Va. Tech shooting

[Cacia]

Focusing on the killer and even the guns is so impotent. I've decided this was a massive societal failure that transcends any of the particulars.

 

[H2Andy]

I hope you are kidding.

 

[Cacia]

I'm so slow

I want to go live back in the wild wild west, where you had a chance and it wasn't so confusing

 

[cdiver2]

I think there is a lot of truth in what Waywardson says. I am reminded of a few instances from my past on this.

1/ A fellow officer in the NI prison service received a phone call at work from his wife, there home was up for sale and two dubious characters had come asking about the house and when would her husband be home to talk to him. So he left work early and was waiting in the kitchen with a pistol when they came to the door, when his wife answered the door they burst in with pistols. The husband came out of the kitchen and seeing he was armed they turned and ran, he shot them in the back as they ran down the garden path. The chief of police gave his wife a bunch of rose's and he a bottle of champagne and told him "thats how we want them...dead". Circa 1970s

2/ Whilst in London a couple of years ago I saw a gang of youths beating on one guy, even though the street was crowded everybody turned the other way. I managed to get him out of it by talking (thank god or my *ss would have been grass) circa 1990s.

3/ Again in London a fight erupted in our hotel lobby (two guys) and again the place was crowded and everyone just stood back and watched. I attempted to get the guy of the top off who was beating the other unmercifully only to find out he was hotel security, but I did tell him there was no need to keep beating him he had been subdued. circa 2000.

4/ Florida one night after making a left from the end of my street onto a main road I nearly hit three youths that had come out of some bushes at the side of the road. I swerved to miss them and as I passed them I heard two loud bangs at the back of the car. Thinking I had hit them I did a u turn to find they were ok, but they came over to the car shouting %^$#@& and started to kick the side of the car. So I jumped out and a chase ensued around the car. At this point I noticed a para rescue truck parked behind me all the lights going and the crew watching the scene, then one of the youths turned toward me and pulled a knife out so I shouted to the crew he has a knife and they replied "we have called the police".

To make a long story short when the police eventually got there and treated me like s**t and not wanting to take a report as they had not apprehended them. I informed the officers I was going to start carrying and if this happened again I would put one between there eyes. I was told "then we will arrest you". So I asked why when someone pulls a knife on me do I not have the right to defend myself? and they said "You could have got into your car and drove away, so you did not have to defend yourself." circa 2005.

 

[mdb]

I am so surprised no one in the media, with all this hair splitting and analysis has not raised one question about what all those officers were doing out there while all this transpired.

The hero stories emerging are about an old 7o-something year old who stood in a door way and another boy who baricaded a door. I can't believe out of all those young strong men nobody picked up some desks and charged him, that those cops with all that armor, ammo, and weaponry just sat outside waiting for a plan. I really can't get over that. okay, won't say it anymore.

http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/a_culture_of_passivity

Catherine: You can say it, it needs to be said. There were multiple police on campus, hiding behind trees and cars, not moving toward the incessant gunfire. Students, some of them student cadets, never rushed the gunman. Glad to see that you instruct your own children. We have had our sons in Akido since age five. Several times over the years this training has helped. Once one of our sons stood up to a group of bullies and defended some girls while some of his friends ran away. We have to be ready to act.

 

[Blitz]

Catherine: We have had our sons in Akido since age five. Several times over the years this training has helped. Once one of our sons stood up to a group of bullies and defended some girls while some of his friends ran away. We have to be ready to act.

Excellent martial art to put children in. I applaud your judgement.

 

[cdiver2]

Unfortunately, people tend to freeze under fire. They are so shocked that they literally cannot act or even move. I have even seen this happen to police officers. Part of the reason, IMO, is that nobody plans to get attacked by a gunman, it "won't happen to me". You need to plan to do something, anything. If you freeze you are a sitting duck and make a much better target. This is what the gunman expects you to do.

Have a plan and practice it, whether you think you want to rush the perp or to run and hide. I have a good friend who was in the middle of the Thurston HS shooting. He rushed Kinkel and tackled him to the ground, getting shot in the process. But he lived and so did many others thanks to his quick thinking, though he was only a student.

I have also seen this. One day in NI I was on guard with another guy in a sandbagged emplacement that had plexi glass windows, when three shots rang out to my right ( where the other guy was standing). I could not see past him so I started screaming shoot. He just stood there. In the window there where three holes in a one inch group, the rounds must have past just behind us. I avoided working with that guy for the rest of the tour.

 

[Cacia]

it needs to be said.

nobody wants to hurt anybody's feelings.

 

[dlndavid]

speak for yourself

 

[agilis]

It's interesting reading cdiver2's comments from a British perspective. I recall that a few years ago a farmer in the English Midlands, Tony Martin, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for shooting two men with his shotgun, killing one of them, after they broke into his home. There was quite a fuss at the time, since he was defending himself from two young career criminals with extensive arrest records. I remember that the Crown Prosecutor pointed out that the UK was a civilized place where the private use of firearms in self-defence was not tolerated.