NEVER TOLERATE TYRANNY!....Conservative voices from the GRASSROOTS.

Self Defense........Your Right To Survive

This is the most thought provoking analysis of the national failure to protect children and the most logical suggestions for thwarting future attacks I have seen

Really good guidance! ........From a West Point Professor

Our real problem is denial. From Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

By Doug Wyllie

"How many kids have been killed by school fire in all of North America

in the past 50 years? Kids killed... school fire... North America... 50

years... How many? Zero. That's right. Not one single kid has been

killed by school fire anywhere in North America in the past half a

century. Now, how many kids have been killed by school violence?"

So began an extraordinary daylong seminar presented by Lt. Col. Dave

Grossman, a Pulitzer Prize nominated author, West Point psychology

professor, and without a doubt the world's foremost expert on human

aggression and violence. The event, hosted by the California Peace

Officers Association, was held in the auditorium of a very large

community church about 30 miles from San Francisco, and was attended by more than 250 police officers from around the region.

Grossman's talk spanned myriad topics of vital importance to law

enforcement, such as the use of autogenic breathing, surviving gunshot

wounds, dealing with survivor guilt following a gun battle, and others.

But violence among and against children was how the day began, and so

I'll focus on that issue here.

"In 1999," Grossman said, "school violence claimed what at the time was

an all time record number of kids' lives. In that year there were 35

dead and a quarter of a million serious injuries due to violence in the

school. How many killed by fire that year? Zero. But we hear people say,

'That's the year Columbine happened, that's an anomaly.' Well, in 2004

we had a new all time record - 48 dead in the schools from violence. How

many killed by fire that year? Zero. Let's assign some grades. Put your

teacher hat on and give out some grades. What kind of grade do you give

the firefighter for keeping kids safe? An 'A,' right? Reluctantly,

reluctantly, the cops give the firefighters an 'A,' right? Danged

firefighters, they sleep 'till they're hungry and eat 'till they're

tired. What grade do we get for keeping the kids safe from violence?

Come on, what's our grade? Needs improvement, right?"

Johnny Firefighter, A+ Student

"Why can't we be like little Johnny Firefighter?" Grossman asked as he

prowled the stage. "He's our A+ student!"

He paused, briefly, and answered with a voice that blew through the hall

like thunder, "Denial, denial, denial!"

Grossman commanded, "Look up at the ceiling! See all those sprinklers up there? They're hard to spot - they're painted black - but they're there.

While you're looking, look at the material the ceiling is made of. You

know that that stuff was selected because it's fire-retardant. Now look

over there above the door - you see that fire exit sign? That's not just

any fire exit sign - that's a 'battery-backup-when-the-world-ends- it-will-still-be-lit' fire exit sign."

Walking from the stage toward a nearby fire exit and exterior wall,

Grossman slammed the palm of his hand against the wall and exclaimed,

"Look at these wall boards! They were chosen because they're what?!

Fireproof or fire retardant. There is not one stinking thing in this

room that will burn!"

Pointing around the room as he spoke, Grossman continued, "But you've

still got those fire sprinklers, those fire exit signs, fire hydrants

outside, and fire trucks nearby! Are these fire guys crazy? Are these

fire guys paranoid? No! This fire guy is our A+ student! Because this

fire guy has redundant, overlapping layers of protection, not a single

kid has been killed by school fire in the last 50 years!

"But you try to prepare for violence - the thing much more likely to

kill our kids in schools, the thing hundreds of times more likely to

kill our kids in schools - and people think you're paranoid. They think

you're crazy. ...They're in denial."

Teaching the Teachers

The challenge for law enforcement agencies and officers, then, is to

overcome not only the attacks taking place in schools, but to first

overcome the denial in the minds of mayors, city councils, school

administrators, and parents. Grossman said that agencies and officers,

although facing an uphill slog against the denial of the general public,

must diligently work toward increasing understanding among the sheep

that the wolves are coming for their children. Police officers must

train and drill with teachers, not only so responding officers are

intimately familiar with the facilities, but so that teachers know what

they can do in the event of an attack.

"Come with me to the library at Columbine High School," Grossman said.

"The teacher in the library at Columbine High School spent her professional lifetime preparing for a fire, and we can all agree if there had been a fire in that library, that teacher would have instinctively, reflexively known what to do.

"But the thing most likely to kill her kids - the thing hundreds of

times more likely to kill her kids, the teacher didn't have a clue what

to do. She should have put those kids in the librarian's office but she

didn't know that. So she did the worst thing possible - she tried to

secure her kids in an un-securable location. She told the kids to hide

in the library - a library that has plate glass windows for walls. It's

an aquarium, it's a fish bowl. She told the kids to hide in a fishbowl.

What did those killers see? They saw targets. They saw fish in a fish

bowl."

Grossman said that if the school administrators at Columbine had spent a

fraction of the money they'd spent preparing for fire doing lockdown

drills and talking with local law enforcers about the violent dangers

they face, the outcome that day may have been different.

Rhetorically he asked the assembled cops, "If somebody had spent five

minutes telling that teacher what to do, do you think lives would have

been saved at Columbine?"

Arming Campus Cops is Elementary

" Never call an unarmed man 'security'," Grossman said.

"Call him 'run-like-hell-when-the-man-with-the-gun-shows-up' but never

call an unarmed man security.

"Imagine if someone said, 'I want a trained fire professional on site. I

want a fire hat, I want a fire uniform, I want a fire badge. But! No

fire extinguishers in this building. No fire hoses. The hat, the badge,

the uniform - that will keep us safe - but we have no need for fire

extinguishers.' Well, that would be insane. It is equally insane,

delusional, legally liable, to say, 'I want a trained security

professional on site. I want a security hat, I want a security uniform,

and I want a security badge, but I don't want a gun.' It's not the hat,

the uniform, or the badge. It's the tools in the hands of a trained

professional that keeps us safe.

"Our problem is not money," said Grossman. "It is denial."

Grossman said (and most cops agree) that many of the most important

things we can do to protect our kids would cost us nothing or

next-to-nothing.

Grossman's Five D's

Let's contemplate the following outline and summary of Dave Grossman's

"Five D's." While you do, I encourage you to add in the comments area

below your suggestions to address, and expand upon, these ideas.

1. Denial - Denial is the enemy and it has no survival value, said

Grossman.

2. Deter - Put police officers in schools, because with just one officer

assigned to a school, the probability of a mass murder in that school

drops to almost zero

3. Detect - We're talking about plain old fashioned police work here.

The ultimate achievement for law enforcement is the crime that didn't

happen, so giving teachers and administrators regular access to cops is

paramount.

4. Delay - Various simple mechanisms can be used by teachers and cops to put time and distance between the killers and the kids.

a. Ensure that the school/classroom have just a single point of entry.

Simply locking the back door helps create a hard target.

b. Conduct your active shooter drills within (and in partnership with)

the schools in your city so teachers know how to respond, and know what

it looks like when you do your response.

5. Destroy - Police officers and agencies should consider the following:

a. Carry off duty . No one would tell a firefighter who has a fire

extinguisher in his trunk that he's crazy or paranoid.

b. Equip every cop in America with a patrol rifle . One chief of police,

upon getting rifles for all his officers once said, "If an active killer

strikes in my town, the response time will be measured in feet per

second."

c. Put smoke grenades in the trunk of every cop car in America . Any

infantryman who needs to attack across open terrain or perform a rescue

under fire deploys a smoke grenade. A fire extinguisher will do a decent

job in some cases, but a smoke grenade is designed to perform the

function.

d. Have a "go-to-war bag " filled with lots of loaded magazines and

supplies for tactical combat casualty care.

e. Use helicopters . Somewhere in your county you probably have one or

more of the following: medevac, media, private, national guard, coast

guard rotors.

f. Employ the crew-served, continuous-feed, weapon you already have

available to you (a firehouse) by integrating the fire service into your

active shooter training. It is virtually impossible for a killer to put

well-placed shots on target while also being blasted with water at 300

pounds per square inch.

g. Armed citizens can help. Think United 93. Whatever your personal

take on gun control, it is all but certain that a killer set on killing

is more likely to attack a target where the citizens are unarmed, rather

than one where they are likely to encounter an armed citizen response.

Coming Soon: External Threats

Today we must not only prepare for juvenile mass murder, something that

had never happened in human history until only recently, but we also

must prepare for the external threat. Islamist fanatics have slaughtered

children in their own religion - they have killed wantonly, mercilessly,

and without regard for repercussion or regret of any kind. What do you

think they'd think of killing our kids?

"Eight years ago they came and killed 3,000 of our citizens. Do we know

what they're going to do next? No! But one thing they've done in every

country they've messed with is killing kids in schools," Grossman said.

The latest al Qaeda charter states that "children are noble targets" and

Osama bin Laden himself has said that "Russia is a preview for what we

will do to America."

What happened in Russia that we need to be concerned with in this

context? In the town of Beslan on September 1, 2004 - the very day on

which children across that country merrily make their return to school

after the long summer break - radical Islamist terrorists from Chechnya

took more than 1,000 teachers, mothers, and children hostage. When the

three-day siege was over, more than 300 hostages had been killed, more

than half of whom were children.

"If I could tackle every American and make them read one book to help

them understand the terrorist's plan, it would be Terror at Beslan by

John Giduck. Beslan was just a dress rehearsal for what they're planning

to do to the United States," he said.

Consider this: There are almost a half a million school buses in

America. It would require every enlisted person and every officer in the

entire Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps combined to put just one

armed guard on every school bus in the country.

As a country and as a culture, the level of protection Americans afford

our kids against violence is nothing near what we do to protect them

from fire . Grossman is correct: Denial is the enemy. We must prepare for

violence like the firefighter prepares for fire. And we must do that

today.

Self Defense........Your Right To Survive

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Comment by Gordon Ray Kissinger on March 27, 2013 at 8:30pm

Hunters Begin Boycott Over Colorado Gun Laws

March 27, 2013 By Breaking News

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.— Hunters across the country are boycotting Colorado because of recent legislation meant to curtail gun violence.

Michael Bane, a producer for The Outdoor Channel, announced he will no longer film his four shows in Colorado, and hunters are joining the protests.

Hunting outfitters say people began cancelling trips after the legislation passed, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported ( ). The numbers are few, but growing.

Colorado’s governor signed bills this month that ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds, and require background checks for private and online gun sales.

Those new gun laws and others were drawn up in response to mass killings at a suburban Denver movie theater and a Connecticut elementary school.

Biden Not Giving Up On Assault Weapons Ban

March 21, 2013 By Breaking News

WASHINGTON— The White House is still pushing for an assault weapons ban, Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday, even though Senate Democrats all but sealed its fate by dropping it from the gun-control package they plan to consider next month.

Although the ban’s sponsor still plans to offer it as an amendment, it is almost certain to fall victim to opposition from Republicans and likely some Democrats, too. In jettisoning the ban Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it fell far short of the amount of support it would need to survive a vote and said including the assault weapons ban could sink the whole bill.

“Attitudes are changing,” Biden said in an interview with NPR News. “The president and I are going to continue to push, and we haven’t given up on it.”

Biden and President Barack Obama have walked a fine line on the assault weapons ban, widely considered the most politically challenging element of the gun-control proposals the administration is pushing. While fully embracing the ban as a matter of policy, the administration has avoided describing it as a must-have, wary of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Instead, they’ve argued that at the very least the ban deserves a vote, even if political considerations ultimately place its passage out of reach.

Read More at OfficialWire . By Josh Lederman.

Photo Credit: Floyd Brown Creative Commons

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