No kidding; how could he stop the shooting before it started if he was not there? - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 23/12/2012 02:18:33 AM
he says he fired four shots, what difference does it make whether he was there or not before it started? he had a chance to stop it and did not. the other officer who responded to the request for backup also was unable to stop the shooting. and these are officers trained in the use of guns and deadly force. now that we have a suggestion for more armed officers, where are they going to come from? how long before they are trained well enough to know how to use their guns? and how effective will a lone person be if they find themselves away from the main campus when the shooting starts?
He also said he was 60 yards away; hardly surprising that four shots missed a man sized target shooting back at him. Think it goes down that way if he is inside the building instead of having to rush BACK to the school before he can even get within 60 yards?
As to the other officer, before it was "columbine had two armed guards on the day of the shooting. they were both immediately fired upon," but now he suddenly "responded to the request for backup." So was he an armed guard at Columbine or not? Clearly he was not, and thus irrelevant to the original question of whether armed police STATIONED at Columbine would have prevented the shootings. Fact is, there was only one cop STATIONED there, and he had been dispatched elsewhere when the shootings occurred, meaning NO cops were stationed there at the time. Consequently, Columbine does not prove armed cops stationed at schools ineffective in preventing school shootings, because it had no such cops.
Which is what Officer Garnder strongly implied: Had he not been sent away from the school, where he belonged, he could have prevented the shootings.
ok, we can start assigning current on-duty police to schools, but it will still take a long time to get enough police trained to guard every single school in the US assuming we do this through the local and state police force. making it a brand new law enforcement position will take even more time and money. the timeline to get this implemented at every single school in the US is laughable if this is supposed to be a serious method of preventing the next massacre. and the cost, whether it comes from state, local or federal, does not matter when we already have examples of gun control legislation which *does* prevent massacres from happening before they start.
They do not prevent massacres any more perfectly or totally than armed police do. Why did Klebold and Harris commit suicide, ending the massacre? Do you think it might have had anything to do with the fact the school was by then surrounded by armed cops? What do you think happens if there are, say, half a dozen trained and armed cops inside the school before a couple teenage Doom junkie gansta wannabes start blasting?
As far as training, how much do you think is necessary? Cops are already trained to look for suspicious behavior, weapons and in the proper use and justification for lethal force (all of which are very good reasons why I much prefer this idea to the insane idea of handing out concealed weapons to teachers.) We would almost certainly need more total cops, but I cannot imagine any of them would need much training cops do not already receive. Note also that the NRAs proposal considers that aspect by including the suggestion of recruiting retired police officers and military reservists.
Most gun right advocates, including NRA members, know well the value of training, and I genuinely think that the common ground we should seek. They do not want criminals, the mentally ill or the untrained carrying guns any more than you or I do. The problem is prefacing every gun control argument with "OMG EVERYONE HAS TOO MANY GUNS111" creates the impression you want to take away everyones guns (gee, I wonder what the connection is....
) Trained, responsible and law-abiding gun owners naturally feel both insulted and threatened by that. They are doing nothing wrong and know gun safety better than what they see as paranoiacs trying to disarm them; that cannot help seeming radical. Common ground is the (only) way to what we all want; branding them gun nuts is counterproductive.