By Bill Frady
Saturday is the infamous first anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. MDA, MAIG, OFA, The Brady Campaign…all intend to reopen this scar on the American psyche, enflame emotions and once again demand “more ineffective” gun control. And they will fail. But that’s not the question we as gun owners and carriers are asking. What we need to do is very carefully deconstruct known facts and move forward. So, respectfully, I offer this for your consideration . . .
The Anomaly
Most school shootings are carried out by current students. Whether they were bullied, ignored or troubled, this is a historical fact. Adam Lanza, though, was, at least chronologically, an adult. All of his weapons were obtained legally by his mother in a state with highly restrictive gun laws.
Apparently the fact that Nancy Lanza couldn’t communicate with him except by email within the same household was a red flag that escaped her notice. That proved a fatal oversight on her part as did her apparent attempts to teach him responsible firearm handling. The actual event that triggered the shooting spree, almost certainly manifested within his troubled mind, will never be known.
Passive Defense Systems
In this case, the securing mechanisms of the modern school, performed as advertised. They were simply bypassed. Entry to the building was easy in this case, and never really slowed Lanza down. ‘Hardened’ or ‘resistant’ is meant to be something that buys you time, and most of the time it does. The most-accepted school defense protocols are grossly inadequate. Passive defenses only function if they are attacked. A hardened door beside a wall of plate glass is not the answer.
Armed Response
Apparently the first four people who rushed Lanza never stood a chance. Still, the principal and some administrators rushed him anyway. While he was mowing them down, another adult was able to call 911 and start locking down classrooms. That person maintained the presence of mind to do everything possible, all while pulling back and directing students out of harm’s way. Imagine that same cool and calm person with a bit of training…and a GLOCK in that moment.
Lockdown
That clearly is a failure. Locked out also means locked in. Once again, bullet resistant does not mean bullet proof. Since there is no photographic record on display, I presume that Lanza shot his way in and then the trapped children. In their final moments they were abjectly terrified and shot in turn. This stupidity and short-sightedness makes me seethe with anger.
Once again, I have seen no pictures, but I presume these classrooms had non-opening windows. Wouldn’t something as simple as an emergency spring-loaded hammer saved lives that day? Those children died at Lanza’s hand, but their deaths were partially the fault of an engineered inability to egress. Way to go, kneejerks.
As a Second Amendment advocate, this shooting, like all the others affects me. Not because of the gun control fight it brings with it, but because innocent people died. If at all possible, transport me back in time to Sandy Hook. Let me get between Lanza and the unsuspecting innocents. I have wanted that to happen in every recent mass shooting. And I suspect I am not alone.
Lots of gun owners have children and grandchildren, and would defend them to the death without question. This isn’t bravado, this is community. Friends and family. It is not Ramboesgue to superimpose that same regard to innocent strangers.I simply cannot, in good conscience look the other way as a madman kills.
What Have We Learned?
Part 1: The government. Short answer is apparently nothing. For them it’s business as usual. Ban guns, keep gun-free zones intact, call for more studies, throw money they don’t have at it. While you’re at it, only throw enough money to make your prescribed changes at 26,000 of the nations 156,000 schools. In short, do everything except something effective.
Part 2: The gun owning public. Apparently we are a parasite on American society. Or so they would have us believe. Watch Arkansas this year. We’ve been joined by teachers in some school districts there. They are on campus, discreetly packing. They have been trained. They are volunteers. In short, they have transformed their schools from soft to hard targets. And they are advertising it. I predict they will be quite safe.
We also learned that the gun grabbers are very intent on disarming us. Everyone was in on it. Media, government, Hollywood…all the usual suspects. Common sense regulation, gun safety, not an infringement became the common talking points. And for me the saddest note: The statists will not allow those poor innocents their just rest. Still, we have persevered. Nothing was passed legislatively at least on a federal level.
But we knew they wanted to disarm us anyway, didn’t we? What we really learned is that the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex, isn’t the bastion of the emphatic humanity that feels your pain. We learned that they will stoop to any low to achieve their goal. We learned they will lie to us. That they want us disarmed and docile, so they can live our lives for us.
And they made Sandy Hook possible with business as usual.
That photo of the broken glass should tell administrators, legislators and ‘advocates’ everything they need to know about stopping a school shooting.
Barriers can always be overcome by force. Offense beats defense. Don’t your children deserve better protection than a few seconds of delay?
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
And that “barrier” did not need a firearm to breach it. A simple 16oz. hammer would have been just as effective (and much quieter). The “reason” that the killer used an AR-15 was because he had planned his own death and wanted to be famous so he wanted the scariest weapon that Diane Feinstein convinced everyone is the deadliest weapon on Earth.
as reported..the POLICE broke that glass…lanza came in through the doors….WTF
Lockdown
That clearly is a failure
Good point.
I don’t understand the obsession the gun grabbers have with rubbing salt in wounds… Actually, I do… They want to toy with emotions because they can not display the facts and evidence.
Thank you for this. I agree, we need to press on speaking the truth.
“Gun Free Zones” mentality is what put these kids at risk and more will die in vain, including more brave principals and teachers who will give their lives for a chance to save them, or worse, cower in terror,
if we dont punch back twice as hard at the kinds of gun-grabber groups and politicians who cynically exploit this tragedy to advance their agenda.
If only they were armed…
my heart aches for the parents.
Well stated. It seems to be the american way to throw money at a problem. Millions will be wasted on some reasearch that will be inconclusive or in the end won’t help solve anything at all.
But, they DID something.
Sadly, that’s the current American way. We used to be a nation of doers; now we seem to be a nation of buyers. On credit.
The fact is that our schools are no safer than they were the day before Columbine. All these years and the grabbers have wasted time, resources and energy trying to achieve what cannot be achieved.
If difi, barry, slow joe and kapo bloomberg were serious about protecting our children they would have abandoned this senseless losing war on honest gun owners and reached out to us instead. Imagine how much safer our schools would be if the “It’ll save one child” crowd actually thought about saving children and not trying to disarm the law abiding?
+1. If anything- one could make the argument that kids are even MORE at risk, thanks to the MSM and Gun Grabber groups cynically exploiting the news, and waving the bloody shirt at anniversaries for ratings, again.
If “they”- and here I am referring to MDA and their corporate PR pro sockpuppet in chief as a particularly egregious example of cynical media manipulation,
REALLY wanted to address the problem,
which is mental health,
then they would work on that, and
stop throwing fuel on the fire of the sick fascination with tragedies like this,
which only stimulates more unstable nuts to go out in a blaze of attention seeking glory.
But that would be a lot of work, and besides- it would bring them
(MDA, MAIG, Brady, OFA, et al)
no $$$ and no power, would it?
Wake up, parents.
There is only on person in that list whose job description has anything to do with education. Maybe that’s where we fell off the rails, when the gummint took the schools in the first place…
“If difi, barry, slow joe and kapo bloomberg were serious about protecting our children they would have abandoned this senseless losing war on honest gun owners ”
This is the sort of mis-direction the Progressives LOVE.
We look at this problem and say, “Here’s the logical solution. Let’s get busy and fix the problem!” and then we can’t understand why the Liberals and Progressives can’t or won’t agree.
Our error is in assuming the problem we see and are intent on fixing is NOT what the Progressives consider the actual problem. They appear to us to be incompetent or ineffective because they do not solve the problem when in fact they are addressing the problem of civilians owning guns, NOT whack jobs shooting little kids. For them these mass shootings, no matter who is/are the victim(s), are just another arrow in their quiver. If they actually solved the problem they would have no more emotional ammunition to use in their true struggle for civilian disarmament.
I’d settle for them not dealing with the problem at all. Get it back in local hands where it belongs.
YES!!!
And the reason the surviving parents haven’t absolutely raped the school board and local gummint in court on this is?
In the Whoopi Goldbergian ‘rape-rape’ sense.
1. They are grieving, and want to move on with their lives.
2. They have been shamed into silence.
3. They enjoy the celebrity of victimhood.
“Let me get between Lanza and the unsuspecting innocents.”
Amen.
Let me get behind Lanza and put a couple between his shoulders.
I for one showed my views by buying an AR-15 today. I posted the pictures on Facebook and then explained all of the reasons how gun free zones put us at risk and how gun control doesn’t work.
I have 20 or so liberal, unapologetic liberals, friends. and the promising thing is that I only had to pull out my explanation 1 or 2 times today
Excellent write up. Perspective is eye level with reality. Bravo!
I am reminded of how immediately following the Sandy Hook shooting last year, our elected officials started talking about a “dialogue” and a “discussion” about guns in this country, but they only wanted to hear one side of the discussion. The sad thing is that many of us, even just your average veteran or casual shooter who’s taught himself to look for vulnerabilities could look at your average school and make half a dozen suggestions to improve security in seconds.
But instead of asking for our help, they ostracize us and paint us as the problem.
So nothing changes. It’s still easier to walk into a great many schools than it is to buy a pack of cigarettes… and that’s lunacy.
“Since there is no photographic record on display, I presume that Lanza shot his way in and then the trapped children. In their final moments they were abjectly terrified and shot in turn. This stupidity and short-sightedness makes me seethe with anger.”
I was angry when I discussed this with some hardcore Obama supporter types last year. It started with the shooting in Aurora… the bad guy was the only one with a gun and the results were predictable. It continued with Sandy Hook with the same predictable results. Granted, there are challenges to having defensive weapons in schools. It’s tragic that we should have to face situations that would require that in the first place, but we also have a responsibility to face those situations rather than stick our heads in the sand and pretend that it’s all just going to magically be OK.
I truly think that they just don’t think the way we do. When I explain that a decent armed person could stop an attacker or at least draw fire and force the attacker to seek cover (and keep the attacker from killing a few more innocents in the process), some people look at me like I’m speaking Aramaic. I think the problem is that it’s inconceivable to them that anyone would actually pick up a weapon and step into a fight like that. The people who look at me with their mouths agape as I explain the difference that even just one loaded 1911 could make can’t envision themselves doing that, so they assume that no one can do it.
Meanwhile, to us, it is inconceivable that anyone wouldn’t step into that fight and even bleed out right there on the floor if it mean saving a few kids and stopping a killer from finishing his work. I think our familiarity with firearms empowers us to realize that contrary to what we’ve generally been told, there IS something we can do. We can effectively resist and prevail.
it wasn’t just “dialogue” and “discussion” that were talked about right after newtown…within 2 or 3 days of the event i saw a video of biden saying “civilian disarmament” verbatim…this had been in the works for a while, and they were waiting for their excuse to roll it out…
Are parents so utterly malleable and stupid that they would rather have their children murdered than allow decent people to have defensive guns in schools? If so, then they are making their own beds. Let them lay in them.
Unfortunately, it’s not just their own beds these gullible fools are making. My kids are in those schools, too.
The “lockdown” / “intruder” protocols for many districts ARE STILL THE SAME. Frightening, right?
Many teachers like myself shake our heads in discuss and make plans of our own should the unthinkable happen…
The ACLU helped defeat CT law in Summer 2012 that would have helped Nancy Lanza lock up Adam Lanza.
Here’s the original document I refer to in this post: https://guardamerican.com/images/stories/blog_pics/aclu_connecticut_protest.pdf
That’s right: Nancy Lanza wanted to institutionalize her son, but the ACLU helped ensure that no “72-hour Hold, AOT” laws existed in CT.
In this anniversary this week of Newtown CT, don’t forget the critical way the ACLU helped make that terrible thing happen.
Didn’t the Lanzas live in New York State?
I always thought ‘lockdown’ drills in school were stupid. You put enough .223 into a wooden door and it’s going to hit something that will let the door open. There needs to be a plan for students to egress, whether it be through windows or through the building with SROs or armed teachers providing defense. My high school had the same ‘locked doors right next to windows (well, one unlocked door, three locked doors’ entry, with one unarmed ‘security guard’ almost never stationed next to it even though there’s a desk for him to sit at end everything. I walk in there regularly without going to the office to get my visitor’s badge because it’s a pain in the ass and most of the faculty knows me. But anyway, my high school at least always had two armed SROs in it, sometimes more depending on the atmosphere of the student body (one time we had some stupid racial conflict going on for like two weeks and there were cops everywhere) Altogether there’s a big lack of security at my old high school but one thing they have right is multiple armed police officers on the premises at all times.
My county’s technical center on the other hand? The had that shit locked down. They still had the windows next to the doors thing going on, but there was always an armed SRO sitting at a desk at the front entrance with security cameras for all the other entrances on monitors at the desk. It would be impossible to get into that building without shooting through a cop first or having the cop know about it immediately. It probably helps that the school was mostly populated with the ‘redneck’ crowd (myself included) who always had knives on them and were always itching for a fight too. I know the whole ‘don’t bring a knife to a gunfight’ thing but I doubt anyone could inflict serious casualties with a couple hundred knife wielding students coming at them.
The reason for unapologetically rolling in the blood of the innocents and stealing the spotlight from the victims and their loved ones is explained in their own literature.
http://dustin.o-f.com/storage/Gun%20Violence%20Messaging%20Guide.pdf
They advocate training themselves and their members to suppress the natural human tendency to have any sympathy and respect for victims in an effort to boost their own messaging ability by stealing the spotlight. The guide is quite brazen and crazy in its various claims and distortions. I recommend reading it. It even makes reference to bitter clingers.
Good article! Good comments! Thanks, all!
We have not had a hijacking on a US aircraft since 2001. This is not because of the Patriot Act or DHS. This is because American’s realized the price of inaction. With schools we have government mandated inaction and we have done nothing about it.
Listening to Melisa Harris-Perry on MSNBC this morning (yeah, yeah, shut up already…) and the “discussion” turned to armed guards in schools…. Apparently this would be bad because “what if they defender missed the bad guy and shot a kid”. This is the inevitable “argument” they present, that 1 child shot by accident is worse than 26 KILLED ON PURPOSE. The empirical evidence thus suggests that Anti-defense people failed basic math at the elementary school level, and they have no empathy or basic humanity. Fornicate those useless bints with a cactus. They should all be put in a remedial third-grade class, completely undefended, of course
“I am not Newtown. Newtown refused to properly defend their children, and to take care of their community members, and I am not to blame simply because I own guns similar to those used in that incident. I am NOT Newtown.”
I posted this to FB a few days ago. Anti’s lost their damn minds.
Great move! Let’s take the fight to them!
Facts and data mean nothing. To win the argument against gun control, the Liberal’s policy proposals for removing the teeth from the wolves vs arming the sheep have to be shown for what they are : Weak, ineffective, and dumb.
http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/a-tale-of-two-gun-control-debates-and-rush-limbaughs-low-information-voter/
If the gun grabbers wanted to use logic they would have quoted the results from the study that Obama ordered as part of his “executive orders”. Oh thats right that study showed that guns were used in self defense more than to commit homicide…
OK then, back to the same M.O. pictures of broken glass and crying children to invoke emotion instead of reason.
off the point of this article, but very important…Have you noticied that any LE response to shootings at schools..and prctice drills…..ALL students are made to exit with their hands over their heads…treated like a criminal…and made to comply …until they are frisked and searched…outside ….seems to me more of a conditioning tactic at this age level……also where is the blood at SHE….never have seen any in any report..NONE …NADA…ZERO …..just asking
Bill,
Well put. Very moving. Thanks!
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