Fantasy: "If only someone had a gun". Reality: Lakewood Wash Nov 29, 2009
‘Horror scene’ as 4 Lakewood police officers shot, killed
LAKEWOOD, Wash. – Four uniformed police officers were shot and killed in a bloody Sunday morning attack at a Lakewood-area coffee shop, and investigators are seeking a person of interest in the killings, officials said.Pierce County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Ed Troyer said the person they are seeking is Maurice Clemmons, who is a fugitive from Arkansas with a lengthy criminal record.
Not to be flip but is there a more hardened target in America than a fricking DONUT SHOP known as a pre-shift COP SHOP? Are we to imagine that everything would have been fine if four kindergarten and first grade teachers/armed monitors from the nearest elementary school had been having some pre-school coffee and going over their paperwork just as the cops were? Or maybe if the girl behind the counter had been packing?
And if we didn’t need more irony we have this:
Huckabee Granted Clemency To Maurice Clemmons, Person Of Interest, In Ambush That Killed 4 Cops
A man with an extensive criminal past — whose 95-year prison sentence was commuted in Arkansas nearly a decade ago by then-Gov. Mike Huckabee– was being sought Sunday as a “person of interest” in a deadly ambush on four police officers who were gunned down inside a coffee shop.
Snip
In 1989, Clemmons, then 17, was convicted in Little Rock for aggravated robbery. He was paroled in 2000 after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted Clemmons’ 95-year prison sentence. Huckabee, who was criticized during his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 for the number of clemencies and commutations he granted, cited Clemmons’ age at the time of the sentence.
After his release from prison, Clemmons violated his parole and was returned to prison in July 2001. He was released March 18, 2004, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper .
But even without the sickening hypocrisy of Huckabee blaming the Sandy Hook shooting on the failure of first graders to engage in state sponsored prayer, we have a case of four trained, armed police officers just minutes from going on patrol being caught mostly unaware by a shooter determined to kill. In light of that the suggestion that all would have been well if only that principal had a M-4 locked in a cabinet in her office ring pretty hollow.
The clean-up of Dodge was not accomplished by assuring everyone had a gun. If I recall the mythic Dodge clean-up, the removal of guns was a sign of the town maturing.
This concept of all armed appears to be functioning under the idea of mutually assured distruction, be it a more local and personal scale.
It’s a cold hard nasty world where you can be struck down out of the blue by innumerable forces you never foresee — and for a lot of people, the best way to handle that psychologically is to believe that those cicrcumstances can be transcended.
Carry a gun and no felon will ever harm you. Make it clear you despise gays and you will never get AIDS. Get to work on a regular basis and you will bever be laid off. Stay “pure” until your wedding night and your marriage will never end. Love God and nothing bad will befall your family. Shun people with dark skins and your social status will be superior. Any of this sound familiar?
the immature fantasy prevails..
Tennessee Considers Training And Arming Schoolteachers To Protect Against Shootings – Tennessee has emerged this week as a center of the “the answer is more guns in schools” sentiment following the Newtown, Conn. elementary school shooting. A member of the Republican-controlled legislature plans during its upcoming session to introduce a bill that would allow the state to pay for secretly armed teachers in classrooms so, the sponsor told TPM, potential shooters don’t know who has a gun and who doesn’t.
Oklahoma Republican’s bill would arm teachers and train them like law enforcement – A Republican lawmaker in Oklahoma thinks that he can prevent another horrific mass school killing like the one in Newtown, Connecticut by arming teachers and giving them the same training as law enforcement.
Rick Perry tells tea party: Allow more guns in schools – Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) says that schools in his state will be safer when school districts are given the ability to allow staff to carry guns.
I’ve had it. I have no interest in living in Hobbes’ state of nature, the “war of all against all.” The whole *point* of a civilized society is having a place where you don’t *have* to live in fear all the time and where status does *not* derive from violence. I don’t understand why a significant fraction of our population either is crippled by irrational fear or actively chooses to reject that position, but I’m through negotiating with them. That is *not* America. That is *not* the society most of us live in, and the minority does *not* have the right to jeopardize the lives of our citizens and the existence of our society.
I live about 30 miles north of Lakewood, WA. The author made a great point that I didn’t even think about. Thanks for the good example of how being armed and trained didn’t get the job done
Most police work, especially on the beat, is reactionary. Modern semi-automatic weapons do not allow those targeted to react in time for the purpose of self defence. That is the problem.
But……
Read the second paragraph of Scalia’s written opinion:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/search/display.html?terms=heller&url=/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html
“2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 54–56.”
That last sentence is illuminating. It clearly points out that laws limiting the ownership of “dangerous and unusual weapons” are supported by historical tradition as noted by Miller’s decision. And Scalia seems to be specifically focused on the types of arms that are protected, “those in common use at the time.” Flint lock, muzzle loaders were the common and only guns at that time.
How funny that they want to train teachers to shoot to kill, when the idea of a teacher disciplining their child sets them off, or a teacher teaching evolution, or teaching tolerance. I mean…really, how disconnected in thought can these people get?
Jack:
Keep in mind; the legitimacy of the 2nd amendment has never been ruled decided upon nor has it ever been used to strike down “any” gun law. For such rulings, another gerrymandered version of Cruikshank vs US and Miller vs the US are the typical go-to rulings.
What do Health Insurance Mandates and guns have in common?
In 1790, the very first Congress—which incidentally included 20 framers—passed a law that included a mandate: namely, a requirement that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen.
That’s not all. In 1792, a Congress with 17 framers passed another statute that required all able-bodied men to buy firearms. Yes, we used to have not only a right to bear arms, but a federal duty to buy them. Four framers voted against this bill, but the others did not, and it was also signed by Washington. Some tried to repeal this gun purchase mandate on the grounds it was too onerous, but only one framer voted to repeal it.
Six years later, in 1798, Congress addressed the problem that the employer mandate to buy medical insurance for seamen covered drugs and physician services but not hospital stays. And you know what this Congress, with five framers serving in it, did? It enacted a federal law requiring the seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves. That’s right, Congress enacted an individual mandate requiring the purchase of health insurance. And this act was signed by another founder, President John Adams.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/102620/individual-mandate-history-affordable-care-act#
Along those same lines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Ordinance_of_1785
The Land Ordinance of 1785, enacted under the Articles of Confederation, established the Public Land Survey System and laid the foundation for the Homestead Act of 1862, and to the point was left unaffected by the Enumerated Powers clause of the LATER Constitution and so must be presumed Constitutional.
the Ordnance established Federal MANDATES to the States to provide for public education and on its part set aside specified sections of every new Township established under the Public Lands System. in fact if you look at old original Township Surveys you will often see a Section (640 acres) labeled ‘School Section’. the idea was not necessarily to physically locate a school in that section but instead to use the proceeds from sale of the land to finance school construction.
that is the Federal role in education funding and equally its role in setting school policy is older than the Constitution and so the Constituions of at least 37 States. Meaning that on education at least the Tenthers don’t have a leg to stand on. Moreover this casts grave doubts on strict reading of the Enumerated clause of Article 1.