“Surveillance video shows the gunman entered the NAVSEA building, at 1336 Isaac Hull Ave., with a shotgun,” wsj,com reports. “He shot a security officer in the head, killing him, and took the officer’s 9 mm pistol and a magazine of ammunition. The shooter then continued through the building and seemed to target his victims, who were mostly on the third and fourth floors.” An armed guard is a sitting duck. Period. The only defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun—that the bad guy doesn’t see coming. Ban gun free zones.
We’ll never do that… Makes too much sense. Let’s try to ban shotguns instead. [Shadup Joe]
So they are saying he entered with the shotgun, not smuggled it in, and assembled it in the bathroom as CNN reported? Obviously still early and facts are hard to come by, but that is a huge difference. It will be nice to see when things get nailed down and the details stop changing.
I agree Robert. If military folks were allowed have side arms this guy would have been killed sooner. Perhaps he wouldn’t have tried it in the first place. Ban gun free zones. Love your site Robert.
At the very least give the CO of each military department in the buildings like the one at the Navy Yard, a lock box that only he or the senior NCO can open and have a few M9s in it. I mean after this and Ft. Hood doesn’t it make sense to have a secure small arms cache for military personnel. Also if they do it, mandate more time at the pistol ranges. We want soldiers using these guns not imitating the NYPD with them.
The Master at Arms in the Yard had plenty of firearms and ammunition. I personally saw them rush past my building around 0830/0840 towards NAVSEA. So, response time was not quite as bad as you would think from the outcome.
Having said that, at my prior job, every time there was a court-martial in the building, they would set up the metal detectors with unarmed guards in the lobby of the building. In the same lobby we had the (armed) duty shack. Pointing out that the detectors should be by the doors, and not in the lobby, I was told logistics and convenience trumped logic. A bad guy with gun would only have to take care of the armed duty first, and would then have nothing to worry from the unarmed guards and pointless (by then) metal detector.
There are no easy solutions, only risk management.
We don’t know for sure where the security guard was. I’ve read he was shot in a stairwell as the shooter was running down it
Navsea? Sounds like he had some beef with the big wigs.
This isn’t the first time the security guards were shot first. It happened in Red Lake School attack in 2005. The killer shot the two security guards manning the metal detectors.
“Ban gun free zones.”
I’ll toast to that.
As an armed guard for years with Pinkerton and driving a Brinks armored car
I was lucky never to shoot anyone OR get shot but I did pull my weapon three times to
Warn people away. We should get paid more and get better training and stay alert. how did this guy get in and don’t say he ad mentl problems and needed help!
I disagree. The armed guard isn’t the only part to working to stop mass shootings. While this armed guard didn’t have a chance other guards have thwarted robberies, or even in the Columbine shooting, helped 2 students escape.
There is no sure shot thing to stop these. Yes more armed good people could help, as could the possibility of that allowing many armed people to slip in too. The only real hope we have and it’s a good one, is that more people are not psychopaths with grudges than are. What is most important though is that every person not be denied a right to fight for their life. Is as if the mass shooter doesn’t get you, Uncle Sam will.
Who says the guard in this case didn’t “work”? If the guard slowed down the attacker, and/or was able to sound an alarm, then that may be the best we can hope for.
We will never stop mass murders. We will never stop mass gun murders, until guns are so technologically obsolete that using them seems laughable, like a mass bow & arrow killing would today – at which point we’ll have the Mommies Against Laser Violence, or whatever comes next.
Obama is too busy waiving Federal Regulations that ban the arming of Terrorists so that he can arm Terrorists to bother arming the US Military to protect them from Terrorists
I actually understood that.
And in doing that Obama committed an act of Treason.
The common thread is not the weapon but mental stability. In each case the altered mind is what carried these attacks forward. The continued flagging of gun control shows our leadership can only forward what is easy (attack gun rights – low coin) and avoid what is hard (mental health – bust the budget).
Ashamed for our Republic
A shotgun was his primary weapon? Well all you folks that think they’ll leave your hunting smoothbores alone will get to find out different now. Gun aowners need to be a united front, regardless if they’re tacticool or fudds.
You are preaching to the choir, but who’s preaching to the Fudds? If you know the history of the NRA and the 1977 Cincinnati Revolution, you know that the Fudds have always sold us out.
That’s why we need to seize this opportunity to drive the message home. Gun free zones cause mass murders. We need to stomp on the necks of the gun control lobby until we ensure that they will not dare raise their voices again for a century. This far and no further. The line is drawn, time to start pushing back.
Armed guards function well as a deterrent, but how do you deter a schizophrenic? And how many totally sane people walk into a school and shoot up the place?
A uniformed armed guard sitting at the front door (or metal detector) is essentially just a greeter. His chances of recognizing a threat and responding in time are severely marginal. There should NEVER be just one guard standing near the entrance and distracted by other duties or lulled into complacency by days and days of repetitive non threatening contact with the general public. IMO there should always be at least one additional guard roving but within sight of the entrance in order to provide assistance.
This is the reason why you hire lots and lots of “janitors.”
I think armed guards can still be effective, but I mainly just want for Texas schools to allow staff and parents with a CHL to carry, as we do inside banks, stores, church and most other places. That’s why I got my CHL after Beslan–so I could carry my gun on school grounds when dropping off the kid. But I can’t carry it inside the buildings. It’s grotesquely illogical to me.
I was thinking of this same thing the other day about how foolish it is to say you can carry your pistol right up to HERE, but no further. If you take your kid up to the front door and you have ill intent, who’s going to stop you from going further?
This occurred to me as I drove past a Starbucks near here. All those whacko “Mothers Against Something We Don’t Understand But Don’t Like” going on about Starbucks allowing CCW holders and open carry in their shops. Even if Starbucks Starbuckled to their demands, the tables outside the front door were filled with oblivious coffee drinkers three steps from anyone in a passing car or just walking by. The shop itself had floor to ceiling plate glass windows. Just precisely how would making that Starbucks into a gun free zone do anything at all to protect their customers or the caffeine addled mothers who want to waste so much money there?
On the most basic level of logical analysis the idea makes no sense.
I eluded to this in a post yesterday or the day before. There is no such thing as a secured area — even if there are armed guards and metal detectors at every entrance. An attacker can bribe, threaten, and in this case just plain overwhelm an armed security guard to gain entry. Once inside, the armed attacker is guaranteed to have the run of the facility for at least a few minutes and quite likely even 10 minutes or longer.
An armed attacker facing no resistance for several minutes can easily kill/injure 50 or more people. This is why we have to eliminate “secured areas” and “gun free zones” — because there is no such thing as a secured area or a gun free zone.
Am I the only one tired of seeing this scumbags face plastered all over this site, as well as literally every news site on the internet? Is this not sending the wrong message, that kill a bunch of people and become the center of attention for weeks…
Agreed. I have asked many times that no one show photos of the attacker nor state the attacker’s name. We can simply refer to the attacker as the Navy Yard attacker rather than by name.
“The only defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun—that the bad guy doesn’t see coming.”
Hence concealed carry.
Gun Free Zone = Murder Zone.
Secured Gun Free Zone = Bonus Time Murder Zone.
And just where is this video everybody is talking about?
Heck within hours the Coalition (to ban all your guns to…) Stop Gun Violence knew (or thought they knew) that the shooter had a TX conceal carry permit. That seemed to die a quick death in the media so I guess it wasn’t true. Retraction? What retraction?
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