- Joined
- Mar 18, 2005
- Messages
- 46,262
- Reaction score
- 9,912
- Location
- on the Seven Bridges Road
- Website
- thepondsofhappenstance.com
Oh, I don't know. There've been school shootings--meaning people being shot at a school--all across time. Do you mean "rampage"-type killings? I'd agree that the frequency of such has increased in recent decades, but I don't know how that works out, with regard to population and demographics.
Here's a blast from the past, circa 1978: http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...7osAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PBMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6850,3664960
The student in this case--13 years old at the time--went into class and shot his 29 year old teacher multiple time with a .22 rifle. He never went to trial, was committed, and supposedly is now a practicing attorney
Yet again, New York City. Less than four months ago. Lone gunman. Two dead. Nine injured. All nine shot by trained professionals.
How many were saved?
Yeah, that's comforting. My college campus police force is woefully inept. I can't imagine a scenario where they had to discharge ANY weapon ending well. I imagine the only safe person would be the target.
Oh, I don't know. There've been school shootings--meaning people being shot at a school--all across time. Do you mean "rampage"-type killings? I'd agree that the frequency of such has increased in recent decades, but I don't know how that works out, with regard to population and demographics.
Here's a blast from the past, circa 1978: http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...7osAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PBMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6850,3664960
The student in this case--13 years old at the time--went into class and shot his 29 year old teacher multiple time with a .22 rifle. He never went to trial, was committed, and supposedly is now a practicing attorney
There was also a case in Winnipeg in the 1978.
How many were saved?
By your reckoning? Close to 300 million.
None because the guy wasn't a spree shooter. He killed the man he intended to kill and was walking away. It was only when police went to apprehend him that he started shooting at them.
My students are into the weapon sites. Some of the boys have swords. When I was teaching Beowulf one had an exact replica of the sword that killed Grendel's Dam. Or at least that was the way it was advertised.
I don't get your math?
Please tell your students that those are not real swords, even if they're real steel, and they can break and seriously hurt people if they try to swing them around. The blade will go flying out the handle.
They can be nice decorations, though.
Well, if we assume there are about 300 million people in the US, and the highly trained members of the NYPD shot nine of them in the incident, that leaves... carry the 1... about 300 million they didn't shoot during the incident.
Hence, "saved".
Maybe he thought he might miss the first time. I mean, it wasn't like the guy he wanted to kill was tied up in a barrel.If backslashbaby has the right incident, the article says:
"Police say Johnson used a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun -- which held eight rounds -- and was carrying extra ammunition in his briefcase."
If he was only going to kill one person, why the extra ammunition?
And?On a related note, I saw this incident on Facebook and looked it up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_High_School_shooting
"The incident began on the morning of October 1, 1997 when Luke Woodham fatally stabbed and bludgeoned his mother, Mary Woodham . . . Woodham drove his mother's car to Pearl High School. Wearing a trench coat, to hide his rifle when he entered the school, Woodham fatally shot Lydia Kaye Dew and Christina Menefee, his former girlfriend. . . Woodham went on to wound seven others before attempting to leave in his mother's car. He was subdued by assistant principal Joel Myrick, who pulled a .45-cal. pistol from his truck and ordered the gunman to the ground."
The weapons master at the Ren Faire where I worked in high school used this video as an illustration when people asked why his handmade swords cost so much more than the "real practice" swords on TV that looked just as good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e77oXjFkIs
Probably would have been "funnier" and made more sense if you used the population of NY. But I guess you were going for hyperbole.
The better answer would have been at least 14. 6 of the bullets left in the clip and at least one extra clip in his briefcase. More if he had more than one extra clip.
Maybe he thought he might miss the first time. I mean, it wasn't like the guy he wanted to kill was tied up in a barrel.
Speculation may be amusing, but that incident is in the past and the events are as the events were. He went to kill one person. He killed that person and walked away. When the police accosted him, he started shooting at them, and multiple officers returned fire. The end. He was not a spree killer. It was not a mass murder. Shooting him did not save any other lives.
And?
The subject of whether more guns and concealed-carry permits could help fight mass shootings is highly controversial. An investigation by Mother Jones concluded that no more than 1.6 percent of mass shootings were ended by armed civilians. On the other hand, gun advocates argue that it’s hard to know how many more shootings would have become mass murders had civilians not been on the scene to end them early. (Following the FBI’s definition of a mass murder, Mother Jones accounted only for murders of four or more.) Furthermore, gun advocates argue that many mass murderers target “gun-free” zones, like schools, where the victims are defenseless against shooters.
Sincere question. Why is he there?As a teacher, my opinion is - quite aside from this issues of proper training - that schools are just not secure enough to have guns around within the potential access of kids.
We have a police officer assigned to the school, and I think he's there just about all the time. That's probably a much better solution, even though that's not really the reason why he's there.