Iowa officials open to armed guards in schools

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Several top state officials on Friday said the National Rifle Association's proposal for all United States schools to post armed guards is worth considering.

Jason Glass, director of the Iowa Department of Education, said the guards should be trained police officers. Many larger Iowa schools already have officers assigned at least part time.

Glass said he will not formally propose the addition of armed officers at all Iowa schools, and neither will Gov. Terry Branstad. But it's possible a state lawmaker will, Glass said, noting he doesn't know of a firm proposal in Iowa yet.

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Thoughts on school shootings

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1. Mass murderers who plan on killing themselves after the spree are not deterred by posthumous legal penalties. Really. Trying to disarm everyone who can theoretically snap is impossible — witness the Russian cops doing mass shootings against the disarmed population.

2. Mandatory lock-downs deny escape to those whose only hope is being a swift and difficult target. Interior doors usually have glass sections and do little to stop armed intruders.

3. At the colleges where I taught in the past decade, about 25% of the teachers and engineering school students carried pistols, up to 10% of the graphic design students. When VT shooting happened, a co-worker said “Thank god our students carry! If this crap happens here, we can hide behind them.” Granted, I wasn’t teaching at a K-12, but the same reasoning applies to them. In a typical school with a hundred or more staff and teachers, it’s likely that a half-dozen armed first responders are on site, and at least one of them would be close enough to fight back.

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Parents back NRA call for school guards

TAMPA (FOX 13) - One week after 20 first-graders and six adults were killed by an armed gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, the nation's most powerful gun organization presented their plan to halt school shootings. "With all the foreign aid the U.S. does, with all the money in the federal budget, can't we afford to put a police officer in every single school?" said the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre. LaPierre says the best way to fight fire is with fire. "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," continued LaPierre.

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"I think it's great. It's the best thing that they can come up with," said parent Itania Guillen.

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Fla. gun instructor says he'll train any teacher

FORT MYERS, Fla. - With the whole nation asking how to stop school shootings, one Southwest Florida gun instructor thinks he has the answer. Alecs Dean, president of International Firearm Safety Inc. here, is offering free gun training to any interested teacher. "If two teachers call me tomorrow and say, 'Hey, we want to take this training,' then I'll give them training tomorrow," he said.

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YouTube: VIDEO: NRA President’s Report: David Keene on the Push to Protect Our Children

Video that shows the NRA message unfiltered by hostile media. Much different from what you saw on the old media networks.

Video Here

NRA’s Press Conference of 12/21/12: An almost masterful strike. (Part 1)

Read this, and compare it to the coverage of the event by the media

I caught the press conference live like many people did and by the time it finished I could not stop but smile thinking that the old coots can deliver harm to the politicians and play a mean game of PR chess to the Media and the Opposition.

David Keene set the tone by telling the Media that no questions would be taken after LaPierre’s words and that the NRA would be available for questions starting Monday. This pretty much said to the boys and girls of the press that: 1) We know you don’t like us so fuck you and sit pretty, 2) By Monday, regular people would have time to digests our proposal and 3) We really don’t care what you say and you’ll probably shoot yourself in the foot

I am going to analyze point by point using the transcript of Wayne LaPierre’s speech available at the NRA’s website:

Out of respect for those grieving families, and until the facts are known, the NRA has refrained from comment. While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent.

I still think too much time passed for the NRA to come out. A week in our modern communications time is forever. The only advantage was that the “conversation” coming from the Opposition was stuck in the forever old talking points. Plus plenty of Gun Rights activists took on the Social Media and the Blogosphere helping to counter the B.B.

Now, we must speak … for the safety of our nation’s children. Because for all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week, no one — nobody — has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?

Ouch! Game changer. For the whole week, the only crap we heard and read was the chant “GunControlGunControlGunControlGunControlGunControlGunControlGunControl” but little if nothing on what to do now. Average Mom & Dad are not particularly worried about future discussions in Congress but if they are gonna see the kids again after dropping them in school in the morning.

The only way to answer that question is to face up to the truth. Politicians pass laws for Gun-Free School Zones. They issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them. And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.…….We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers. Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it. That must change now!

Two distinct points here: Repetition that the imaginary force field called Gun Free Zones is not working and that politicians were responsible for creating such stupidity and they know it doe not work because instead of trusting their lives to the imaginary force field, they gave armed people taking care of them. To summarize: Politicians have not given 2 craps about your kid’s life since the introduction of the Gun Free Schools program.

The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. They walk among us every day……….

This whole paragraph has been reviled in the media. In fact the moment it came out, the Twitter feeds exploded with accusations of Fear-mongering and Paranoia by the NRA. The problem is that they (and everybody else) know damn well another attack like that will happen but having the NRA throw it at their faces was not something they enjoyed.

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine that rewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave — while provoking others to try to make their mark?

This is ” Dear Media: We know you don’t like us so fuck you and sit pretty,” Part 2. From now on we can say foam was literally coming from the mouths of almost every journalist in the country that has been covering Sandy Hook or any other school attack or mass killing. A well deserved spanking IMHO and one the Media cannot deny.

Killers, robbers, rapists and drug gang members who have spread like cancer in every community in this country. Meanwhile, federal gun prosecutions have decreased by 40% — to the lowest levels in a decade. So now, due to a declining willingness to prosecute dangerous criminals, violent crime is increasing again for the first time in 19 years!

It is the Executive’s turn to taste some. A direct accusation saying “you talk about “gun violence, but you ain’t doing squat about it!”

In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes — every minute of every day of every month of every year.

And here we have the broadside against the Media. Some have decried the bundling of the video game industry with the rest of the media, but they are indeed part of the same people who have no problems both calling us killers and they selling violence while washing their hands in the whole process. Are video games responsible for the violence? In my opinion they do not create killers but the already scrambled in the brain pan may be overly influenced by them. But there is no doubt that Hollywood has a long and wide strip of hypocrisy denouncing violence while making cash fist over hands with it. Pointing out is a way to make them look stupider than usual.

Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you’ll print tomorrow morning: “More guns,” you’ll claim, “are the NRA’s answer to everything!” Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word “gun” automatically become a bad word?

“Dear Media: We know you don’t like us so fuck you and sit pretty, Part 3.” No need to expand much.

A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn’t a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn’t a bad word. And when you hear the glass breaking in your 6 living room at 3 a.m. and call 911, you won’t be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

So why is the idea of a gun good when it’s used to protect our President or our country or our police, but bad when it’s used to protect our children in their schools?

“What makes you so special you can have all the security you want, but my babies are supposed to have none?” This one has to hurt. No mater what kind of explanation you can come up with, trying to counter the argument will result in you appearing to be a callous jackass who does not care for kids.

More on the next post. Trying to keep it at a somewhat digestible size.

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Armed Teacher Pilot Program to Provide Free Training to Educators

DELAWARE, OH - Buckeye Firearms Association (BFA) announced they have launched a pilot program to provide firearm training to teachers free of charge.

The announcement was made at a Town Hall Meeting at Ohio State University Thursday evening where participants debated the gun control issue in light of the recent mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

Ken Hanson, BFA's Legal Chair, made the announcement, saying, "Teachers and school board members have been asking us for years about training to prepare for an incident like Sandy Hook. So our educational Foundation will sponsor an Armed Teacher Pilot Program for a comprehensive 3-day training class at Tactical Defense Institute in West Union, Ohio. Based on the response to this pilot program, we will roll out classes to other training facilities."

The program will begin by accepting 24 teachers. All expenses, including class tuition, ammunition, and lodging (which are expected to total approximately $1,000 per teacher), will be paid by Buckeye Firearms Foundation and outside donations. Officials will be invited to attend the class at no cost to help develop appropriate training guidelines.

"The long-term goal is to develop a standard Armed Teacher curriculum and make the training available to any teacher or school official," said Hanson. "To begin, we will use funds from our educational foundation and solicit donations from corporations to pay for the pilot program. Going forward, we will seek funding from a variety of sources to expand the program."

BFA's educational foundation is finalizing details of the Armed Teacher Pilot Program and will announce the first class in early January. Interested educators can submit their name for consideration by using the Contact Form at www.BuckeyeFirearms.org. Identities of participants will be kept strictly confidential.

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ID: District Considers Allowing Teachers to Protect Students

(AMMON) – Bonneville School District 93 is considering the possibility of allowing teachers to carry guns to protect students.

KIDK reports a school district in Texas has already adopted a “Guardian Plan,” which allows teachers with a concealed handgun license to carry a gun with them at school.

In the meantime, the district has accepted more security from the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office.

The state of Utah allows for teachers with permits to carry guns on public school property. Oklahoma is also considering a similar law.

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Rassmussen Poll: Questions - CT School Shooting - December 17-18, 2012

Not one question on allowing armed responsible adults to protect the children in the schools, as the Israelis do

National Survey of 1,000 Adults Conducted December 17-18, 2012

By Rasmussen Reports

1* How closely have you followed news stories about the recent shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut?

2* Does the United States need stricter gun control laws?

3*Does the United States need to take more action to identify and treat mental health issues?

4* Does the United States need to place limits on violent movies and video games?

5* Can schools ever be made completely safe against violence like the incident in Connecticut?

6* What will do the most to reduce the number of mass murders like the school shootings in Connecticut—stricter gun control laws, more action to treat mental health issues, or limits on violent movies and video games?

7* How likely is it that congress and the president will create tougher gun control laws?

8* How likely is it that congress and the president will place limits on violent movies and video games?

9* Do you own a gun?

NOTE: Margin of Sampling Error, +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence

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MO:County Police Chief Recommends Arming School Personnel

ST. LOUIS COUNTY (KMOX) - St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch says it is time to talk about arming civilian school personnel following Friday’s massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, comparing it to arming airline pilots after September 11, 2001.

“I see it no differently,” he said. “Pilots have been armed now for many many years, we’ve not had another hijacking and the issue is, for the bad guy, he doesn’t know which airplane he’s getting on, if the pilot is armed or not.”

Fitch said the killing will not be stopped by legislation or laws. “If there’s somebody that’s really hellbent on doing something like this, they’re not going to care what the law is.”

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AGAINST MONSTERS

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.

Source

Disastrous Gun Law Sparked School Shootings

From 1900 to the late 1990’s, there were no mass shootings in schools. Lest it be thought that guns were uncommon in schools, that was not the case. Guns were commonly brought to school for shooting competitions, hunting after school, for teachers to trade or show to each other or their students, or for show and tell. Guns were even made in shop class under the supervision of the shop teacher. Guns were common in gun racks in pickup trucks in the school parking lot. Even today, many schools provide special dispensation for students to take off from school for deer hunting season.

During the height of gun control fever during the first Bush Presidency, the Congress passed the Gun Free School Zones act of 1990. It was designed to make it impossible for ordinary people to carry guns most places, because it forbid the carrying of guns within a thousand feet of a school. If you overlap the 1000 foot gun free zones that surround schools in most cities and towns, no one can go about their daily business without intersecting one of these zones at some time.

The Gun Free School Zone act was quickly challenged in the courts, and found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court under the interstate commerce clause, in U.S. v. Lopez, 1995. The reasoning was simple: If merely possessing a gun within a thousand feet of a school was interstate commerce, and therefore subject to federal regulation, what could possibly be construed as not interstate commerce? Virtually everything would then be controlled by the federal government. As the Constitution means something, the interstate commerce clause must mean something. If all of life can be controlled by the federal government, the clause means nothing.

President Clinton blew a gasket when the Gun Free School Zone act was found unconstitutional. He fiercely lobbied congress to pass a replica act, slightly modified. He threatened to keep congress from adjourning to go home to run for office if they did not pass the replica act. They passed the new Gun Free School Zone act in 1996. Since then, federal prosecutors have been very careful not to prosecute many cases under the act, not wanting to present the Supreme Court with another test case.

The results of the Gun Free School Zone act’s passage have been devastating. The first mass shooting in a school since before 1900 occurred in 1997. As prominent researcher John Lott has noted, mass shooters are attracted to defenseless victim zones. While zones that ban armed citizens are a tiny percentage of the nation’s area, according to Lott, only one of the “successful” (four or more victims) mass shootings in the past thirty years occurred outside of a defenseless victim zone (gun free zone).

Why do mass shooters chose defenseless victim zones? Because they want the fame that goes with the media attention that a mass killer gets, and to get the attention, they have to kill a lot of people. If they are stopped by an armed citizen, they lose their chance to make the “record books”, and there is no point in mass killing.

Armed citizens stop about one in ten of mass killings before they become “successful”, but they are rarely mentioned because of this fact. Most of these life saving actions occur outside of defenseless victim zones.

Mass Killings Stopped by Armed Citizens Link

We have a real world counterexample to the Gun Free School Zone act in Israel. Israelis were confronted with a similar problem after the Maalot massacre in the 1970s They responded by allowing teachers, responsible older students, and volunteer parents to be armed in their schools. They have not had a child shot in a school since.

Israeli School Solution Link

Since the Gun Free School Zone act was passed for the second time in 1996, 13 mass school shootings have occurred. This unconstitutional law has been a disaster and should be repealed.

Note: The Frontier Middle School shooting, which happened in 1996, does not make most lists of mass school shootings becaue only three people were killed before the shooter was subdued by gym coach Jon Lane. It occured in the breif period after the 1990 law was struck down by the Supreme Court and before the 1996 Gun Free School Zone Act was passed.

Dean Weingarten

Update: Ever wonder why we have these insane zero tolerance policies about guns in schools? You know, where an eagle scout and honor student has his life ruined because he tried to do the right thing?

The 1996 Gun Free School Zone act is the reason. If schools do not implement "zero tolerance" policies, they lose federal funding, so school administrators are scared to death of being accused of not following the insane "zero tolerance" rules. Just another cut at cultural genocide of the gun culture (a fair proxy for Western Civilization) by the left.

Correction: It is not the Gun Free School Zone Act of 1996, as listed above, it is the Gun Free School Act of 1994, which is a separate law passed two years earlier, during the Clinton regime.