More on Virginia Tech Shooting
I’m reading a lot about the lack of training and the police response.
Training: The folks at VT had training. They knew how to go into lockdown. As a small part of the training world, that’s it. That’s all the training that the administration at your children’s schools or colleges have or will ever have. They’re taught to hunker down and wait for the professionals, the police. That presumes several things.
- The police will reach you before the gunman does.
- The police will be able to protect you from the gunman.
- The police will survive any confrontation with the gunman.
- The police are trained for situations like this.
- The police are armed for situations like this.
- The police are emotionally and physically capable of dealing with situations like this.
It is very clear that none of these assumptions will always be true. We’ve all read stories where police officers fired thirty or forty shots and less than five hit the suspect. Last week an FBI agent was killed by a fellow agent in a situation where the suspects did not try to resist. It’s unlikely that Barney Fife and Andy have the same training as the average NYC cop. And so on… Relying on the professionals is the safest course for admin folks. They now have someone to blame when things go badly, and that is far more important than the actual safety of your children.
Police Response: VT is a small city. I have no knowledge about the training or professionalism of its campus police or the local police that may have been assisting them or taking over any investigations for them. I can say that the initial murders were probably handled as they would in any small city in America. A lover’s spat that ended in murder.
Maybe the VT police screwed up. I say that it’s way too early to think that. I will wager that in the end, we will discover that they did all they could within their training, arming and legal capabilities.
There’s a lot of talk about the murderer’s “signs”. Looking back, there will always be things that stand out. Hindsight sucks. If there had been anything that looked serious, wouldn’t at least a couple of these know – it – all’s have told the police before the guy started shooting? Let’s face it. He wasn’t wacko enough to draw police attention. It’s a college, and there are a lot of wackos on campus.
The rush to blame the school’s administration and police is a reflection of a society that believes any and all misfortune can be averted by the proper application of government will. At this very moment, politicians in Richmond, Va., and Washington, D.C., are exerting their tiny brains trying to be the first to propose legislation that will “prevent the next tragedy.” The number of laws the killer broke on Monday will probably run to more than 20, but there are those who actually believe he might have been deterred by a few more strokes of a legislative pen. I can’t put it any more simply than this: There are evil people in the world, and no amount of laws will make them any less so.
There may be a level of security that would deter a suicidal maniac from carrying out the kind of horrors seen on the Virginia Tech campus Monday morning, but I doubt anyone would want to attend the school that implemented it.
As NRO’s designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn’t anyone rush the guy? It’s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness’ sake—one of them reportedly a .22.
At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren’t very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can’t hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren’t bad.
Yes, yes, I know it’s easy to say these things: but didn’t the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It’s true—none of us knows what he’d do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I’d at least take a run at the guy.
I think you’re being way too hard on these kids. Someone can walk into a class room and squeeze off 15 shots in the amount of time it takes you to say to yourself “what the f___ is going on”? It probably didn’t register to the kids in the first class that there was a man with a gun untill he’d killed most of them.
The killer was a better shot than the FBI agents you mentioned.
In the second class, nobody thought that the noises were gunfire. Apparently, they thought it was a nail gun being used in some renovations. By the time the killer walked in, you have the same situation at the first class.
There were several students killed trapped up against the chaind door of a hallway. Facing a gunman in a halway without cover is probably not very easy. Derbyshire should go to Iraq if he is so brave. There are plenty of contractors looking for drivers, instructors, IT people etc.
Comparing these kids to flight 93 is not fair. No one was shooting at the passengers. When you’re being shot at, your first reaction is to duck, not charge the attacker. Reading your post about Iraq on this blog re-inforce this. For every “hero” you have 10-20 heavily armed soldiers, ducking behind whatever, crapping their pants. Usually, the hero is not responding the instant the shooting starts but only after evaluating the situation and determining what to do. The passengers on flight 93 had lots of time to phone people and plot and acquire weapons before they did anything and they weren’t being shot at while doing it. I don’t think any of these kids had time to phone home to say good bye to mom and dad before rushing the gunman.
If they want to prevent a similar tragedy, instead of spending millions on cameras and sensors, they could install locks on the classroom doors.