My children go through “Bad-Guy-With-Gun” drills at their school … this is a school full of age 14 to 19 boys and girls in the prime of their lives … and more than 30% or these are fit, strong, and athletic kids … and smart to boot. Now consider the drill:
* Close door to classroom
* Stay quiet
* Hide under or behind desk
* Stay away from windows and doors
Mark Steyn – “… at Yale, the dean of student affairs, Betty Trachtenberg, reacted to the Virginia Tech murders by taking decisive action: She banned all stage weapons from plays performed on campus. After protests from the drama department, she modified her decisive action to “permit the use of obviously fake weapons” such as plastic swords.”
More here – “Mom, I’ve run the Columbine scenario a million times in my head.”
Kevin B, go back and read my comment again. My whole point, perhaps too sublime for you, was that if you are waiting for the police to re-act and to protect you then you are S.O.L. My apologies to the police but the reality is that the response time and action time would be far too slow to effectively prevent many deaths if this had happened in Canada. The Garbi incident in Montreal only confirms this fact.
Obviously, in a violent society, banning guns creates the ultimate advantage for the psychopath. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Which school is a killer going to attack – a liberal/pacifist school like Virginia Tech that has banned guns, or another school that hasn’t?
Perhaps the best solution is to allow certain qualified (judged mentally stable) students and/or teachers to carry guns on campus. If that was the case at Virginia Tech, the killer might have had second thoughts. Or, he might have been shot before doing so much damage. Either way the odds are it wouldn’t have ended up the way it did.
I instructed my kids to grab two pencils and stick them in the attacker’s thy and stomach should SHTF. And if they are in a class on the 1st floor, to break a window using a chair and run for cover. The school policies are suicidal at the very least.
I think at least some of the lessons of VT are clear.
1) If the shooter is not in your classroom, then barricade the door. Start with the biggest piece of furniture (teacher’s desk) and then add everything else that is not nailed down. Then, if at all possible, escape out a window.
2) If you cannot barricade, try to ambush the shooter as he comes in the door of the classroom – a chair to the face from someone standing out of view next to the door should do nicely.
3)If confronted by the shooter at a distance of 12 feet or more, run. Try to do a zigzag pattern. If you’ve feeling brave, go around a corner and then ambush him.
4) If directly confronted by the shooter at close range, throw stuff at him and then charge while screaming like a banshee. Most GSWs are not fatal – unless hit in the head, heart or spinal cord, you have a good chance of recovering. A stundents desk will not stop a 9mm round but it may deflect it and will definitely slow it down – use the desk as a battering ram.If you cower on the floor and are then shot in the head, you will die. Period.
None of these things are easy and most won’t come naturally when you are scared. The only way it will work is if you think about them ahead of time and rehearse them in your mind.
…some people tend to forget, newer schools have the doors opening outward, not inward, so barricading a door may not be as easy.
– but yeah, learn the heav-ho way of doing things together. Like heaving desks, chairs, pens, books, at the doorway and anything not bolted down. Only problem is, if everyone misses, you end up with a loonie hotter than a hornet’s nest.
I agree with the fight like hell scenario. But, remember, virtually all state-funded schools are “Where have all the flowers gone”, pacifist zones.
holdfast is onto something, but one would need to promote and maybe even practise this kind of pro-active response. Schools practise lockdown procedures, but the chances of them ever practising real fight-back techniques is highly unlikely: such pro-active behaviour would be altogether against their utopian, dystopian, all-people-are-really-nice-and-even if-they-aren’t-we-should-be nice-to-them fiction.
Very discouraging. Maybe try home schooling one’s children, which might protect them until they go to college.
One thing that bothers me, VT being a ROTC campus, there are no brave officers or the slightest of ideas how to fight without a gun being taught there?
I feel sorry for our future officers there, this will always hang around their neck like a millstone come times of danger and instantaneous decision needed to save lives.
Liberal jerks say we dont need guns we can call the police but they dont mention how long it will take the police to get there i mean liberals are such a bunch of wussietards and blabbering nit-wits