The atrocity at the Connecticut elementary school will not be the last such horror, nor was it the first or even the worst. Go back to the year 1764, in what is now Franklin County, Pennsylvania. The first: during Pontiac’s Rebellion in the wake of the French and Indian War, four “warriors” entered a schoolhouse and slaughtered the headmaster and some ten children. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac%27s_Rebellion_school_massacre . The worst: in 1927, a crazed monster beat his wife to death, then triggered a bombing in an elementary school in Bath, Michigan, killing some 38 kids and several adults. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster .
I’ll repeat what I said in the Wall Street Journal op-ed section and on the Today show in 1999, after the Columbine High School atrocity: if we simply prepared teachers to handle this type of crisis the way we teach them to handle fires and medical emergencies, the death toll would drop dramatically. We don’t hear of mass deaths of children in school fires these days: fire drills have long since been commonplace, led by trained school staff, not to mention sprinkler systems and smoke alarms and strategically placed fire extinguishers that can nip a blaze in the bud while firefighters are en route. In the past, if someone “dropped dead,” people would cry and wring their hands and wail, “When will the ambulance get here?” Today, almost every responsible adult knows CPR; most schools have easily-operated Automatic Electronic Defibrillators readily accessible; and a heart attack victim’s chance of surviving until the paramedics arrive to take over is now far greater.
The same principle works for defending against mass murders…it just doesn’t work HERE, because it is politically incorrect to employ it HERE. After the Ma’alot massacre in 1974, Israel instituted a policy in which volunteer school personnel, parents, and grandparents received special training from the civil guard, and were seeded throughout the schools armed with discreetly concealed 9mm semiautomatic pistols. Since that time, there has been no successful mass murder at an Israeli school, and every attempt at such has been quickly shortstopped by the good guys’ gunfire, with minimal casualties among the innocent. Similar programs are in place in Peru and the Phillippines, with similarly successful results.
Some people see the logic in the Israeli approach. Dave Workman does, as seen here: http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-wants-action-regardless-of-politics-after-gun-free-school-zone-tragedy?cid=db_articles . Ann Coulter does, as seen here: http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/newtown-school-shootings-ann-coulter-makes-her-case-concealed-carry-laws-69361 .
Unfortunately, in this country, logic has been buried under political correctness. Those in power whose ego is invested in brie et Chablis values that include scorn for the peasantry they accuse of “clinging to guns and Bibles” will never see that logic. Children will continue to die in gun-free zones hunting preserves for psychopathic murderers, and the cowardly murderers will continue to surrender or kill themselves as soon as armed good guys show up…far too late.
Been reading you since I was a kid; now middle-aged and raising a 4-year-old as my first child, I no longer view personal defense as a choice, but as an obligation. I defend my family, therefore I must always defend myself so as to keep myself in proper condition to defend my family. I’ve had my eyes opened since becoming a father, to just how many places I take my daughter where armed citizens are not welcomed. A local ice cream shop was our favorite, but after Newtown, they put a sign up stating all weapons were prohibited. Apparently many other regular customers felt as I did, and took their guns and their money elsewhere, because the sign came down after about 3 weeks. But it served to illustrate for me just how many places the world expects me to go with my family, where that world would seek to deprive them of any protection. Sandy Hook proved what I had suspected might happen ever since I saw it in former Yugoslavia: That eventually, it would not be a teenager acting out against classmates but a psychopath unleashing on LITTLE kids, and that everyone on both sides would seek some way to sooth their wounded emotions. That has been the case now. Maybe faculty and legislators could take lessons from skunks, porcupines, badgers, and armadillos, all of whom go about their days with SOME means of repelling violence, and the absolute will to employ such means against predators who know full well that these animals are no easy targets.
Thanks for the info.