From John Farnam:
4 Jan 07
At a just-concluded terrorism seminar in NJ, colleagues Dave Grossman
and Chuck Remsberg warned of the high likelihood of terrorist attacks on
American schools and school children. Terrorists' predicable goal is to
inflict maximum mayhem and death as a way of bursting onto our national
headlines, just as was the case at Belsen. However, what struck me most
was the terrorists' thinking process in selecting targets. They may be
crazy, but they're not stupid:
Unlikely targets include schools in states that have "Shall-Issue" CCW
laws, where parents dropping off and picking up children, or attending
school activities may well be armed (contemptuously ignoring stupid
"no-guns-on-school-property" rules) and likely to enthusiastically
engage, with lethal force, those attempting to harm their children.
Terrorists find that eventuality most inconvenient!
Unlikely targets also include schools where emergency planning has a
high priority in the community, is well publicized, and visibly-armed
police officers are continuously present and maintain high profile.
Likely targets include isolated schools in rural areas, where law
enforcement and EMS resources are stretched thin and are easily
overwhelmed and where bad, winter weather makes travel difficult,
slowing and complicating response.
Likely targets include affluent school districts in big, metro areas or
posh suburbs, where "emergency planning" is a subject so unpleasant that
the community just doesn't want it discussed, even among police. These
are the same places where police beat cars contain neither rifles nor
shotguns, and even uniformed police are supposed to be unarmed on school
property. Let's just call it Lemming City!
Likely targets include school districts close to the Mexican or Canadian
border, where entire teams of terrorists can easily slip into the USA,
achieve their goals, and then slip back across the border where they'll
likely escape capture indefinitely.
I wonder if it will take a Belsen-like incident to persuade Americans
that children need to be continuously protected by armed adults. It is
time for Americans parents, teachers, and school administrators to get
tough or die!
The meek may inherit the Earth, but they do it in small plots!
/John
(Michael Reagan in not my favorite talk-show host but he's what's
available on local radio on weekdays, while I'm driving home from my day
job. Several Fridays ago he was commenting on a shooting at a school and
was bemoaning the prospect that school teachers might need to be armed.
I was able to phone in and get on the air when I got home. I was
disappointed but not surprised to find that his concern is that his
daughter is preparing to be a teacher and his desire is that she not
need to be prepared to deal with violence from students. Since that was
not his theme for the day, he poo-pooed my attempts to show that some
teachers need to be armed to deal with terror attacks on our schools.
It's pretty bad when a major conservative commentator denies that risk.)
5 Jan 07
Yesterday, a heavily-armed gang of Mexican drug traffickers "overran" a
US Border Patrol site, on US soil, somewhere in Arizona. The site was
manned by uniformed, US National Guardsmen, all without weapons or
ammunition of any kind! Guardsmen did the only thing they could. They
fled for their lives, amid, I'm sure, the unrestrained laughter of the
Mexican invaders! These are the same unarmed/unloaded Guardsmen who
mockingly "patrolled" airports in the wake of 9/11.
What kind of idiot put these poor lads in the middle of "drug alley"
with no way to protect themselves? Is the president and congress so
frightened of "negative publicity" associated with our brave lads
shooting foreign invaders, that they would rather see our own people,
defenseless and helpless, shot to death? And this, under a Republican
administration?
The lives and health of our soldiers obviously mean nothing to their
(so-called) commanders and everyone else comfortably up the food chain
and personally out of harm's way.
This would be an absolute disgrace for any nation, much less the world's
only (so-called) super-power. I'm sure the Mexican government and
Mexican drug traffickers alike regard it as hilarious. We have become a
laughing stock! Violent, Mexican criminals are absolutely confident,
despite occasional empty bluster from some congressional gasbag, in
response to every such provocation, our government won't do much more
than scratch itself!
Who live in that part of the country, Federal agents, Guardsmen, and
private citizens alike, and who still foolishly believe our Federal
Government is going to so much as lift a finger to protect them and
their property are delusional. They're on their own!
Two-thousand years ago, Seneca put it this way:
"The worm that destroys you is the constant temptation to seek approval
from your critics."
Nothing much has changed. For civilizations, life is short. Shorter
for some than others!
/John
(I commented on this week's incident in southwest Arizona earlier. I
will add some tangential observations: The young man who first
instructed me in the use of handguns was a National Guardsman from San
Diego who had been called up for duty during the 1965 Watts riots, where
he was placed on a street corner with no ammunition for his rifle. When
I purchased my first handgun, a Walther PPK, he demonstrated the low
power of its .380 ACP cartridge relative to that of the .45 ACP we were
shooting out of his 1911's but commented that he could probably get away
with slipping the smaller pistol into a front pocket of his fatigue
pants, if he were called up again for riot duty. Decades later, I
reported for jury duty at the L.A. Criminal Courts Building, the week
after the Rodney King riots. On lunch breaks I observed three-man teams
of National Guardsmen trudging into downtown L.A. from what is now
called South L.A., with M16's with empty magazine wells. My reaction was
that the neighborhoods they had traversed had plenty of Vietnam veterans
and that it was a miracle that they had not been attacked and robbed of
their weapons. Marines assigned to riot duty, however, had been issued
live ammunition, a fact that was the final lesson learned by one
knucklehead who attempted to run a Marine checkpoint. The flip side
however, is that we need not to tolerate erosion or repeal of the Posse
Comitatus Act of 1878, which limits the federal government's power to
use federal troops for domestic law enforcement.)
--
Stephen P. Wenger
Firearm safety - It's a matter
for education, not legislation.
http://www.spw-duf.info
