Posted on 04/22/2009 6:06:05 AM PDT by marktwain
Several of my colleagues are today observing the tenth anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.
As we look back on that terrible day, many Americans try to sort out what led to the event, and what might be done in the future to prevent another such tragedy.
The answer is alarmingly simple, and nobody is going to like it.
We cannot prevent more Columbines. There it is. If we could, there would have been no Virginia Tech. The shooting at Red Lake High School in Minnesota would not have happened. We would never have read about the shooting at Northern Illinois University.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and its state-level colleagues at various “CeaseFire” groups argue that “closing the gun show loophole” will help. That’s preposterous and they know it. While Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris obtained at least a couple of guns from an adult friend who legally bought them at a gun show, in the years since, none of the gunmen who shot up any school or shopping mall has gotten his guns from a gun show.
People call Columbine the worst school massacre in the country’s history, but that’s also a lie. Nobody remembers the Bath School bombing in May 1927 in which a disgruntled school board member named Andrew Kehoe blew up the Bath Consolidated School and killed 45 people, most of them elementary school-age children. He used dynamite, and he didn’t get it at a gun show.
The perpetrator was school board member Andrew Kehoe, who was upset by a property tax that had been levied to fund the construction of the school building.
Can we take steps to minimize the likelihood of future Columbines? Sure.
Step One: Abolish gun-free school zones and those insidious “zero tolerance” rules that victimize and demonize students who are now afraid to talk about hunting, target shooting or competition; rules that prevent teachers or administrators from having a firearm. Instead of firing those teachers, fire the Chicken Little administrators and replace the school board members – and their attorneys – who cling to zero tolerance and gun free zone mandates as substitutes for common sense and courage. (I wrote about this with co-author Alan Gottlieb in our book America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age)
Assistant Principal Joel Myrick stopped a school gunman at Pearl, MS on Oct. 1, 1997 – 19 months before Columbine – by rushing to his car, grabbing a pistol he had there, and confronting gunman Luke Woodham, who quickly surrendered rather than get shot. Myrick hardly gets mentioned these days because he used a handgun to stop a killer, much the same as the armed students who interceded at the Apalachian Law School shooting are essentially ignored.
Step Two: Schools should pin medals on students like Jacob Ryker, the hero teen of Thurston High School in Springfield, OR in May 1998 – 11 months before Columbine – who understood quickly “from his own experience with guns” that teen gunman Kip Kinkel had run out of ammunition and tackled him. Ryker was shot in the melee, but he got in some good licks on the little scumbag before the authorities arrived and took Kinkel into custody. Schools should encourage other teens like Ryker, they should offer classes in firearm safety and hunter education as part of the curriculum.
When his rifle ran out of ammunition and Kinkel began to reload, wounded student Jacob Ryker—recognizing from his own experience with guns that Kinkel was out of ammunition (and understood that this was the best chance to stop Kinkel)—tackled him, and was soon assisted by several other students.
Step Three: Instead of marginalizing gun owners and groups like the NRA, the news media needs a philosophical overhaul, after which it should marginalize gun prohibitionists and groups like the Brady Campaign. For decades, we’ve tried it their way with increasingly strict and intolerant rules that border on the insane, and all we have to show for it is a list of tragedies and a body count.
It should be noted for the record that, like school board member Andrew Kehoe, who murdered his wife before committing his atrocity, Woodham killed his mother and Kinkel murdered both of his parents.
What we learn from Columbine and other shootings is that gun control groups exploit such tragedies for their own political ends. They pretty much dance in the blood of the victims to push an agenda that may, but usually does not, have anything remotely to do with the crime they are condemning. Their goal is disarmament -- victim disarmament, if you will -- and they don't seem to grasp the fact that if people are caught in imminent life-threatening situations and cannot fight back, they frequently die.
The “real lesson of Columbine,” if there must be one is that we should have taken a lesson from Pearl High School and Thurston High School.
Alas, gun-phobic school administrators and teachers, and gun-hating politicians, continue with their heads in the sand, and other dark places, enforce a philosophy and defend laws that haven't worked, and that will only give us more of the same.
NOTE: The 2nd Amendment is SELF-incorporated to all government entities at every level. It is MORE ABSOLUTE than the 1st Amendment, or any of the others, because the wording forbids not only CONGRESS, but ANYONE from infringing on it. The 1st says “Congress shall make no law...”. The 2nd say “shall NOT be infringed!” Period! End of debate!
One lesson learned from Columbine is that the police cant wait until the SWAT team, all their equipment, and everything else arrives on the scene. The first four officers in place now go in using the diamond formation and search for the killer(s). Standing by outside while more die inside is a non starter now.
In addition to applying the first-aid of defensive firearms, we should also administer vaccination.
We can do this by vigorously and directly addressing schools where administrators tolerate or ignore, and thus foster, the unrelenting heaping of humiliation, degradation, and physical and psychological abuse on students who fail to conform to the prevailing “popular” norms.
Murderous rage in ordinary young men doesn’t come out of nowhere. Some kids eat a shotgun in order to escape the crushing degradation of acidic school cultures which they are required by law to endure. But as we all well know, not all of them decide to point the shotgun at themselves.
A good defense is laudable, but that’s usually addressing the symptom, not the disease.
..Or addessing parents who say, “We do not see the shotgun barrel on your dresser. Here’s a car, here’s a computer, get out of our sight and stop bothering us”.
I was subbing yesterday (4/21) in a high school class when 'Code Black' came over the intercom. Thankfully, I'd written myself notecards on what to do for lockdown and already had the doors locked. Closed the blinds, covered the windows to the hall, turned off the lights and had the kids sit on the floor.
I took the opportunity to talk a little about why we have Code Black.. many had never heard of Colombine (freshmen), but one girl had and when she started telling her classmates the stats from that day and she got their attention. I had several that fall into the the "my poo don't stink, do you know who my daddy is" group so I informed them about the bullying aspect of what brought about that day.
I admit, I was a bit freaked, yet calm. The drill was during first block and I had a knot in my stomach the rest of the day! Yet I knew then that should something horrible happen, these kids were my responsibilty and I'd do whatever it takes to see to it they return home safely.
For the record, and for anyone who has to respond to yet more gun-grabbing
because of Columbine:
The two murderers carried a total of four firearms.
Two were sawed-off shotguns, the making and possession of which have long
been felonies.
Only one of the four firearms qualified under the original “assault weapons”
ban.
The two murderers also carried 95 bombs, the making and possession of which
have long been felonies.
A popular line of reasoning is that if only the AWB had been in place, then
Columbine would not have happened. Such willful ignorance boggles my mind.
Never mind the bombs or the sawed off shotguns. The are not the threat. Only
ugly guns are the threat.
My daughter’s middle school had one of those complete lockdowns a couple of weeks ago.
It was not a drill.
A student had a seizure in the hallway during classes, so the school locked itself down so the student would have privacy, and called an ambulance.
Of course they didn’t tell anyone what was going on. It lasted an hour. My daughter wasn’t scared during the hour she stood with her classmates away from the windows and door.
Why not? She knew it was fake, that nothing bad had happened, because the school’s front doors are locked and nothing bad ever happens in our town.
She found out what happened when she got home because the school used their message system to call all the parents so they would know what was going on if their children were scared.
I would have been all over this with the government workers at the school, but we are leaving this state within the next 2 months, and it is just not worth it to me.
Does anyone else see anything wrong with a lockdown to protect a student’s privacy, especially when all the other students are in their classrooms?
We need to replace these administrators. These administrators are generally liberal, and like the feel good policies such as “gun free zones” around a school. I think Virginia Tech was a gun free place.
And it bears repeating that all of these killers were in violation of numerous existing gun laws even before they began their rampages. The sad fact is that the criminal element and demented people don’t obey the law. Any regulations or laws will be ignored by them.
Give me 8 Iraq tested soldiers or Marines and I will clear any building you want in minutes after arrival on the scene.
Seems to me the student's privacy could have been maintained without stopping the learning process for the whole school for an hour. I've no problem with drills.. ours lasted about 15 mins, time for admins to walk thru and make sure everyone did as they should.
When I was in Jr High a boy had the end of his finger twisted off by some piece of machinery in shop class. I was in art and we heard the ruckus as he (and the tip of his finger) were walked to the office and passed our door. No disruption to class.
I do think there was a time Littleton CO thought they were just a small town where nothing ever really happened tho. No one is immune, IMHO. And I do like the message system.. I get emails and calls. A local middle school was evacuated Monday because some Einstein sprayed pepper spray into the air system! We heard the sirens and shortly thereafter came an email explaining there was smoke in the school and everyone evacuated and ok.
>Yet I knew then that should something horrible happen, these kids were my responsibilty and I’d do whatever it takes to see to it they return home safely.
Except, you know, have a gun and drop whoever was threatening you and your students. {That’s not allowed!}
So they were in a double bind - the school administrators would not enforce justice against the abusive student elites at the school, nor would their parents. And given that elites with criminal charges and convictions suffered no consequences at school, apparently the police wouldn't either.
>Does anyone else see anything wrong with a lockdown to protect a student’s privacy, especially when all the other students are in their classrooms?
Yes, it was a waste of time, energy, and resources. All that would have been needed was clearing the path between the kid and the medics.
>Give me 8 Iraq tested soldiers or Marines and I will clear any building you want in minutes after arrival on the scene.
You’d probably want more than 8, but eight could do the job, unless the perp is familiar with the building & has planed for clearing procedures being used against him.
...is it wrong to want this pic on a T-Shirt that I can wear to school?
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