Tag: defense

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crime and punishment education and schooling general freedom media and media people national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights

Good Guy With Gun

Blaine Gaskill, school shooting, gun, gun control, Maryland, defense, 2nd Amendment

Short version of the story: a good guy with a gun at a Maryland high school stopped a bad guy with a gun. In less than a minute. How? Because the good guy had a gun and was inside the school with the gun.

The bad guy was able to shoot a 16-​year-​old female student, apparently someone with whom he had a previous relationship, as well as a 14-​year-​old male before an officer on site responded. This officer, Blaine Gaskill, was on the spot in less than a minute. Gaskill and the assailant fired simultaneously. The assailant fell dead. What exactly happened is still unclear; there has been some media speculation that the bad guy may have shot himself. 

But the 17-​year-​old shooter is dead. The female victim, though still alive, is unfortunately in critical condition. The male victim is in stable condition.

The good guy was armed — with a gun. And he was on site. If you’re learning about the incident here first, it’s because the story isn’t being plastered all over the place 24 – 7 as it would have been had the shooter been able to wreak much more havoc because nobody could quickly counter him.

So, is it okay to let responsible, well-​trained administrators, teachers and others in schools be armed? 

Well, ask the question a different way. If you happened to be inside the school at the time, would it be okay to survive when some maniac with a gun starts shooting at you and others inside that school? 

Let’s defend our loved ones.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Self-​Defense, Implausible?

gun, gun free, school zone, control, schools, teachers, Israel, defense, gun control

Don’t take a GUN-​FREE ZONE sign to a gun fight. 

Whenever there’s a horrific incident of mass murder, advocates of citizen disarmament blame the right to protect oneself against armed attackers. The thinking seems to be that if we make it illegal for all civilians to have guns, bad guys willing to kill people will also refrain from using guns as they try to kill people.

This is implausible.

And if you do not see its implausibility immediately regarding firearms, consider drugs. Not taking them, but the war on same. Drugs didn’t vanish upon prohibition. Neither would guns if prohibited.

President Trump argues that students would be safer were schools a harder target. Why not arm well-​trained teachers? “If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly.” He’s right.

Not a new idea, of course. It’s been argued, for example, by the NRA, whose chairman says that the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun. 

This idea is being practiced right now — in Israel.

As Tzvi Lev argues at the Arutz Sheva 7 site, Israel proves the NRA’s point. 

Even Israel — where Arab communities are “rife with illegal weapons” despite their illegality — has not always been quick to recognize that it’s better to have lots of armed civilians when terrorists start shooting at civilians. But after terrorists attacked a school in 1974, the government began arming and training teachers — somehow failing to defer to the terrorists’ preference for gun-​free zones. 

In both of the only-​two school shootings in Israel since then, teachers killed the attackers. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies

Of Course, You Know, This Means War

Afghanistan, war, Trump, foreign policy, defense, middle east, east asia

When Steve Bannon was booted out of the White House, my thoughts turned immediately to war. As I wrote in frustration on Friday,

Bannon’s departure probably means the slim chance that the US might withdraw from “our” open-​ended, never-​ending occupation of Afghanistan has been foreclosed. 

If we don’t win the war by ushering in a completely transformed, modernized and westernized Afghanistan, at least our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, etc., etc., will each have. their turn.

Of course, if the fabled “Graveyard of Empires” continues to work its historic magic, maybe future generations won’t face that burden: the United States could fall … as a worldwide imperial presence. And, if our global military archipelago fails — for, say, want of wealth to throw overseas — do we have any reason to believe that our republic would bounce back?

There remains more than enough reason to work for foreign policy sanity.

Prior to his evening national address on the day of the eclipse, Trump explained what he intends to do in Afghanistan — send 4,000 more troops.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon’s door-​slapped rump did not dissuade him from tweeting out what he intends to do “on Capitol Hills, in the media, and in corporate America”:

If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents.…

Call this the Bugs Bunny Policy: “Of course, you know, this means war!”

And considering the promises made in the President’s speech, we can amend that to “of course, this means never-​ending war.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

A Threat We Can’t Refuse

NATO, Angela Merkel, Germany, Europe, Trump, Donald Trump, Russia, defense, war

“Recent days have shown me that the times when we could rely completely on others are over to a certain extent,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told folks in a Munich beer hall last Sunday. “We also know that we Europeans must really take our destiny,” she said, on the heels of the NATO and G7 meetings, “into our own hands.”

Merkel may have designed her comments to elicit shock and dismay among the inhabitants of America. But my shock is that anyone would find anything shocking, at all.*

Merkel’s responding, of course, to President Donald Trump’s censure of European NATO members for not ponying up to their treaty obligations.** This is widely whispered as … rude. Mustn’t upset Germany and other allies, even if only five of NATO’s 28 nations have reached the agreed-​upon two-​percent of GDP goal.

The received wisdom seems to be: don’t embarrass the freeloaders.

I’m often not copacetic with Mr. Trump’s demeanor. But the “threat” that U.S. soldiers might somehow not be permitted to shed their blood to defend deadbeat countries against a feared Russian attack is … just not all that threatening. 

What’s so scary about self-reliance?

It was also announced that German security agencies won’t share intelligence with the U.S. regarding alleged Russian interference in their upcoming election. 

This, too, we can survive.

But, gee whiz, I hope we aren’t banned from the cool countries’ lunch table at the cafeteria in the brand new $1.23 billion NATO headquarters — for which the U.S. pays a disproportionately high 22 percent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* In my judgment, Merkel should have jettisoned “to a certain extent” and put a period after “over.”
** It’s worth noting that Trump is not the first president to marshal this complaint.

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Accountability media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

War on Page A‑10

war, news, newspapers, defense, spending, Iraq, bombs, drones, soldiers

War was once big news. Now? Not so much.

Which may be a function of the never-​ending War on Terror, no end in sight in Afghanistan and an Iraq War that is officially over … except for the fighting.

Last October, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein busied fact-​checkers by claiming the U.S. was “bombing seven countries.” True, declared PolitiFact: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Yemen is better known after January’s raid that killed Navy SEAL Ryan Owens, wounded three other SEALs, and killed 14 to 25 Yemeni civilians, including children. Last week, during President Trump’s speech to Congress, Owens’s widow, Carryn, received a thunderous ovation.

But, as I argued at Townhall, “Ryan Owens and his widow and her three now fatherless children deserve more than applause.“ How about thoughtful policies and a Congress that holds the executive branch accountable?

Invading Iraq was a mistake. So was President Obama’s swerve over to destabilize Libya.

“We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves,” President Lyndon Johnson once said … right before he sent more American soldiers to Vietnam.

Consider that U.S. Special Forces were deployed to 70 percent of the world’s nations in 2016. And, in recent weeks, President Trump asked for a $54 billion increase in military spending, and we have learned of Pentagon plans to seek a “significant increase in U.S. participation” against ISIS.

We owe it to those in uniform to ask tough questions, including: Is what we’re doing really worth a single American life?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Further reading:

Reason: Is the Military Really “Depleted” After Years of Record-​High Spending?

The Atlantic: Fighting Terrorism With a Credit Card

The National Interest: America Is Never (Ever, Ever) Ending the War on Terror

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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies responsibility

Overkill, Not Parsimony

defense, defense spending, war, budget, military, protection

Two truths: national defense is a necessity; national defense is a racket.

The latter is the case because the former is the case. Big spenders rely on “better safe than sorry” to always push the envelope, over-investing rather than under-investing.

So, we are trapped — and our new president knows this. Before Trump ran for office, he said that sequestration cuts to the Pentagon budget had not gone far enough. But when he threw his hat into the ring, he promised to “make our military so big, so powerful, so strong that nobody — absolutely nobody — is going to mess with us.”

President Trump now proposes over fifty billion dollars in new defense spending. More soldiers, more ships, more fighter jets.

John Stossel argues that Americans are not necessarily suckers for this game. At least, a majority does not support increasing military spending.

More importantly, Stossel challenges the whole “overkill always” strategy. “America is going broke, and our military already spends almost $600 billion dollars [annually],” Stossel says. “That’s more than the next seven nations spend — combined.”

Now would be a good time to not only rethink Middle East policy, but to re-​consider our expensive role as world policeman (speaking of “national” defense). During the campaign, Trump was criticized for questioning our alliances and demanding more of our allies. But he was right. I hope he’ll get tough in prodding our allies to ultimately provide their own defense.

Even more basic? Demand an audit of the Pentagon before new funds are thrown into the five-​sided money pit.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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