School Board shooting

"" No, a more effective weapon for her would have been just a tiny little bit of knowledge. A brief 15-minute lesson (honestly, maybe as little as 5 minutes) in how to do a basic disarm would have done it. ""

Obviously she didn't have training, but every public building will have a fire extinguisher. So, with disarm training out of the picture, what would be the next course of action for a person committed to presenting themselves making a difference?

There are too many "could haves" ( could have gotten how to perform a trake with a pen, how to get a fish bone unstuck from a dogs throat, . . . )
 
Obviously she didn't have training, but every public building will have a fire extinguisher. So, with disarm training out of the picture, what would be the next course of action for a person committed to presenting themselves making a difference?
Click to expand...

Unless people have given previous consideration to such problems or have a good amount of time to think about what they can do, few have the ability to improvise on the fly. Take a look at various shootings and hostage situations and note how many folks, despite having numerous potential weapons to use around them, fail to use them.

Search this forum and other gun forums and see how many people you can find that proclaim themselves to be defenseless without a gun. Better yet, take a look at the threads from this search. It was a search for "defenseless" in thread titles only.
http://thefiringline.com/forums/search.php?searchid=4890778
You can do your own search with more parameters, but you can get the idea from this search. Basically, a lot of folks have a very limited view of how self defense is undertaken.

Look at the number of people who will burn to death in a building because they don't consider kicking a hole through a couple layers of drywall to get to freedom in the next room. Self defense isn't just from bad people.

If they haven't already considered it, few people will MacGuyver on the fly and of those that have the brains for it, many will be too old, too young, wounded, or have other physical limitations to make it happen.
 
http://www.newsherald.com/video/?videoId=712477346001&lineupId=99536645001&play=now

I was rewatching the video of the security guard's re-enactment and a second video followed that was of the 911 call. The lady calling 911 asked the 911 operator about evacuating the building and the 911 operator first said that they needed to go with their policy for such circumstances and asked the woman if they had a policy for such a situation and the caller replied that they did not.

I wonder if that will change.
 
Bottom Line this is a Pro-gun situation. Every Human has the right to self defense by available means. I would have said something to him even without carrying. I hope so at least...
 
The School Security Guards Story

I read the account of Mike Jones, the School security guard (retired LEO) in Guideposts Dec. 2011 periodical.
I am struggling to post this update. Mike wrote this account as a inspiration to others struggling for sense in a world that to some seem so hopeless.


If you wish to review the video of the incident;
Thirteen Seconds; is the story's name in the periodical.
 
Oh, crap.

Gbro, I started to read the story, and our "heo" lost me right at the beginning, with THIS statement: "Your job is to go home to them every evening."

No, Mr. Former Police Officer, your job is NOT to go home to [your family] every evening. It would be nice if you could do that, and I pray that all police officers can do so ... but when that becomes your mindset and your primary objective, you simply cannot perform your duties as a police officer properly.
 
Last edited:
In the Guidposts article, the Security guard says 18 shots were fired ....... I did not see anywhere near that in the video...

He also stated he had a 5 shot (probably j-frame) on him initially and then left to get an automatic and body armor befor engaging ......

....and when he does engage, it appears he shot the perp from bheind, hitting him with the first round or two...

Questions:

1- Why leave? That was a huge risk.

2- If he was not confident in his ability with a 5-shot j-frame, why carry it at all?

You go to war with the army you have......
 
Gbro, thanks for posting that link. Very interesting!

Something particularly compelling: Mike Jones, the security guard, was carrying a .38 snubby when he was called into the room. From the story, Mike believed his

... little .38-caliber pistol was no match for that man’s automatic.
Click to expand...

So he planned to

... get to my car parked a few hundred feet away and grab my automatic pistol and bulletproof vest...
Click to expand...

So he first engaged the hostage-taker in conversation, then backed out of the room and ran to his car to get his other gun and the vest. During that time, the hostage-taker began shooting at the sitting ducks (board members) at the front of the room.

I think the lesson here is: Carry something you have confidence in. And if you're a law enforcement officer (or might be called to do a law enforcement job), wear your vest.

pax
 
I think the lesson here is: Carry something you have confidence in. And if you're a law enforcement officer (or might be called to do a law enforcement job), wear your vest.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I constantly fail to understand folks who have guns and then determine that they are unwilling to engage because their guns aren't good enough, in this case, the snubby not enough to deal with a semi-auto. Sure, the bad guy may have some advantage, but you fight the bad guy, not the gun.

Considering what the guard was carrying, he was only prepared to engage bad guys with what...smaller short barrel revolvers, derringers, and knives? Given the numbers of semi-auto guns out there, he sabotaged his own capabilities.

People who keep their gear in their vehicles, like this security officer, come to realize that they are often not in their vehicle with access to the gear when the need it.
 
Trying again.....

Considering what the guard was carrying, he was only prepared to engage bad guys with what...smaller short barrel revolvers, derringers, and knives? Given the numbers of semi-auto guns out there, he sabotaged his own capabilities.
Click to expand...

I think he fell into the trap so many do: They hear that "the average gunfight happens at 3 feet, lasts 3 seconds and 3 shots are fired" ..... and thinks that since the odds are so small of ever being in any gun fight, there is no sense in being prepared for anything above average.....

That's kinda like saving for a 7 year retirement, since the average person retires at 65 and lives to be 72 ...... what are these folks going to do if they live to be 80? Spend their last 8 years eating out of garbage cans?
 
I think he simply didn't have confidence in his weapon and abilities. BELIEVING you're under-prepared is different than BEING under-prepared.

How someone could carry a gun that they don't believe is sufficient is beyond me. It has nothing to do with whether it is or is not actually sufficient.

In all likelihood, he would have effectively stopped the attack with his snubby. The problem was his lack of confidence in his weapon, not in the weapon.

His was ridiculous for him to carry a 5-shot revolver if he really believed this:

This guy would riddle everyone in the boardroom with bullets before I could empty my chamber.
Click to expand...

I doubt he really believes it but there's no excuse for carrying that revolver if he did. What'd he think? He wasn't going to face someone with an auto? He's not ever going to face anyone at all?

His confidence in his equipment was the problem, not his equipment. If he believed that he needed a semi and vest to do the job, he should have had them or he wasn't doing the job.
 
It is axiomatic that we fight as we train, and he apparently spent his entire law enforcement career training NOT to use his duty weapon. Why, then, is it a surprise that he didn't know how to react when the moment presented itself to shoot someone? In reality, he should have just taken a head shot with the revolver and not bothered to open his mouth.

I know some current officers, and I know some retired officers. One of the retirees, in particular, comes to mind in connection with this story. Like this guy, my friend carried a duty weapon for an entire career and never had to fire it except for annual qualification. He was a police officer when they still carried .38 revolvers. In fact, one of the factors that led him to retire was the fact that his department was switching over to those new-fangled 9mm semi-automatic thingies.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top