Uhh. I think some of you are not up on your self-defence laws. It is comments like these that give ammunition to the anti-conceled carry arguement. Someone carrying legally can’t just pull out their weapon and start blasting away. Self-defence justification is based on levels of threat. If the gunman had come into the classroom shooting then you would be within your rights to blow him away. If he wasn’t shooting, the only thing that you could legally do would be to pull your weapon and give him the chance to surrender or flee, anything else and you would be the one going to jail.

Huh? So if someone is pointing a gun at someone you have to wait until they actually shoot the person before you can shoot them? Or worse if someone pointed a gun at me, I’d havfe to let them shoot (at) me before I could shoot them? I’m no gun law expert, but that sounds pretty fishy to me.

The anti-concealed carry crowd will take any statement about someone getting shot, real or not, legel or not, and attempt to use it to prove their points.

That’s one of the reasons that I believe in training before someone is issued a conceled carry permit.

Training is required, but that is beside the point. As O’Rourke mentioned, the rel life scenarios have featured crazy people intent on killing and loaded for bear. A reasonable person (with training, without training, makes no difference) taking personal responsibility (as used to be the American ideal) would recognize this pattern (crazed killer taking advantage of a gun-free zone) and and draw prepared to eliminate the threat. If such threat is a cop, cop can be expected to forget the drill and take all kinds of lethal action. They’re sort of animals that way. Do dumb stuff, when people react rationally then overreact, kill them, attend ceremony to receive badge.

Point is this idiocy should be condemned because if the classroom contained one responsible citizen this would have turned out ugly.

Better yet, play it like other disaster scenarios are played, with a smaller group of people in a controlled environment who’ve been given the same script. They do this with Terrorist Takeover and Richter Scale 9.0, why not Armed to the Teeth Crazy Person as well?

Self-justification is based on what a reasonable person would conclude is a major threat that can only be overcome with lethal force. Let’s recap…all of the campus shootings within my recent memory have involved people who clearly needed to be under a psychiatrist’s care. They walked into areas that were deemed off-limits for firearms while loaded for bear and killed whoever had the misfortune to cross their path; there was no chance of reasoning with them and very little chance they would have listened even if the opportunity presented itself. Now we have a scenario where someone is not coming across as the most lucid of individuals. He’s holding a class hostage, a teacher at gunpoint, and he’s talking about shooting whoever has the lowest g.p.a. Who knows where the police are, if they even know what’s going on, what they’re going to do or when they’re going to do it or if they’re going to do anything in time. At this point the argument can be made that a reasonable person would think this a credible, imminent threat that can only be solved by the use of lethal force.

“Uhh. I think some of you are not up on your self-defence laws. It is comments like these that give ammunition to the anti-conceled carry arguement. Someone carrying legally can’t just pull out their weapon and start blasting away….”

Um, I’m pretty damn certain that if a crazed intruder/disguised-cop walks into a room and a responsible citizen takes personal responsibility for the group’s safety, ie pulls a gun, that cop is going to go predictibly apeshit and the severe irresponsibility of his hoax will be compounded quickly.

Right, but that doesn’t mean that it is not something that might happen.

True, but you don’t punish people who say, man that’s a cool car, I would like to take it from that guy. It’s a pretty significant difference.

If the play acting cop had been shot by an armed student, that student would simply be charged with killing a cop. We all know that the over-reacting student should have realized that the intruder was a cop! After all, normal good people can always tell the difference between a cop and a crazed intruder, can’t we?

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As for the zero tolerance thing, I think I find both sides annoying. Sure, the school went way too far, but as for the people saying the school shouldn’t have done anything at all, what the hell? Maybe they should have made him up a little self-esteem award, instead?

If you don’t punish thieves for small thefts, you get more thieves, and bigger thefts.

Comments overheard afterwards:
“yep, they’d all be dead, good drill” and “hey next time hide behind the trees until you hear the gunman has shot himself, you know, for realism”

I think I would carry onto campus in violation of a no-carry policy. In my opinion, it’s better to do 18 months on a weapons charge as a result of saving my life than being shot dead and leaving a wife and two kids. University administration officials who allow these idiotic drills should anticipate that there are people who may see things this way.

This one could have been titled “Javert lives!”