When faced with a gun, is turning the other cheek an effective strategy?
Dear Readers,
Today, I bring you an article by Christina Blizzard of the QMI Agency verbatim about how
Ontario gun laws make mass shootings less likely, according to the OPP commissioner.
As usual, my response is below and there is room for your comment below that but please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent.
OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis. (STAN BEHAL/Toronto Sun files)
Still, Canadian gun laws make mass shootings less likely. “Even without the long-gun registry — which I am sorry to see go — we
still have better controls on the purchasing of firearms than the
U.S.,” he said. He doesn’t buy the gun lobby argument that arming everyone will cut down on gun crimes. “There are women walking in the Walmart with baby carriages wearing .45s on their hips in the U.S.” he said. “And they wonder why their crime is so crazy.” Lewis said there are more murders in Washington, D.C., which has a
population of less than one million, than there are in Toronto. “They have ten times the murders that Toronto has even though we’ve got three million people,” he said.
While this country has had its problems with gun violence, it’s nowhere near the levels it’s at in the U.S., he said. “We’re doing something right, as is Ireland, the U.K. and other jurisdictions.” Lewis said all major police forces put in place new protocols for
dealing with gun violence in schools after the 2006 Pennsylvania Amish
school shooting. “We have better weapons, better vests and better training for
officers so they don’t stand around and wait for a SWAT team,” Lewis
said. “They can proactively go into the school and go straight to the threat and deal with it.”
The bottom line, says Lewis, is that if there’s a crazed gunman
determined to shoot-up a school, there’s precious little anyone can do
to stop them. “If there’s someone out there who’s in that mental state and has
access to a firearm, legally or illegally, it’s going to be a scary
situation, but I think we’re better prepared up here.” And while we in Canada like to be smug and superior when we look at
the U.S., the fact is, we’ve had our share of shootings and we can’t be
complacent. I’m not talking about the long-gun a farmer keeps in the barn.
Lewis points out there is no reason for anyone apart from military and cops to have assault weapons. You don’t use them to shoot bears. Fair enough, Stephen Harper soundly rejected the suggestions from Toews’ firearms advisory group. The fact they were made at all shows some people disagree. How many tragedies will it take for the message to get through:
Assault weapons have no place in attics and basements where any
disturbed nutbar can get his hands on them. The price is too high — and too many innocents have paid it already
Kids in school!
my response.....
While talk about an easing
of regulations surrounding the ban on prohibited weapons such as assault
weapons was quickly slapped down by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the American President now wants to have a
“national conversation on guns”. No problem, but unless this national
conversation will include
allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons, then it isn’t a
conversation at all, it is a lecture, according to Larry Correia in 1389 Blog. The fact remains....the single best method to respond
to a mass shooter is with an immediate,
violent response. The vast majority of the time, as soon as a mass
shooter meets serious resistance, it bursts their fantasy world bubble.
Then they kill themselves or surrender. This has happened over and over
again. But OPP Commissioner Lewis says that if a crazed gunman
is determined to shoot-up a school, there’s precious little anyone can do
to stop them. This I vehemently disagree with!!
While Police are a necessary part of the solution, any honest cop
will tell you that when seconds count, they are only minutes away. Thankfully, after
Columbine law enforcement changed their methods in dealing with active
shooters. It used to be that you took up a perimeter and waited for
overwhelming force before going in. Now, as soon as you have two
officers on scene, they can go in to confront the shooter. There are a
lot of very sound tactical reasons for going in with only two, mostly because your
success/survival rates jump dramatically when you put two cops through a
door at once. The shooter’s brain can take a moment to decide between
targets, and that moment can be fatal for the shooter! The reason the cops go in fast is because they know that every second
counts. The longer the shooter has to operate, more innocents will die. However, cops can’t be everywhere. There are at best only twenty thousand cops on duty at any given time patrolling the entire
country. Excellent response time is in the three-five minute range.
We’ve seen what bad guys can do in three minutes, but sometimes it is
far worse. So in some cases that means the
bad guys can have ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes to do horrible
things with nobody effectively fighting back.
More kids in school!
But Police can be expensive, so if we can’t have cops at school while our children are in class, what can we do? The statistics tell us that 14 is the average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when
the
shooter is stopped by law enforcement while 2.5 is the average number of
people
shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians.
The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it
started. Granted, there are a few teachers who
simply can’t comprehend themselves being mandated to carry a gun into a classroom, or
those who believe teachers are all too incompetent and can’t be
trusted. So, don’t make it mandatory. The only people who are capable with a gun are the ones who wish to take responsibility and
carry a gun. Make it voluntary.
It is rather simple. Just make it so
that local concealed weapons law trumps any Federal Gun Control law. All that means is that teachers who voluntarily decide
to get a concealed weapons permit are capable of carrying their guns at
work. Easy. Simple. Cheap. Available now. The teachers are there already. The school staff is there already.
Their reaction time is measured in seconds, not minutes. They can serve
as our immediate violent response team. Best case scenario, they engage and
stop the attacker, or it bursts his fantasy bubble and he commits
suicide. Worst case scenario, the armed staff provides a distraction,
and while he’s concentrating on killing them, he’s not killing more
of our children!!
and even more kids in school!
Liberals may whale that this is impossible, and provide all sorts of
terrible worst case scenarios about all of the horrors that will happen
with a gun in the classroom. No problem, I welcome this conversation because this has happened
before. In fact, there are some Toronto schools that allow for Police with weapons in school right now. Yes, we have for several years now but they are not in every school across our beautiful country, and that worries me!
It is no secret that 'Gun Free Zones' are hunting preserves for innocent people. Period. Think about it. Think about a violent, homicidal madman, looking to make a
statement and hoping to go from disaffected loser to the most famous person
in the world, for a brief period of time. One way to accomplish this goal is to kill a whole
bunch of innocent folks. So where’s the best place to go shoot all these people?
Obviously, it is someplace where nobody can shoot back. That No Guns Allowed sign is not a cross that wards off
vampires. It is pathetic wishful thinking. The only people who obey No Guns signs are people who obey the law. People who obey the law aren’t going on rampages. As is
always the case, people who want to commit a crime don’t care about
laws.
and even more kids in school!
I suspect
that some lone shooter will think twice about
going on the campus of a school where it is known that folks are armed.
These types of shooters are cowards. They go after the defenseless. It only stands to reason that citizens should be armed if they are known targets of gun violence. Consider this report from The Weekly Standard: “David
Gregory mocked the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre for proposing that armed guards
be at every school in America. But the NBC host seems to have no
problem with armed guards protecting his kids everyday where they attend
school in Washington, D.C.” “The Gregory children go to school with the children of President Barack Obama", according to the Washington Post. That school is the co-ed Quaker school Sidwell Friends. According
to a scan of the school’s online faculty-staff directory, Sidwell has a
security department made up of at least 11 people. Many of those are
police officers, who are presumably armed. Typical Liberal hypocrisy; protection for me but not for thee.
Folks demanding change!
Since guns laws and
places where guns can be carried have restricted law-abiding citizens
from having an effective method to bring down a criminal with a gun, multiple murders like the rampage that happened in Connecticut have increased. So, do you think turning the other cheek is an effective strategy?
More kids in school! 
and even more kids in school!
and even more kids in school!
Folks demanding change!
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