually how long it took them to get there, but the neither of the two SRO’s covering 15 campuses was there at that time.
The District still wont allow staff or volunteer noon-duty monitors to be armed…
So now we have a kill zone where the kids cant even run away…
Is there a news article? I’d love to have more info on that situation.
Google Kelly Elementary School in Carlsbad.
The cops did a great job managing the situation once they got there, and I know LEOs from all over were there en masse, ASAP.
The problem is simple physics, distance and time of travel. The only way to have a good guy with a gun stop a bad guy with a gun, on the spot, is for that good guy(s) to be there.
And ideally to use the expertise of the PD to make sure those responsible volunteers who will CCW; a principal or VP, a coach or two, teachers, campus monitors- were trained to shoot, trained to respond, in concert with emergency plans, exits, PD tactics, and drilled to keep their training fresh enough to be the drilled response, when TSHTF.
As to how to make most use of delaying tactics, short term, while the others designated to do so, classroom teachers, etc are getting kids out the back door (s) rather than huddling under desks…and opening the locked gates in the security fence at multiple points.
THAT would be ONE lesson learned from the TTAG scenario, and others, including Beslan. Dont huddle in place to die, and DONT follow the crowd, which may be herded by multiple attackers to a collection point or kill zone.
“They don’t value the lives of children, except when taking them as props in their jihadist terror theater.”
You forgot the part where terrorists (cough Boko Haram cough) also take girls for sex slaves.
“Where else can so few kill so many so quickly without fear of (immediate) resistance?”
That’s easy: a sports stadium filled with anywhere from 50,000 to 110,000 fans. There are countless ways to kill thousands in that confined space … or as the fans stream out to their vehicles. Next question.
Some events are covered by a lot of uniformed and undercover officers and private security. The Super Bowl was supposed to have “an army” of armed protection. Not schools though. So if I was a bad guy intending to do bad things without opposition, I’d pick a school where I know that nobody is armed.
I was hoping that you could come up with scenarios. Here are some thought starters:
Option (1)
Borrowing from a Simpsons animated television series episode, just drive a snow plow at high speed into the crowd pouring out of the stadium. And since this theoretical Johnny Jihadi is determined and has time, he can install clear acrylic sheets around him in the cab and have a truly bullet proof vehicle. Once that machine starts rolling, nothing is going to stop it.
Option (2)
Terrorists ignite a few M80 firecrackers and smoke bombs in the stadium and let the ensuing panic and stampede kill thousands. Pro tip: launch the pre-lit firecrackers and smoke bombs from outside the stadium with the giant slingshots that people use to launch water balloons to avoid any concerns about screening going into the stadium.
Option (3)
Crash a small airplane (e.g. single engine Cessna or Piper Cub) or very large radio controlled airplane full of gasoline inside the stadium. The initial crash will kill several hundred and the ensuing panic and stampede will kill thousands.
Shall I continue?
Read “Day of Wrath ” by William Forstchen.
Please read “Terror At Beslan”. It describes how exactly this situation played out in an outlying Russian town.
Here is something more recent:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/01/asia/pakistan-peshawar-school-guns/index.html
If there is an attack, it will be in a major metro area. Unless you are in a major metro area, you are probably safe. These terrorists want glory and headlines in the news, they are not looking at strategic hit and run attacks.
Until there is an actual attack, most of the USA will remain clueless. After the attack, the bloody shirts will call for more draconian laws that will not stop the next attack.
All the items discussed require lots of money and mental commitment that we live in a dangerous world. The anti-gun crowd would rather see dead children than more guns. There is no winning on this issue.
It is unclear to me in this current PC environment where in UC Davis Jews are shouted down with the support of the administration by Hamas supporters that people understand they need to protect themselves. Feelings have replaced logic. They have now started to ban commercials because “wheat” offends those who are “gluten free” because we now have a grievance industry — we are screwed.
So many people have been trained to look to the government for help, not sure if they know how to defend themselves anymore. There is scourge and malaise of this hard left multi-cultural Utopia that will never exist who believes that if we are nice to our enemy they will be nice to us. How did that work out for the two Japanese citizens?
It will take a tragedy, but I have no idea how things will change after the bodies are buried. One things is for certain, none of the above proposed ideas will even be considered until something really bad happens. I am not holding my breath.
“Until there is an actual attack, most of the USA will remain clueless. After the attack, the bloody shirts will call for more draconian laws that will not stop the next attack. ”
I have felt this way for some time, but haven’t been able to express it this well. Wipe out a school, with 1,000 kids dead, next day we’ll have a huge push for UBC, assault weapons bans, magazine bans, anything and everything which absolutely CAN NOT help in any way, not a damn thing which could.
“Until there is an actual attack, most of the USA will remain clueless.”
Wasn’t there an actual attack in 2001? How’d we, as a nation, do after that one? Aren’t we STILL clueless?
7 years later the sheep elected an islamo-marxist.
Because Newtown, CT is a Major Metropolitan Area.
The hypothetical terrorist team that Mr. McDaniel described is a hit-squad. A hit squad has three ginormous advantages:
(1) They have the element of surprise.
(2) They choose the place, time, and circumstances of their attack to their maximum advantage.
(3) They know their “enemy” and their enemy’s tactics very well.
In other words Mr. McDaniel’s hypothetical hit-squad is applying Sun Tzu’s Art of War strategies to maximum effect. Unfortunately, there is no practical solution.
I wish I had better news or a solution. I do not. History shows us that trained, equipped, determined forces can overrun enemy military camps and bases during war. Overrunning a school is easy in comparison.
By all means I support armed staff, parents, and visitors in schools. We have already seen that such armed staff, parents, and visitors can stop single spree killers. And those same armed people could reduce the casualties of a terrorist attack. Experience and wisdom tell us, however, that nothing short of a Special Forces team on site will have any likelihood of preventing or at least radically minimizing a terrorist attack on a school.
There are no guarantees in life. Hug your children every day and tell them that you love them. Unfortunately, any day could be their last day on Earth.
It is guaranteed the next victims after the event will be the law abiding firearm owners who will be publicly accused of blocking “common sense” restrictions that may have prevented the tragedy. Bonus points for the NRA being accused as well.
I’m still waiting for the fallout of the Sydney cafe siege. The inquiry is underway but no government inquiry ever happens without the conclusion being known beforehand.
If you knew there was going to be an attack you wouldn’t be at that place and time. The only way that your children can avoid a school attack is if they aren’t there. Home school is the only answer. In this case, you can say, “Do it for they children”, without any sarcasm. Don’t wait until it’s too late.
This has been on my mind lately. My 4 yo came home with a note saying a lock down drill will be happening at her preschool this month. I just cringe thinking about telling her that it will do no good if a bad guy comes in. I’ve already started explaining the idiocy to my 6 yo. Both girls know I carry, why I carry (to protect them from bad guys), and not to talk about, especially at school. I often think about the irony that I’ll spend years telling my girls that there’s no such thing as monsters, and when they finally believe me, to tell them there are monsters out there, only they don’t look like Shrek or Dracula.
The clueless sheeple seem to be quite content living in a society full of “soft targets”. And of course, in the event of another tragedy it will be solely the fault of the gun regardless. It nice to have a built in cause and scape goat for any crisis.
Or there will be a suicide attack on an un-guardable large subway station. Think Penn Station in NYC or Union Station in DC as the most obvious targets. Thankfully I have been in neither location in many years, but in spite of the armed police, what would one suicidal Jihadist with a few grenades or a “real” AK-47 style pistol and a briefcase full of loaded magazines be able to do before the police got him? To say nothing of a vial of liquified nerve gas. As others have pointed out with an attack on a stadium, the panic and stampede would kill more than the attack itself itself. I am amazed that it has not happened already, if not in the US then in London (again on a larger scale than the last time) or Paris. You would think that the Jihadist would first shoot any uniformed police close by before going after the civilians. There is a small possibility that an armed CCW holder might actually make the difference. But unlikely in the likely target locations.
Islamists have, for decades, understood the horror of attacks on schools and children. No. No, the peaceful disciples of Islam would never do such a thing!
I love the header photo of the high speed/low drag operator with his holographic sight mounted backwards. Where would we be without the gallant and extremely well trained sheepdogs looking over the flock? Oh, that’s right, on our own. Same as it ever was. Remember boys and girls, nobody in this world has your own best interests at heart more than you do. You are your own first responder; think, act and train accordingly.
This “operator” is not a sheepdog but a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
Putting the sight on backwards may look more tacticool but reading the instructions first might save some embarrassment, if the jock ever learned how to read in first place.
The backward mounted EOTech…oy…the “operator” needs to get off that range and go back to the classroom.
We dont have to imagine that someone is threatening us- just listen.
They have been telling us for some time.
http://gatesofvienna.net/
http://www.longwarjournal.org/
Anybody notice that the Eotech is backward on the rifle in the picture?
That’s what the BUIS is for…. Back Up for Idiot Sight, I think is how the acronym goes.
That has been distracting me so bad I haven’t been able to read the article, I thought it must have been some new site that I hadn’t seen before.
…Which further confirms the operator has never zeroed the Eotech on that weapon at all. Yea!!!
One of the things I’ve constantly noticed about civilian first responders (cops, fire, EMTs/Ambulances) is how bizarre and idiotic their radio systems are.
People who aren’t part of the LEO/fire/EMT scene literally have no idea how responses sound on a dispatch repeater. It’s enough for a quadruple face-palm at times.
That’s long before we talk about the weapons, training and tactics of the cops responding to a planned attack. Just their communication channels and training in effective communication is so badly lacking, that there’s little hope of a fast response, even in a small town where everyone knows everyone else. All you need is for a dispatcher to get flustered (and with many dispatchers being female, all it takes sometimes is a male voice coming on the air, clearly pissed off at a mistake and the dispatcher gets flustered quickly) and things start to spin apart.
How would it work if certain school staff has CCW and come into action. I would hope the situation is neutralized in a few minutes. But if LEO’s and swat show up while the staff member is still engaged or in panic fails to re holster how would they indentify good guy from bad guy with a weapon?
If a 911 call from school describes who the good guy is and details of what he’s wearing in great detail we all know this info does not always make it to each responder storming the place.
I say get LEO out of banks. Put thoes LEO’s in schools.
Money has a face value. Children are priceless.
Type “Beslan School massacre” into a search engine to see the likely result of an Islamist assault on a school. These savages want to die, and they are willing to wait until the SWAT team attacks to start their mass killings. In Beslan, they used explosives and AKs to kill 385 people (including 186 children) out of 1100 hostages. Most were killed as the Russian SWAT teams attacked.
Who needs a SWAT team? Just about every event is going to be over, or become a bore them to death exercise within 15 minutes, or within 5 minutes of the first person with a gun going after the bad guys. So, SWAT shows up, and drinks coffee until the bad guy gives up. Or picks up the pieces.
Mostly, they violently and dangerously serve warrants where there is no perceived risk, but it sure is fun. For people they think are actually dangerous, they pick them up when they are not at home.
So what’s the point in SWAT?
And, exactly, where are the bad guys who operate on a scale that needs a military response, and yet so pokey that they are still shooting when SWAT shows up? Never been a sign of them here (unless you count that shoot out from that bank robbery in L.A. where the bad guys had body armor, for all the good it did them in the end (and that was, what, 15 years ago?)).
I recently took an Active Shooter class at the NRA HQ in Fairfax. The class analyzed some of the recent, high-profile incidents including Sandy Hook. The instructors showed diagrams of who survived and who did not and drew conclusions as to why.
One takeaway I had about schools is that physical security is just not what it should be. No one should be able to just walk into a school without being buzzed in by someone behind bullet proof glass. My gas station has their cashier behind bullet proof glass for heaven’s sake! Keep in mind the terrorists at Charie Hebdo were buzzed in by an employee, who was afraid of herself and her child getting shot through the glass.
Another take away is that some people survived by simply barricading themselves in rooms. We should facilitate that. Classrooms should have heavy doors and staff (only staff, not students) should be able to lock and unlock those doors from the inside.
Also, I think schools should have a “panic button” that only staff can activate that tells LEOs this is a bona fide, active shooter situation and to call out the troops. In addition, there needs to be training on this. Sorry if it scares the kids, but it has to be done. Hey, back in the day we did fire drills, tornado drills and nuclear war drills. It only scared us a little.
The problem with active shooter panic buttons is that some do gooder will water this down with anti children fighting – it is all violence, isn’t it? That is like a turd in a punch bowl.
Calif started the Amber Alert system, where everybody’s cell phone would notify them of a child abduction. This was designed for stranger abductions. Then some lawyers got involved and it now is used for family abductions. These are 2 different animals. Most of the time a family member abduction is done by the parent who actually cares about the child and the way the other is not caring for him. This means the Amber Alert is not even looked at by most people because it is really a civil matter. If the alert can be worded is such a way that it is only used in a shooting or mortal injury situations, fine, but why not just sent the unicorn to stop it?
I call bullshit. More illegals have been caught and sent back under Obama than under Bush.
If the author can’t get that right, there’s no point reading farther.
Question. I am not an expert on holographic sights. I was wondering about the photo in this article. Is the point of the picture that the sight is on backwards? It looks like an Eotech sight. Is that the case? Where/when was the photo taken? Thanks.
Am I the only one that looked at the stock picture and thinks that the EO Tech sight is mounted backwards?
Stories like this will only make the Feds stronger. They will want to come in with a dedicated SWAT team. We do not want the feds to have even more power. we need to take away LEO teams for most of the alphabet agencies. The IRS, the poultry inspectors, the FDA, etc, do not need LEOs of thier own. We do NOT need Federales, Gestapo, Federal police, Mounties, or the like to come in and take over the state’s jobs.
It is bad enough that the states want to take over property tax that is used for local schools – they want total control over schooling our children, they want people in a good school district to open it for children in lesser districts. Now the feds are trying to takeover things. Saying things like local SWAT are not good enough just opens the door for them. Getting these teams in place will build the forces that will come and take your guns – no locals needed.
There is a reason the CIA and the Armed Forces are not to act inside the US borders. GW and Obama have done thier best to build the NSA and other federal LEO forces. They need to be dismantled.
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