Lt. Darren Mitchell, a Northern Illinois University officer who was on duty Feb. 14 when a gunman killed himself and five others at a lecture hall there, said his NIU comrades feel so strongly about preparation that even though they went through crisis training before the shooting, they went through more about a month after the killings to help answer a question: "How can we do it even better if we were to have something happen again?"You'll carefully note that they've been asking themselves that question, but at least one option seems to still be off the table -- the option of letting students be their own last line of defense as the laws of Nature and Nature's God demand. I read that whole threat assessment bit and thought to myself, ok, what happens when that threat is assessed and it's too late to do anything about it? No matter what, there are always going to be those who fall through the cracks, and the public deserves better than to be forced to wait on other men with guns to ride to the rescue. More people will die, and of this you can be certain. As I was writing this I just thought of a rather interesting comparison...
Last year's inaugural summit also took place at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, a suburb of Oklahoma City. Speakers this year emphasized that it has become increasingly clear since a gunman killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech that people from all parts of a campus must remain vigilant and communicate to identify threats and try to prevent violence.
Steven Healy, the chief of police at Princeton University, said it is "absolutely essential" for colleges to develop a behavioral threat assessment process. The trick, he said, is keeping a campus secure while respecting the open academic environment.
Before the Virginia Tech slayings, the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States was this one. One of the results of that shooting was the later institution of a shall-issue concealed-carry law in the state of Texas. And as far as I remember the only reason it took so long to get the Concealed Handgun License laws instituted was the opposition of Democratic then-Gov. Ann Richards. Gov. George W. Bush signed the bills into law not quite a year after his election in November 1994. No doubt many have wondered over the last year if we'll ever get a dose of common sense and allow students to carry their sidearms on campus just as they can carry everywhere else. Judging from the fact that almost a year later the people in charge are still convening summits and tossing around meaningless mumbo-jumbo like "remain(ing) vigilant" and "behavioral threat assessment process," I'd say it looks like it's going to take at least as long to get any kind of similar results on the nation's college campuses that we got here in Texas. Now, a threat assessment process is by no means a bad thing, but without immediate, near-instantaneous deployment of, say, 230-grains of copper-jacketed lead at 850-875 feet per second, I'd say such a process is damned near useless. But what do I know, I'm just a bloodthirsty, warmongering, trigger-happy Texan...
|