“The 16-year-old student accused of making explosives in his Monkton home told police he took a stolen handgun to the George Washington Carver Center for the Arts and Technology last week, but was too intoxicated to carry out plans to use the weapon at school, according to charging documents,” baltimoresun.com reports. You did clock the word “explosives” in that lead, yes? Kinda like the bombs that failed to explode in the Columbine killing spree. Turns out aspiring Maryland murderer Sash Alexander Nemphos hit the whiskey a bit too hard; he forgot to bring the explosives. Check this out . . .
Police said Nemphos eventually admitted he had stolen the gun and hidden it in a plastic container in his bedroom, the documents state. When asked what he planned to do with the weapon, the teen said he was going to kill his parents and then drive to the school and shoot the school police officer. He said he planned to take the school officer’s gun and kill as many students and teachers as he could, according to the documents.
Nemphos stole the gun from his father’s workplace. (So much for background checks, eh?) He possessed the gun (also a crime). Brought the firearm onto campus (another crime) intending murder (yup, criminal). So . . . how about another law?
The scenario revealed by the Sun should give pause to anyone who thinks that an armed school resource officer (SRO) is the be-all end-all of school safety. Who’s to say Nemphos couldn’t have taken out the guard, grabbed his gun and gone on a rampage? I’d bet dollars to donuts there wasn’t another armed person on campus ready to do what a dead SRO couldn’t do.
Arm teachers. Or, at the very least, let parents, teachers, administrators and staff who want to arm themselves exercise their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms on campus. That’s it. That’s the first line of defense against criminals, crazies and terrorists. A lesson that we’ve already paid for in blood. [h/t DCW]
Huh… Well ain’t that some shit.
Just a wee lad.
A policeman costs about $35,000 to $55,000 a year, and a retired guy might be less. A concealed carry permit, a few boxes of ammo, and a new pistol like a Glock, a Beretta, or a Taurus revolver would cost probably less than $750 total, depending on the cost and training reqs of the state in question’s permitting process.
Oh no, dont, you are making too much sense! We can come up with reasonable solutions, but god forbid they actually take them into consideration.
But then the school board would have to find room in the budget for that without impacting their $120k+/year salary for doing 40 hours of work a month. (or much less in many cases)
No kidding, Sian.
I drove past the local school admin. building a few years back, the parking lot was full of BMWs High-end Audis and Volvos.
There are plenty of teachers willing to foot 100% of the bill as long as they can protect their students.
None of the money even has to come from tax dollars.
A cop with benefits runs about $150 K / year in CA. My live in academy, one of the last in the nation, ran over $200,000 for training. Most of us with more than 10 years on the job are making more than $100 K / year with OT. Some of that contract OT actually makes money for us, so doesn’t count against taxpayers. Movies are big business.
Cops are expensive. And we shoot the wrong targets more often than CCW carriers. We also miss more. CCW carriers are less expensive, more accurate, rarely shoot dogs, and have the lowest arrest rate of any segment in society. As an Independent Conservative, that math is pretty obvious. To the liberal progressive statist, the answer is: more government.
Similar to my thoughts on this subject. Employ a high dollar, professional that costs a lot of money, a lower cost guard that is likely a retired cop or maybe just someone who looks like one OR employ a policy that allows responsible teachers and administrators to carry or keep weapons close just in case. In the first two cases you will be paying someone to stand around being bored most of the time and also a potential target for Perps. In the last case it costs little more than the current budget and potentially far better protection IF it is ever needed. Isn’t this all obvious ?
Come on now, we can’t have some common sense solution thrown into the mix. Sheesh.
Those are 1980s numbers.
In Phoenix, the average police costs taxpayers north of $150,000 per year.
REQUIRE school personnel (all of them) to be armed as a condition of employment. Simply allowing carry in schools will not change the attitudes of educators toward self defense. Colleges granting degrees in education should require firearm training and qualification before graduation, that would begin dismantling that ridiculous culture of cowardice as well.
If you do that, 80% of people going into the teaching profession would bail! All the lefty Dewey-ites would jump ship, leaving only teachers and administrators who believe in hard work, swift correction, 2+2=4, and American history that doesn’t bash America. We cannot have that.
not to mention the pistol packin’ wannabe who failed the the police interview… think gay priests. eventually you’ll get some beauty who planned it all along.
Can you even imagine how HORRIBLE that would be? */sarcasm*
That will NEVER happen in The Worker’s Paradise, Maryland, home of SB281 (aka – “You don’t need a pistol unless you’ve been killed”).
I can empathize with the kid. Schools run by liberal bureaucrats do nothing to prevent bullying. Back in the stone ages when I was in school, even the teachers bullied me.
Today, teachers and bureaucrats bully the victims as well. They do it be treating the victims that defend themselves the same way they treat the bullies. By their actions and policies they tell students that the only way to avoid being punished is to let a bully beat the shit out of you then go tell a teacher. Then the teacher berates the student for not being tough enough. The kid goes home and the parents yell at him for not standing up for himself.
So nobody should be surprised that occasionally a victims just snaps.
I’m not sure how a parent telling thier kid to stand up for themselves or punch a bully in the face is somehow contributing to this vicious cycle that you’re describing.
The parents telling the kid to stand up for himself isn’t the problem, but it does complete the cycle @fishydude describes in which the school says don’t fight back.
During my painfully awkward adolesence my grandmothers sage advice was don’t start fights but finish them however you need to. My mother for her part would rail against the administrators when they would try to punish me the same as or worse than the assailant. One incident ended with my bashing the kids head against a brick wall in honest desperation. That was probably my only genuine case of defending my life and it was in the sixth grade.
When it was suggested that pilots be armed after 9/11, all the proggies went apeshit and cried things like, “Pilots have a lot to do in the cockpit and can’t be concerned with providing for the safety of the airplane and passengers” (irony is that is exactly the job of the pilot) and “But how will they fly the plane?” Yet the Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) program was passed. Though there are problems (mainly from the TSA) with approving suitable candidates to continue to training, the program has the right idea. Programs with similar ideas aimed at school security have been introduced in various states. For example, the School Sentinel law in South Dakota was signed last year. While Utah might be the gold standard, pushing this type of legislation would be relatively inexpensive to implement and finally allow concerned teachers and staff the option to defend themselves and their students in the extremely unlikely event of a school shooting. That is an actual law that has a chance of limiting the damage by a mass murderer instead of the safety theater of banning (insert type of firearm that was used in the last shooting here).
“When it was suggested that pilots be armed after 9/11, all the proggies went apeshit and cried things like, “Pilots have a lot to do in the cockpit and can’t be concerned with providing for the safety of the airplane and passengers” (irony is that is exactly the job of the pilot) and “But how will they fly the plane?””
Quite a few of them routinely catch up on their sleep during cruise phase.
True enough.
What about securing the firearm?
So major crime spree was prevented by the public getting involved to say something when they saw something? Huh. So much for the dual school-based early intervention and SWAT will save us myths.
Now, I’d like to see some more reporting on the home life and those parents. Nobody raises a monster with absolutely zero outward indications whatsoever. If their little darling came that close to a spree that could cost the rest of us our rights, then I demand some answers out of them as to how they let this get this far.
I’m not very old (mid twenties), but from what i have experienced, I’m starting to think some people are just defective. Think about how every once in a while you but a car and you just can’t get it to work no matter how much money you out into it. Not saying that was the case here. I really don’t know.
“Defective people drive defective cars.”
-WI State Trooper
Looking at past shooters the trend is that they are very much “broken” and not simply the result of bad parenting or bullying. In fact many of these people had quite good childhoods and were either popular among those they attacked or were the bullies them selves. To assume that these killers were raised “wrong” is dangerous. They are notoriously capable deceivers that May do the dishes take out the trash say grace and fit in at school all while hiding their intentions from every single person around them.
If students were actually allowed to fight back against an attacker in school without being punished, their would be a lot less bullying. That is wear this crap all starts. They students are “disarmed” by telling them they cannot fight back.
You should have seen the shocked looked on the principal’s face when I told her that my kids have my permission t defend themselves. If they ever get suspended for defending themselves they will be rewarded with spending the whole day on the play station. Better to come home with bruised knuckles than a black eye or broken bone.
But… but… if we don’t suspend both parties for “fighting” anymore, educators will be required to have common sense and actually listen to students! ::shock::
Yeah. I fought back in high school when a guy jumped me on the stairs from behind. I was carrying a box of stuff in my arms. I could have fallen and died. I fought him off (won btw) and then was shocked when I got suspended too.
I was 17 years old. That was the year I 100% realized how stupid some people are, and that unfortunately many of these stupid people make the rules, compounding how unfair life is.
I know it isn’t popular to say so, especially in the US, but I think a lot of our social problems would be mitigated with the abolishment of coed schools and introduction of school uniforms.
Actually, school uniforms are de rigeur in a lot of “problem” school districts, and remedial school programs are routinely single sex. So you’re not off the mark at all.
And if students paid more attention at school, they would not use ‘their’ instead of ‘there’ or ‘wear’ instead of ‘where’. ☺
Come on, guys, I’m trying to learn better English here without actually going to school and posts like these do nothing to improve my grammar skills.
Otherwise I mostly agree and I’m realy glad that vast majority of bullied students do not decide to deal with this problem by murdering their parents, teachers and schoolmates.
Just read my posts then. I tend to use correct grammar.
Expecting everyone online to post with correct English is a bit silly. I know it’s difficult to do so, but you can’t assume that people who don’t type well are stupid. Some friends of mine write like 3rd graders. They’re not stupid and they don’t speak like morons, they’re just older and not very well read.
TheBear, I never suggested that anyone is dumb because he doesn’t write like Shakespeare. It was just a little joke which I tried to communicate by using a smiley face.
I for one SPEAK English like a moron – kind of slow and with funny accent that makes me sound a bit retarded.
I could not study English in school when I was young. We had only mandatory Russian and German, than I learned Slovak, Polish and English by myself. All of them I find harder to speak in right than read and write.
When someone would laugh at me for sounding like a three years old I just smile and think: ‘This guy’s Czech must be really impressive! ‘
Apologies for not catching your emoticon. I was not trying to be a dick. 🙂
Yeah I’m surprised more crap doesn’t happen. When I was in high school we had RACE riots. Late 60’s-early 70’s. No guns that I know of but plenty of knives and fisticuffs and flying chairs. I’m a bit creeped out by “fishydude” too. Man Up guy. Everyone is bullied at some point.
“I’m a bit creeped out by “fishydude” too. Man Up guy. Everyone is bullied at some point.”
And some people are bullied daily for their entire childhood by both students and staff. What do you suggest that kid do? Go tell the staff that the kid from the football team has been stealing his lunch money and stuffing him in lockers for the last 8 years? If they confront the bully the rest of the football team backs his story, nothing happens to him, the kid gets in trouble for lying and then gets beat up even worse by half the football team the next day. If he tells his parents they will contact the school and they will be informed that their son was lying and the entire football team confirmed it.
The big difference here is that when most of us were young, after 8 years stuffed in a locker, if that kid finally broke the popular kid’s nose he might have had detention for a week. Today he ends up suspended, forced to go to counseling, possibly charged with assault and maybe forced to change schools. Depending on where they live that may require the family to relocate. For a kid with an already weakened mental state the idea of going out in some misguided blaze of glory to be remembered is a fairly reasonable option compared to changing schools to a new set of bullies and corrupt administration. I do not condone it but it is not difficult to see why kids in this situation have trouble distinguishing which is the better solution.
Yep MAN UP. Or grow up. Life is not a video game. Or be home schooled so you don’t have to deal with aggressive kids. Just make sure Nancy Lanza isn’t your mommy. Oh yeah + 100000 Mina.
Unfortunately, “man up” simply isn’t an option for many kids. Not the way today’s schools and courts operate. For the kid that is half the size of his tormentors who are supported by the school staff there aren’t many options. The overwhelming majority do get over it and move on to be functioning adults. Some move on to become very strange, introverted adults. But you tell somebody who has been filled with rage and stripping of their self worth daily for years and years to man up, expect that will end badly on occasion. Simply barking man up ignores the fact that they are not allowed to and makes the problem worse.
On a side note, if it was an adult instead of a high school boy we would be advocating they arm themselves to protect against their attackers. That is one of our main arguments in favor of arming women and the elderly. So they have a reasonable chance of defending themselves from larger/stronger attackers. Premeditating a mass school shooting is not even remotely the same thing, but for the sake of argument lets say he waited for one of the linebackers to punch him in the gut after he said, “no, you can’t have my lunch money” for the first time. Had he simply waited until he was inevitably manhandled again then shot one or more of the specific bullies at that moment what would the outcry be?
In the end the system fails some of our kids so profoundly that it is the very core of the problem. The ineptitude of our educators are one of the main reasons this boy is broken. Now he will be the one to pay for it . . . again. I’m not saying he shouldn’t. I’m saying they should too.
I was bullied quite a lot growing up, I did “Man up” and it wasn’t easy. If it hadn’t been for my grandmothers Texas wisdom and my mothers tireless battles with the schools it would have been impossible. Modern schools are run like the dreaded police state. You would find it fairly impossible to man up when your neighbor decided to take your car and your punishment for simply resisting was greater than the punishment for theft. Regardless if this case follows type the chances are it had nothing to do with bullying. The msm gave us the same BS story after columbine, the perps were not the poor defenseless losers. They were the bullies.
Wait a minute, wait a minute ……. this can’t be a true story. After all, it is taking place in the People’s Republic of Maryland, a state with wonderful gun control laws! They must have gotten the location wrong – they probably meant to say Alabama or Texas or Idaho or one of those nasty states that let the gun owners run wild.
Anyone consider the kid was driven to drunken rage by his first name? “Sash”? Who would do that to a kid?
‘Sasha’ is a common male name in Eastern Europe, but female in the West.
A bit like ‘Robin’ is a common male name in England, but female in the U.S.
Clearly the issue is not the implements, the issue is the person.
Serious parental failure here…did his his parents skip the background check for procreation? Oh wait, there isn’t one.
Can’t buy a firearm without getting all checked out. Want to have a child and inject that child into society? Sure thing, have at it, as many as you want, raised in whatever fashion you want. What could possibly go wrong?
At least it wasn’t a Pop Tart this time.
What I want to know? WHAT IN BLOODY HELL IS GOING ON W THESE KIDS????
Look at him! Should be a normal 16 yo out having fun doing boy stuff, not thinking about shooting up schools.
WTF folks? Is this not the problem we should be trying to solve?
Having only read the articles provided and basing my opinion on those bits of information . . .
Yes, this is a problem we should fix. Almost every kid gets picked on/bullied at some point in their life. I would say it is an important part of growing up. Everybody needs to learn conflict resolution in multiple forms at some point in their life. Just like kids need to learn the word “no” without throwing a temper tantrum it is important for everybody to learn that there are mean/bad people in the world who will act that way purely for entertainment. In these situations the bullies need a stern talk’n to and the bullied need to know that it will happen again, it is not ok, and how to deal with it.
From the limited reading available it does not sound like that is the case here. It sounds like this kid has spent much of his childhood being pushed around and ridiculed by his peers and educators. If you want to fix this problem, that’s where you need to start. When the kid who has been bullied his entire life finally sticks up for himself he should get a pat on the back, not an assault charge. Sometimes a fist to the nose is the right answer, both literally and metaphorically. It should only be punished when it was the wrong answer, not every time.
Boys need to be treated like Boys – MEN IN TRAINING not like little girls or princesses.
Institutionalized Feminism is fucking up our boys & it needs to stop. Right Now.
Yes. Absolutely agree. Now we need society/schools/courts to let us do it.
CORRECT!!!!
Of course, the antis will use this as yet another example of why all firearms should be banned and confiscated from everyone (except the government, ’cause they’re totally trustworthy, yo).
Arming teachers? Hahahahah. Teachers can’t even teach. As a whole, they are the most underperforming segment of an underperforming society. So what makes you think they will be able to handle a gun?
I take serious issue with that. I am not a teacher, but I am taught nine hours a day in a public school: I figure I’m qualified to judge. Every one of my teachers is, at the least, competent. Most are superb… And, to tell the truth, I’d trust five of seven with my life, especially when there isn’t a better alternative. A little strobe-light/Mace-can gadget isn’t going to cut it.
Every one of my teachers is, at the least, competent.
Measured by which standard, exactly?
FTFA: “If a student reports bullying, “teachers work with counselors immediately,” Dickerson said. He said staff also are trained to take note of students exhibiting abnormal behaviors”
Trained to take not of students exhibiting abnormal behaviors like….. bullying? Taking note isn’t sufficient and punishing the one being bullied when standing up for one’s self (in particular when those charged with the safe keeping of students consistently fail and admit an inability to protect students) isn’t sufficient, either. Just have the kid sign a behavior contract like the bullies have to and that’ll fix it, right, MD?
Nemphos? You have got to be kidding. No wonder why the kid wanted to murder everybody.
Things have changed drastically since I was a kid going to school in the 40’s.
We didn’t have all the outside influence that we have now, like violent video games, computers with easy access to porn, R, and X rated movies on the big screen, and of course, the boob tube!
Then there’s drugs. When I was a kid, I never knew what drugs were, except a prescription you got at the drug store when you were sick.
It it much more difficult to be a parent now days. Couples who are not willing to devote the time and energy it’s take to raise a kid, should not have children, ever!
Anything other than opinion supporting that idea that games and movies effect kids?
Oh, well. Even though he failed, we have pro-gun web sites like TTAG willing to pay him for the attempt by publicizing his name and helping him to attain the fame he so desperately desires.
There are some 37,000 public and private high schools in the US. The average 180 days of school per year. Mass shootings like Columbine are incredably rare.
Most school staff are not familiar with guns. Wear a gun in the classroom and the students will see it. (Unless you sit at a desk.) To teach you have to move about the room and work with students. Arm teachers and you’ll have ND, weapons left in restrooms, forgotten on a desk, you get the picture.
There were maybe four of us on staff that were competent with weapons. Two of us regularly went to a pistol range. The rest? I’d be nervous.
About the only solution I could think of would be to place gun safes in certain offices and have just a few staff trained.
If what you’re saying is absolutely true and they are that irresponsible, undisciplined, and untrainable, why in the world are they around children?
All you have to do is look at the vast number if ccw related NDs among some ten million licensed carriers and many more non licenced.
Whisky murderdick?
As a resident of the PRMD, and a teacher in the district where this was planned, I know for a FACT that the student’s drunkenness on that Friday was NOT the reason this did not go down. AND it would have gone down on Monday if it wasn’t for some good follow up work by a curious police officer and some key eyewitnesses who just by chance provided the police with information that led them to the boy over the weekend. The fact that this did NOT happen was mere chance-without question, it was rescheduled for Monday. All of this is rather ironic when just two weeks ago the politicians and Baltimore County’s superintendent were mugging for the camera after 9+ million in funding was allocated by the government for school safety. It is a misnomer to think that more security cameras and a few more door buzzers will prevent an individual from wreaking havoc in a school building. Whether the answer is to arm more teachers, I couldn’t say, but it certainly isn’t id badges for kids, check ins in the office, locked exterior doors, and more cameras.
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