Shooting Holes in NRA’s Post School Shooting Proposal

The response from the NRA today provided a telling view of their position.  They blamed any and everything for the violence that visited Sandy Hook except the reality that guns were there.  They only acknowledged that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”  So it is only the response of “more guns” that would have saved the children at Sandy Hook…or Aurora…or Virginia Tech…or Foot Hood…or the Luby’s Cafeteria…the beat goes on.

If only one person with a gun had been there…”

But let’s look at history, the reality of the issue.  And to do that, let’s look at two incidents, though there are more.

In April of 1999 13 people were killed by two gunmen, students at the school.  Could they have been saved by that one guard that the NRA wants us to believe is the solution?  Well, there was an armed guard, a 15 year veteran of the Sheriff’s department.  And he responded, and he returned fire.  He called the Sheriff’s office for backup.  Yet, with both an armed security guard on site and backup coming in by the minute the two shooters, who started their rampage at 11:19am continued until THEY ended it at 12:08 p.m with their own suicides.  They left 13 dead and 21 injured in the wake of that 49 minute attack.

In March of 2005 a 16 year old shooter killed his grandfather, a deputy sheriff, took his guns including two handguns and a shotgun and vest and went to Red Lake High School in his grandfather’s police vehicle.  The first person he killed was one of the school’s two security guards at the door. He went on to kill five students and a teacher at the school wounding at least a dozen more before ending his own life.
The NRA solution 100% in place with 100% failure.

Ten years after Columbine, in a coffee shop in Lakewood, Washington, on November 29, 2009 four police officers were sitting down before starting their shift.  They used the coffee shop as a meeting point prior to their shift and were killed by a single gunman who walked into the coffee shop and executed them while they worked on their laptops at the table.  They were well armed, they were well trained and they had the situational awareness to perceive threats.  Within seconds they were all four dead.

The NRA solution is to place armed guards at schools to “stop” the potential for mass violence.  Yet, in two schools, each employing that very plan the death toll is 23, the injured number over 30.  And when we include the police killings in Washington, four well trained, well armed professionals…the glaring weakness of the NRA’s proposal becomes abundantly clear.

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