“Kidding, kids! Just a drill!”
You see, there really are consequences to our political leaders’ irresponsible fear-mongering. People still tend to believe and trust our leaders, the fools, and when prominent ones like President Obama and Diane Feinstein, aided and abetted by hysterical media voices like Piers Morgan and blathering celebrities like Jim Carrey, exploit the deaths of small children in a tragic school shooting to use fear rather than reason to pass additional gun regulations, it isn’t surprising that members of the public get frightened. This is supposed to cause them to push their representatives for gun measures that, in truth, have little to do with preventing school shootings, but it also causes them to act irrationally. Reckless conduct and cynical legislative strategies have consequences.
At Pine Eagle Charter School in tiny (population 288) Halfway, Oregon, administrators thought the risk of another Adam Lanza shooting up their small school was so serious that it justified staging an unannounced massacre drill. Two masked men wearing hoodies and wielding handguns burst into a meeting room full of teachers and opened fire, with blanks. Not that the terrified teachers knew that, until it was clear to them that they had been shot and weren’t dead.
The teachers and administration justified the drill as alerting the staff to their lack of preparedness in the event of an attempted charter school shooting by multiple gunmen, of which there have been…let me see…none. Ever. Presumably the school will also have unannounced drills for incidents of terrorist bomb attacks, rabies-infected dogs running amuck in a classroom, Samurai sword-wielding assassins, a visit by Leatherface and his chainsaw, alien invasions, and spontaneous combustion.
Is this more outrageous than the unannounced East Harlem lock-down drill that a batty principal ordered earlier this year? No, but only because in that case, children were needlessly terrified as well as teachers. The East Harlem stunt didn’t involve gunfire, however.
There is no excuse for this. Studies indicate that children increasingly fear being killed at school, and this is because they pick up on the fears of their parents and teachers, who have, in turn, been primed by manipulative politicians. When one of these hysteria-fueled surprise drills goes horribly wrong, say, when a teacher drops dead of cardiac arrest or an armed teacher shoots one of the fake attackers right between the eyes, there is no question where the blame will lie, and it isn’t Adam Lanza.
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Facts: Oregon Live
Graphic: Terror Daves
Ethics Alarms 
The gun companies are trying to scare us to sell more guns…
Those who want fewer guns are trying to scare us to get background checks…
Journalists and media trying to scare us to get more ratings…
Politicians are trying to scare us to get more votes and support…
No wonder everyone is getting more stressed out, unhappy (with all the health side effects), and even angry. Maybe FDR should have said, ‘The only thing we had to fear is fearmongering itself?’
If that we’re to happen here there would be at least a dose of wasp spray in the eyes of the gunman. We finally got training that allows for proactive efforts to stop the gunman in his tracks or get the kids out and away not just cower and wait to be killed.
Cry wolf? If anything this argues for keeping teachers armed.
Your last sentence – that is just what I was thinking. Will it take someone getting assaulted or shot to stop this nonsense? Having a gun pointed at you and a trigger pulled can cause real trauma even if the gun is fake. The physical response of the victim is the same as it would be if the masked men were really criminals. One can get PTSD from an event like that. It is unconscionable. Geeze.
Does anyone remember when Brandon Lee was killed on the set of The Crow? It was from a gun firing a blank.
Technically a blank was loaded, but there was a bullet lodged in the barrel.
Blanks fire essentially the exact same charge of gunpowder as a live round, so that combined with the lodged bullet was the same as firing a real bullet.
Ditto on that last sentence- Not even counting an armed teacher, I keep waiting to hear about one of these surprise drills end up with an “intruder” getting slammed to the floor, kicked in the ribs, smile rearranged via chair, etc…
@Andrew Indeed. Of course, people who know guns rather than fetishizing them as terrible demons actually know that blanks aren’t necessarily harmless, but I have a hunch the bright folks behind this drill don’t know a magnum from a muzzleloader.
You’d think that these teachers, living in one of the wildest areas of Oregon, would know firearms backward and forward. You’d also think that they’d be a little less braindead than that principal in NYC who did much the same a few months ago. Of course, this illustrates one reason for not arming teachers. Had they been, those moronic “shooters” would have been hamburger meat in three seconds flat. And the principal whose bright idea it was would have probably wound up decorating a tree limb shortly afterward.
On further reflection, I take it back. Arm those teachers! If nothing else, they can cull the genetic deficiences from their own ranks!
Why leave it at the teachers? Arm the children! Statistically there’s a chance one of them might shoot straight in the ensuing firestorm.
P.S. Just extemporising. I appreciate that 1, mercifully no children were involved in this unbelievable incident and 2, Steven Mark Pilling did not add his final comment in total seriousness.
Culling genetic deficiencies from their own ranks is fruitless if those culled have already reproduced!!!
Unlike your country, young people can still learn to shoot and maintain a firearm here. We hold to that in many areas and enshrined the general concept in our Constitution from our memory of how we eventually ran your army out of America without an army of our own. Any number of adolescent children can and would perform valiantly in such a situation.
In fact, a number of recent home invasions have been foiled by children as young as 12 who knew firearms and used them to protect their siblings or even their parents. Naturally, I don’t favor people in their minorcy carrying weapons on a campus, for a number of reasons besides that of competance. But if a teacher or any adult with responsibility over and for children is denied the means of protecting their lives, he has already failed in his prime duty as an adult citizen.
BTW: I realize, of course, that your comments were intended to be snide. Actually, they were merely inept. I suggest you take a hard look at the crime rate in your country, now tyrannically stripped of the right to own firearms. It’s reflected in such American cities as Chicago and Washington… and for the same reasons. In the heartlands of America, we know better and history proves us right.
Thank you for your reply. I think you are too ready to accuse me of being snide, inept maybe. That is a risk you run when conversing with citizens of another culture. For what it’s worth I’ve been visiting the US regularly for over 30 years, paying for the visits out of my own pocket. Hardly a foundation for inherent US criticism.
You suggest I look at crime figures in my own country so I did just that. Focusing primarily on gun homicide since that is the primary driver of the conversation.
Two interesting reports here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/14/crime-statistics-england-wales
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state
followed by
http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-kingdom
http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states
I realise that The Guardian takes a left wing stance but its regard for facts is not in question. As for Gunpolicy.org I have no view but its research appears painstaking.
Looking at figures specifically for gun homicide I see that in 2010 the UK had a gun homicide rate of 0.04 per 100,000 population whereas the US had a rate of 3.59 per 100,000. Now if that’s living under a tyranny count me in.
That is only the result of a quick search and I would in no way claim that it is definitive.You may well have a different interpretation. That I would be interested to hear.
If there’s one thing we can both take heart from it is that figures show a drop in both countries.
“Looking at figures specifically for gun homicide I see that in 2010 the UK had a gun homicide rate of 0.04 per 100,000 population whereas the US had a rate of 3.59 per 100,000. Now if that’s living under a tyranny count me in.”
Oh dear. That’s the problem with statistics. There are so many variables. Sweden is an example of almost everyone owning guns and practically no gun violence. Of course,guns are highly regulated.
Could it be that America just has more than it’s fair share of hot heads,crooks,and loonies? If so that’s all the more reason I want to be able to protect myself. The coppers never arrive in time.
You didn’t show less death, just less death by guns. I’m of the belief that more guns does lead to more death, but you didn’t show that.
Courtesy of Sarge983:
More guns don’t lead to more deaths
Actually, even if we compare American non-gun homicide rates to total homicide rates in other OECD nations, we’d still be about number 2 on the list, suggesting that gun control measures might at best only make a small dent (since at least some would-be gun deaths might just be replaced by greater use of stabbings, bludgeonings, etc.): http://maketheworldworkbetter.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/guns-are-probably-not-responsible-for-the-high-murder-rates-in-the-us-how-to-understand-the-stats/
Of course, methodological issues in estimating gun ownership/distribution and non-justified homicides might just render much of our pontificating moot to begin with.
I’ve seen statistics that say different, Limey. I’ve also seen that, from a nation that was once one of the most law abiding nations on Earth, Britain has since gone to the most violent one in Europe. As in American cities that have imposed harsh gun controls, Britain has likewise suffered. You’re quite right that the Guardian is left wing. So notoriously so, in fact, that its bias renders it ineffective as a source of information. There are many way to doctor statistics or present them in such a manner as to blindside the big picture. The Left is a master of these techniques. I find it ironic that the entire concept of private ownership of weapons comes from your country, which has since abandoned it to an extreme degree.
Steven
You probably should also point out that violent crime statistics in Great Britain are kept in a profoundly different way than they are here. As a result, it is difficult to get a clear picture of the relative levels of violent crime (note that I use the phrase violent crime, rather than gun crime – it seems to me that it should not matter how, for example, a murder is committed; just that it was).
As an example of the differences, in GB, a crime would not be classified as a murder until the justice system had run its entire course and the criminal had been convicted of the crime and had exhausted his appeals. Prior to that, it would not be included in the murder statistics. In the US, the FBI crime statistics are largely based on the preliminary investigation that determines if the probable crime is a murder or self-defense, etc.
In other words, an unsolved murder doesn’t count as a murder.
I would think the victim would count it as a murder, but it would not have an effect on the murder statistics until the trial and appeals were complete. So if there is never an arrest, it doesn’t change the stats.
That’s what I mean. If 1,000 people were shot dead but no one was ever arrested for the deaths, it would count as zero murders in the official crime statistics.
Why don’t we look at the WHO European Detailed Mortality Database 2010, avoiding the UK justice system altogether:
http://data.euro.who.int/dmdb/ca.php?cy=UK%20%282010%29&agt=1&ag=0&sex=0
Items X94 and X95 Mortality by firearms assault 27 or 0.044 per 100,000.
If you want to include items Y23 and Y24, death by firearms discharge undetermined intent, that increases the rate to 0.0615 oer 100,000.
Two other statistics (taken from gunpolicy.org) which are even more relevant are for gun ownership.
UK 6.7 per 100 individuals
US 101.05 per 100 individuals
Perhaps there is a link between these and the mortality figures?.
WHO apparently gets their information from self reporting by the various country specific agencies. That may or may not make a difference, but it is another element to take into account when comparing statistics from separate countries.
As I noted above in my original comment. I am far less interested in gun deaths than I am in overall killing and the trend of those numbers – also where the violence tends to happen. As an example, in the US, if you were to remove the killings in several of our largest urban areas, the number of killings in the US would not be very different from the numbers in the UK. (It may or may not be relevant that those urban areas in the US are also the areas with the most restrictive gun ownership laws around – that is another conversation). These killings in the large urban areas are, in the main, young black men killing other young black men.
In the conversations that I have had over the years with people about violence, it has nearly always been true that those who emphasize the phrase “gun deaths” or “gun violence” are most concerned that it was a gun involved and seemingly would be fine with the death or violence if a knife or a hammer had been the implement.
What is beyond dispute is that the number of violent crimes in the US is and has been trending downward for quite some time. I don’t know what those trends are in the US or other areas, though my impression is that they are trending the other direction (could be wrong about that).
I would also venture to guess that the gun ownership levels in the US are understated in the numbers you show here from gunpolicy.org.
I don’t know what those trends are in the US or other areas, though my impression is that they are trending the other direction (could be wrong about that).
Should be:
I don’t know what those trends are in the UK or other areas, though my impression is that they are trending the other direction (could be wrong about that).
No, the heartening thing is that the trend is downwards in both countries. Here the only crime to show an increase in 2012 was “theft from the person”. I imagine that is the official name for mugging. Your point about extracting the figures for the major cities is worth investigating. I know that here in the UK the prime problem is inter gang violence. This tends to be in the inner cities as in the US.
Knife violence was a particular concern for us here two to three years ago. The police put a lot of effort into trying to educate teenagers away from this. I have no figures to compare but have a feeling that there may have been a little improvement.
Impression is likely from media. You know the U.S. Stats because you’ve looked than up or seen a correction somewhere. You just get the bare bones things from the UK, so you’re fooled like most Americans are fooled about U.S. crime rates.
What is your point? That is why I called it an impression.
Thanks for the points, Phil. I wasn’t aware of Britain’s different police methods in that respect.
This was wrong on so many levels. Remember though, schools do fire/tornado drills without telling kids that they are drills. (And, I’m old enough to remember those stupid drills where we would cover our heads under our desks to be “safe” in case of a nuclear attack.) I recall those drills being frightening at first (that alarm going off would jolt me out of my seat), but then as they happened repeatedly, I would just assume it’s a drill but would go through the motions anyway. Those drills have the desired result though — getting kids in an organized fashion to the point of safety in case there actually is an emergency. I think gun violence is at the point where schools need to talk about how to prepare for this type of event — and since the response may be different than that of another emergency (i.e., hide in the building until the danger is over — not exit the building in organized rows), shouldn’t adminstrators/teachers have this discussion? Is discussion enough, or does there need to be some sort of “drill” for the students?
I think gun violence is at the point where schools need to talk about how to prepare for this type of event
Why? Gun violence hasn’t been increasing.
It’s actually dropped dramatically. The biggest drops have come from states where concealed carry laws prevail.