livingston
20×102mm Vulcan
Why Mass Shootings Continue
In the wake of the Parkland, Florida shooting of February 14th, many people have offered their own assessments of why these sorts of incidents continue to happen. They appear in media to tell us that “something must be done,” or that “something has to change.” Few of them offer any but superficial remedies, but sadly, many people fall for this nonsense, uncritically believing their passion rather than questioning either the concrete concepts involved, or because they conceptually don’t bother and just wish the human suffering they’ve witnessed to end. In part, this is understandable, and I could forgive the general lack of detailed understanding, but because this blind spot is exploited to strip law-abiding Americans of their liberty, I simply won’t tolerate these senseless exclamations to go unanswered any longer. On this site, I’ve gone to great pains to explain the technical aspects of the firearms, and the philosophical aspects of the foundations of our law, including what constitutes a right. I realize this site is not the most highly trafficked destination on the Internet, but for all the howling lunatics who insist that we can “fix this” by banning guns, or by background checks, or by any other simple solution, let me state it succinctly: We will never eliminate the phenomenon of mass shooting entirely, but neither will we significantly reduce it if we ignore the question: “Whose job is it to protect our children?”
Let us start with a few facts that most people seem to disregard on their way to blaming all the wrong things, and permitting all the wrong things to continue. Let’s focus on the shooting of Parkland, Florida as the exemplar of this type of event. In the lead-up to this event, the FBI had at least two leads, one called in by a bail-bondsman, that was a little less specific, but also somebody closer to the shooter called in a solid tip on this shooter in January, contending he was going to “explode.” A PDF of the full transcript of this call was posted by the NYTimes. It’s astonishing how specific the information was, and more astonishing that the FBI didn’t act.
Local police had dealt with him in at least thirty-nine documented calls for service(mostly 9-1-1 calls.) The school had continuously wrestled with this kid in an ever-escalating series of incidents including assaults, fights, and terroristic threats, culminating in his eventual expulsion. There were countless “red flags” about this wayward soul. His classmates even half-joked about him becoming a school shooter, and ironically, they may have even unintentionally implanted in him the idea. It should have been clear by the time he entered high school that he did not belong in the mainstream school population, but today’s education fads make it difficult to remove a troubled youngster. All of the aggregated incompetence of individuals in the system, and the oppressive bureaucracy itself could not avoid producing the result of February 14th. It’s baked into the cake.
Given all the failures in advance of the event, it was almost inevitable that this event was going to happen. All that could now change would be the number of dead, and the result was dominated again by the incompetence of individuals as well as the bureaucracies involved. Let us start with Deputy Scot Peterson, the sole School Resource Officer on the campus at the time the shooting commenced. Peterson had been with the Broward Sheriffs Office going back to 1985, and thirty-three years later, and apart from the shooter himself, he would come to be the person most instrumental in the final body count. He arrived outside the building less than a minute after the shooting had commenced, and there he waited, effectively seeking cover, but taking no remedial actions of any kind. Even as he was joined by additional deputies, Peterson did not rally them to make entry and confront the shooter. They simply waited for the shooting to stop. How many were shot and killed or bled out for lack of medical attention or simple first aid while Deputy Peterson did nothing? A time-syncronized analysis of the various surveillance tapes might provide that answer, or at least a reasonable approximation of it, but Sheriff Scott Israel, the highly political head of the Broward Sheriffs Office, will likely do all in his power to prevent the disclosure or obfuscate any analysis that may ever be done. You can’t be permitted to know, but most importantly, the people who lost loved-ones in this shooting must never be permitted to know lest there erupt some sort of popular lynching of the Sheriff and his deputies. While the word “disgrace” doesn’t cover it, it is nevertheless disgraceful. The bulk of the media is covering for him, of course, and this is why the underlying dereliction was mostly covered-up until the end of the week and the gun control narrative had been thoroughly seeded. Imagine the complete arrogance it takes to make the statement Sheriff Israel offers in the video clip below:
https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/967811615419707394
In for a penny, in for a pound.
It is at this point that something of an outrage erupts over the conduct of Deputy Peterson and his fellow officers, as well as the attempt to cover this up by Sheriff Israel, including his public attempts to deflect criticism onto the NRA. The problem is that when all the outrage dies down, Israel and his deputies will have gotten away with it, as will the incompetent school, the incompetent FBI. Their defenses will be their incompetence. You can already hear it from their shills. “We’re too few, we have too little money, we have to few people, we didn’t know, and it’s the guns!” What they won’t highlight, but I’m going to tell you, is the thing they don’t dare say in plain language to the ears of a listening world:
“It isn’t our job!”
Indeed, Sheriff Israel tells us that it’s his job to hire, train, and arm his deputies, but once they’re in the field, it isn’t his responsibility with respect to what they do as individuals.
More at ...
Why Mass Shootings Continue
In the wake of the Parkland, Florida shooting of February 14th, many people have offered their own assessments of why these sorts of incidents continue to happen. They appear in media to tell us that “something must be done,” or that “something has to change.” Few of them offer any but superficial remedies, but sadly, many people fall for this nonsense, uncritically believing their passion rather than questioning either the concrete concepts involved, or because they conceptually don’t bother and just wish the human suffering they’ve witnessed to end. In part, this is understandable, and I could forgive the general lack of detailed understanding, but because this blind spot is exploited to strip law-abiding Americans of their liberty, I simply won’t tolerate these senseless exclamations to go unanswered any longer. On this site, I’ve gone to great pains to explain the technical aspects of the firearms, and the philosophical aspects of the foundations of our law, including what constitutes a right. I realize this site is not the most highly trafficked destination on the Internet, but for all the howling lunatics who insist that we can “fix this” by banning guns, or by background checks, or by any other simple solution, let me state it succinctly: We will never eliminate the phenomenon of mass shooting entirely, but neither will we significantly reduce it if we ignore the question: “Whose job is it to protect our children?”
Let us start with a few facts that most people seem to disregard on their way to blaming all the wrong things, and permitting all the wrong things to continue. Let’s focus on the shooting of Parkland, Florida as the exemplar of this type of event. In the lead-up to this event, the FBI had at least two leads, one called in by a bail-bondsman, that was a little less specific, but also somebody closer to the shooter called in a solid tip on this shooter in January, contending he was going to “explode.” A PDF of the full transcript of this call was posted by the NYTimes. It’s astonishing how specific the information was, and more astonishing that the FBI didn’t act.
Local police had dealt with him in at least thirty-nine documented calls for service(mostly 9-1-1 calls.) The school had continuously wrestled with this kid in an ever-escalating series of incidents including assaults, fights, and terroristic threats, culminating in his eventual expulsion. There were countless “red flags” about this wayward soul. His classmates even half-joked about him becoming a school shooter, and ironically, they may have even unintentionally implanted in him the idea. It should have been clear by the time he entered high school that he did not belong in the mainstream school population, but today’s education fads make it difficult to remove a troubled youngster. All of the aggregated incompetence of individuals in the system, and the oppressive bureaucracy itself could not avoid producing the result of February 14th. It’s baked into the cake.
Given all the failures in advance of the event, it was almost inevitable that this event was going to happen. All that could now change would be the number of dead, and the result was dominated again by the incompetence of individuals as well as the bureaucracies involved. Let us start with Deputy Scot Peterson, the sole School Resource Officer on the campus at the time the shooting commenced. Peterson had been with the Broward Sheriffs Office going back to 1985, and thirty-three years later, and apart from the shooter himself, he would come to be the person most instrumental in the final body count. He arrived outside the building less than a minute after the shooting had commenced, and there he waited, effectively seeking cover, but taking no remedial actions of any kind. Even as he was joined by additional deputies, Peterson did not rally them to make entry and confront the shooter. They simply waited for the shooting to stop. How many were shot and killed or bled out for lack of medical attention or simple first aid while Deputy Peterson did nothing? A time-syncronized analysis of the various surveillance tapes might provide that answer, or at least a reasonable approximation of it, but Sheriff Scott Israel, the highly political head of the Broward Sheriffs Office, will likely do all in his power to prevent the disclosure or obfuscate any analysis that may ever be done. You can’t be permitted to know, but most importantly, the people who lost loved-ones in this shooting must never be permitted to know lest there erupt some sort of popular lynching of the Sheriff and his deputies. While the word “disgrace” doesn’t cover it, it is nevertheless disgraceful. The bulk of the media is covering for him, of course, and this is why the underlying dereliction was mostly covered-up until the end of the week and the gun control narrative had been thoroughly seeded. Imagine the complete arrogance it takes to make the statement Sheriff Israel offers in the video clip below:
https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/967811615419707394
In for a penny, in for a pound.
It is at this point that something of an outrage erupts over the conduct of Deputy Peterson and his fellow officers, as well as the attempt to cover this up by Sheriff Israel, including his public attempts to deflect criticism onto the NRA. The problem is that when all the outrage dies down, Israel and his deputies will have gotten away with it, as will the incompetent school, the incompetent FBI. Their defenses will be their incompetence. You can already hear it from their shills. “We’re too few, we have too little money, we have to few people, we didn’t know, and it’s the guns!” What they won’t highlight, but I’m going to tell you, is the thing they don’t dare say in plain language to the ears of a listening world:
“It isn’t our job!”
Indeed, Sheriff Israel tells us that it’s his job to hire, train, and arm his deputies, but once they’re in the field, it isn’t his responsibility with respect to what they do as individuals.
More at ...
Why Mass Shootings Continue
