The dead horse on the living room floor: school shootings and VA Tech.

There’s a dead horse on the living room floor. At least when we think of school security, and the possibility of some nut case coming in and shooting up the place, and the people inside. We are loathe to discuss the dead horse because we don’t want to contemplate the fact that we would have to do something tangible about it. So we simply tiptoe over it and try to ignore its presence. And we pray that others will do the same.

Like an alcoholic refusing to admit that they have a problem because then they’d have to do something about it, we all can see the dead horse, yet no one wants to do anything about it. Meanwhile, it continues to fester. What about future happenings? Future victims?

Well, there’s a problem with this strategy, as Virginia Tech shows us. We can try to ignore dead horses, but they continue to make their presence known to us, and our avoidance of the topic becomes more and more silly and pathetic as time passes, and events illustrate the fallacy of our preconceived notions.

The read dead horse is, of course the sad fact that the VA Tech nutcase had time to chain the doors, reload, and perform many other tasks – including killing as many people as possible – simply because he had no viable opposition. The dead horse is the fact that when nutcases come to our schools looking to make names for themselves, they know that they face no effective opposition.

32 people dead in VA Tech. how many would be alive and walking around today had there been someone – anyone inside that building who could mount effective opposition? The dead horse I refer to is why wasn’t anybody else armed? Why wasn’t there an armed person inside that building who could provide effective protection for the victims, who could only be led like sheep (or horses) to slaughter?

We know that name of that dead horse – the college administration is afraid of guns and had banned them from campus – even by licensed permit holders. Not only that, but they had just successfully defended this policy against a licensed permit holder in court. And not only that, they crowed over their victory, claiming it would make the campus safer. Events have proved that this policy, far from making people safer, actually increased their vulnerability for when the nutcase came.

Guns are banned from public places out of ignorance and propaganda. Those who know the truth know that guns are used far more often to deter crime than to cause it. They know that passing laws, enacting policies, etc. only deter the ‘good guys’, and do nothing to stop the ‘bad guys’. In fact, by publicizing the fact that yours is a ‘gun free’ zone, you effectively invite every nutcase in the vicinity to use your facility, and your people, as targets in his shooting gallery. You guarantee him safety from opposition whilst he continues to kill more and more people. And you take the right to self defense away from the victims.

Read the whole thing.