Platt Canyon: Another School Shooting That Could Have Been Stopped In Progress
By John Longenecker (09/30/06)
School shootings, church shootings, airport shootings, workplace shootings. . . mass takeovers and shootings nearly anywhere can be stopped in progress.
Gee, Longenecker, how can you make such a statement?
Easy.
Crimes such as the Platt Canyon High School shooting can be over in moments. In taking hostages, the situation can be protracted, and the criminals largely in control of the thing, with precious moments slipping by even before 9-1-1 can be dialed. Tactical thinking has to center around sizing up the situation, being a step ahead of the criminals, applying well-drilled plans, and proper execution of the tactics made for the situation. I’m a believer in preparedness, training and drilling, but that’s an awful lot of time.
What do you do when it winds up playing out their way and ending in suicide, as they often do? It means that the criminal was in control all along.
It means a missed opportunity in there to stop the situation from escalating. If only you will see it.
How can you really be one step ahead of the bad guys?
Before we put any blame on our assets, let’s put the blame – yes, blame – on the political activism which so clearly contributes to much of these shootings as an ally in secret, the anti-violence movement.
First, in my analysis of this kind of shooting, you don’t paint honest citizens as bad guys, step Number One. That includes parents, local citizens, volunteers, anyone outside police. Remember that the parents are the ultimate authority, and should not be fooled into thinking that School Boards, Law Enforcement and others do not take orders from the People. You can change policy anytime you like. Get involved.
On that, has anyone noticed that school shootings didn’t occur until after gun bans on campus were implemented..? Has anyone noticed that shootings occur in so-called gun-free zones – such as churches, campuses and Washington, D.C.? Ever notice that all the violence is one-sided? Has anyone noticed that all sorts of violence using all sorts of weapons occur in known resistance-free zones? And that’s exactly what they are: resistance-free zones. And the bad guys know it. Beginning to see the problem?
This is why the anti-violence movement is so truly anti-family. Time after time, gunmen attack in resistance-free zones, and so do knifemen, bullies, bombers and others. Anti-violence groups are anti-family because they work to talk households out of meeting violence immediately, and when officials listen, they join in the movement to grow violence for political gain. When your children are at risk by nanny-state drones as many teachers and administrators are across America, you come to realize that they own none of their actions or non-actions and put it all ultimately on your back.
Well, since all responsibility is in fact on our backs, why not take command of the situation and apply due process to change it more in our favor for the safety of our children? Remove some of that drone authority and replace it with your own.
President Bush has said this week that you don’t create terrorism by fighting terrorism. When it comes to protecting our children – and the children of other households, our fellow Americans – we do not create violence by meeting it; by meeting it we stop it from escalating.
And that is the entire purpose of owning a gun: to keep a situation of grave danger from escalating when first responders are not available. This is where the anti-violence movement is purely anti-family, anti-your family and your neighbors’ families.
I’ll say it for the umpteenth time: anywhere police can be summoned, the average citizen should be carrying a weapon, purely because the citizenry is the ultimate authority in this country, and that means it is above the authority of police. Anyone who disputes it doesn’t understand the nature of the relationship between law enforcement and the People, or doesn’t want to. They don’t tell us, we tell them, and it’s about time they were told: drop the gun laws which forbid law-abiding citizens from carrying weapons on campus. Or church. Or in airports, on aircraft. Oh, and yes, in Parks.
As I wrote about the Goleta, California Postal Shooting, this could have been avoided by being met. Met not by some designated person, but by the average reasonable person.
All violence can be mitigated or reduced in severity by being met, and when it is unanswered, it prevails.
Make sense?
Anti-violence movements, no matter what disguise they wear, are anti-family because they believe (or maybe they don’t really believe what they announce) that to meet violence is to make violence.
This is just decerebrate. I said decerebrate. Anti-violence movements are decerebrate.
Do I question motives? You’d better believe it. Naturally, when the outcomes are so obvious, predictable, irrational – and heart-breakingly irrevocable – then you have to see that the thinking is part of that larger movement to dissolve our resistance and resolve in this country. It works by making adverse situations worse and then installing rotten answers. The American Family has been under attack from many corners for decades now, and it is accelerating. Can you feel it?
The entire gun debate – which is a debate about whether someone protects themselves in time of grave danger or is not allowed – is an exhibit of how over the decades the left’s predictions have been utterly wrong and perhaps even lies, and the liberty movement’s predictions have been utterly true and have come to pass.
The predictions of the left as interference with the civil right of carrying a weapon for self-protection have been insulting to every citizen in forecasting blood in the streets, vigilanteism, chaos, anarchy, road rage, general irresponsibility and carelessness, lover shootings, and more, yet they haven’t come to pass. At this time, more than forty states have some sort of family-friendly recognition of the civil right to carry a weapon for self-defense and, brother, they just don’t seem to have that violence problem.
Sounds like a remedy to me!
On the other hand, the liberty nuts have foreseen various interferences as having dire consequences of building on incremental precedent, knowing where it will all lead, and they have been right. Chief among the predictions is the infringement on personal liberty in the name of fighting crime. Need I say more? This is how 22,000 gun laws and other rules now affect the non-gun owners in America. It’s no accident of good intentions – it’s no accident at all.
As I have said, right-to-carry works for the country, but where it’s needed most, it’s frustrated most.
Not allowing self-defense and not allowing an average Joe or Josephine to meet a violent situation with their sovereign, legal authority is just decerebrate. It is to work for a different cause, and this is anti-family.
The solution is to understand how the citizen has a civil right and a human right to carry a personal gun anywhere he or she has a right to be, anywhere police can be summoned, anywhere one may face grave danger alone. Emphasis on grave danger and emphasis on alone.
Make sense?
The solution is to remember the authority each adult possesses in this country – yes, authority – and how good-natured people have been talked out of it. I should say, bluffed out of it.
It still exists in law. But make no mistake, it is changing. My suggestion is that parents get together and explore these values while you still can.
It doesn’t make violence, it meets it. It protects the children. It protects parents at home and away from home. It protect the nation.
And that’s good for the country.
John Longenecker's second edition of Transfer Of Wealth - The Case For Nationwide Concealed Carry is available worldwide in Hardcover. Visit his website at www.TransferOfWealth.net
(Printer friendly version) Email: John Longenecker
