Tag: prevention

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

He Applied Himself

pre-crime, PKD, guns, gun control, shooting, Parkland, Florida, prevention, freedom

“I need to make this count,” wrote a young man in Everett, Washington. 

Unfortunately, it looks like he wasn’t attempting a big career-​oriented project. He was planning a mass shooting.

“I need to get the biggest fatality number I possibly can,” is one of many damning journal passages the police have made public. Apparently he had settled on attacking the high school he attended. “I’ve been reviewing many mass shootings/​bombings (and attempted bombings) I’m learning from past shooters/​bombers mistakes.”

Ambition and rigor: missapplied.

Fortunately, his grandmother read his journal and discovered a rifle in his guitar case. She turned him into the police the Tuesday before the Florida shooting I wrote about last week. And maybe just in time.

Meanwhile, last week’s Parkland, Florida, shooting dominates the headlines. Fellow students and neighbors of the Florida shooting victims have ramped up their condemnations and demands — including at a horrorshow “town hall” on CNN.

Yet the nature of the difficulties in preventing such atrocities has become lost in the rhetoric and anger.* 

In a free society, we cannot arrest people before they commit a crime. In the Everett case, officials were “lucky”: despite the young man’s lack of a criminal record, they were able to charge him with a burglary they allege he committed the day before arrest — and his extensive planning notes are being taken as evidence for intent. He’s also been charged with attempted murder. 

We should be in inquiry mode, right now. It could be helpful to know the exact motivations for both the Florida shooter and the Everett wannabe — and similar cases.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Law enforcement is tasked with uncovering spree shooting plots today — and to protect, too. But the armed, uniformed school resource officer at the Parkland high school failed to protect. He heard the gunshots but never entered the building, while the shooter killed 17 innocents.

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Categories
crime and punishment responsibility

Don’t Demand Too Much

police, law enforcement, prevention, law, response, illustration, photo

It’s commonly said that government is here to protect us. Well, that’s one theory.

In the wake of the horrible massacre at the Pulse in Orlando, Florida, I’ve been hearing a lot of murmuring. People are wondering why a man who had been interviewed by the FBI several times in relation to possible terrorist activities could have legally purchased firearms without flagging greater attention.

Others complain that it took the police three long hours to gather themselves and enter the Pulse, to rescue the living, and kill (as they ended up doing) the shooter, Omar Mateen.

Where’s the protection? Where’s the security?

Governments don’t seem to be much good at that.

And why should we expect them to be?

It’s hard to collate information well — though the government had everything it needed, what it lacked was the sense and the willpower to do it. Why? Because novel, dispersed information is hard to deal with.

And let’s not second-​guess the Orlando police. It’s a tough job dealing with a killer who wants to kill as many people as he can before he is, himself, killed.

If we wanted real security, real protection, we’d be more armed ourselves (the Pulse had security personnel, but the night club was a gun-​free zone, so that’s not much protection), and we’d hire, by contract, security professionals to protect us.

Government police aren’t here to protect us. We have them to clean up after something terrible has happened. Re-​establish order. Seek justice against the perpetrators. And, thus, provide “security theater,” more than security itself.

Governments are good at some things.

Just don’t expect more than they can deliver.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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police, law enforcement, prevention, law, response, illustration, photo

 

Photo credit: Elvert Barnes on Flickr

 

Categories
Second Amendment rights

Let Teachers Bear Arms

We have no sure way to prevent such horrors as the recent shooting at a Connecticut elementary school. We can’t predict which very few of the very many persons with grievances will choose to vent their rage by loosing a hail of bullets at innocents. And schools would be unable to function if they were so locked down as to eliminate the possibility of a gunman walking through the door.

We can, however, take measures to reduce the likelihood and severity of such an attack. We can also prepare to defend ourselves if the worst happens. When someone is shooting at you and the students in your care, the best chance of stopping the shooter within seconds — when the police are minutes away, at best — is to shoot back. The more persons able to shoot back, the better.

It makes sense for appropriately trained teachers and other school personnel to be armed and ready to confront an assailant. This isn’t just a theoretical proposal. In 2008, the Harrold school district in Northwest Texas introduced a “guardian plan” under which some teachers and other staffers carry concealed handguns. A few other school districts have followed suit. But the practice is far from common in Texas or in the nation at large.

Says Harrold’s superintendent, “Nothing is 100 percent. But what we do know is that we’ve done all we can to protect our children.”

The Harrold district’s provisions for self-​defense are controversial. They shouldn’t be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.