A sixth grader in Utah told classmates yesterday his parents encouraged him to bring a gun to school in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy. He was apprehended by teachers after he was found with an unloaded .22 caliber handgun, according to local station, Fox 13.
. . . at West Kearns Elementary School, in a suburb of Salt Lake City. He reportedly took the gun out of his backpack during recess Monday afternoon and showed it to classmates. Isabel Rios, a fellow student, told teachers he pointed the gun at her head and said he was going to kill her.
A spokesman for the school district told Fox 13 that although they were not notified immediately, teachers apprehended the student in “30 to 45 seconds” once they were alerted to the weapon. He was then taken to the principal’s office.
Local parents, however, aren’t satisfied with the school’s reaction. John Klaus, a father, complained, “There was no lockdown. No one was called. Nothing was done. And then we had to hear it from our kids.”
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Reported by Mediaite
I wish to God she (the deceased Principal of Sandy Hook Elementary) had had an m-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out ... and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.
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Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-TX
That some right-wing lawmakers and commentators have responded to Newtown by calling for teachers, principals and campus security guards to be armed is beyond obscene — and beneath contempt. More guns, with amateurs firing every which way, surely would have meant more dead children and more grieving families.
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Eugene Robinson on Washington Post
Blood is on the hands of members of Congress and the Connecticut legislators who voted to ban guns from all schools in Connecticut. They are the ones who made it illegal to defend oneself with a gun in a school.
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Statement from Gun Owners of America
Until the facts are thoroughly known, NRA will not have any comment.
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Only Statement from the NRA so far, via spokesman Andrew Arulanandam
UPDATE: The NRA made a statement this afternoon:
The National Rifle Association of America is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters – and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown.
Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting.
The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.
The NRA is planning to hold a major news conference in the Washington, DC area on Friday, December 21.
Details will be released to the media at the appropriate time."
They (NRA) go into possum mode every time something like this happens. That’s the reason why we exist. They think that if they don't say anything that it will go away.
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Mike Hammond, Legal Counsel for Gun Owners of America
Toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns than guns.
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Bill Moyers
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. . . You can't ban guns. That ship has sailed.
You can't ban them because the Supreme Court has now ruled, twice, that you can't. You also can't ban them because there are hundreds of millions of guns in circulation in the United States--no one knows exactly how many, but we are either approaching, or well past, one gun per adult citizens. Other countries that banned guns started with a less absolutist attitude towards civil liberties, and also, a lot fewer guns.
. . . I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. Would it work? Would people do it? I have no idea; all I can say is that both these things would be more effective than banning rifles with pistol grips.
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Megan McArdle on Daily Beast
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THINK ABOUT IT: If everyone is armed at all times, then everyone can kill any mass murderer. Indeed, why not require all of us to carry two weapons, thus DOUBLING OUR ABILITY TO SHOOT DOWN A MASS MURDER? How can ProgressVA, Lowell or anyone else argue with the math?
Moreover, if you don't carry your weapon one day, and get killed; you are to blame, not the politicians, not the gun control laws, not the NRA, not a breakdown in morality or even the craziness of your killer.
If you leave home without your two weapons, it is your fault if you get killed by anyone for any reason. That's the logic of the situation.
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GoldmanUSA on Blue Virginia
This sacrosanct notion that we cannot do anything but have gun-free zones is just a fallacy. What we’re dealing with here is people who don’t care. They’ve erased their moral compass. They don’t care about the law, and they are intent on horrific acts.
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Oklahoma Rep. Mark McCullough, R-Sapulpa
I could not be in more opposition to that idea. Schools are not a place where we should be arming combatants.... Our job as educators is to try to create an educational environment and try to teach students how to love one another and try to get along with one another so these kinds of tragedies that occurred in Connecticut never happen again. That’s our job. Our job’s not to try to kill an intruder.
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Kevin Burr, Sapulpa, OK, School Administrator, referring to Rep. McCullough's idea
I don’t think the answer to our gun problem is add more guns into the equation. I don’t think he probably really understands how schools operate. Schools can be emotional places at times. Kids can get emotional. Teachers can get emotional. Parents come in emotional. Throw weapons into that mix, and it can be dangerous.
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Ed Allen, president of the Oklahoma City American Federation of Teachers.
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School teachers
Should they be armed with big-ass rifles? Yes. They must protect our children from rampaging shooters. They should preferably be armed at all times, because when you’re around emotionally immature, irresponsible young people, you want to be able to shoot whatever marauder they’re all screaming about like he’s f***ing Justin Bieber, with murder.
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Wonkette (this is snark, in case you're wondering)
In our zealousness to protect people from harm we’ve created all these gun-free zones and what we’ve inadvertently done is we’ve made them a target. A helpless target is exactly what a deranged person is looking for where they cannot be stopped.
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Florida Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala
Must every tragic mass shooting bring out the shrill ignorance of “gun control” advocates?
The key fallacy of so-called gun-control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.
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Thomas Sowell on National Review
Children ages 5 to 14 in America are 13 times as likely to be murdered with guns as children in other industrialized countries....
. . . American schoolchildren are protected by building codes that govern stairways and windows. School buses must meet safety standards, and the bus drivers have to pass tests. Cafeteria food is regulated for safety. The only things we seem lax about are the things most likely to kill.
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Nicholas Kristof on New York Times
It is not that the people are allowed to arm. It is that the government is disallowed to disarm them.
. . . Those upset with the order of things are welcome to try, and doomed to fail, to repeal the Second Amendment via the constitutional process. But the guns of America aren’t going anywhere any time soon, and generic calls to “do something” — even insofar as doing something is desirable — must reckon with this fact.
On Friday, the president promised “meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” We doubt that something like this is possible, in a way consistent with the principle and the fact of the Second Amendment.
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Editors of National Review
We have to do everything we can to make sure those types of evils are restricted the best they can be. One thing I hope I don’t see is knee-jerk reaction from Washington, where they come in and think they know the answers.
In the state of Texas, if you go through the process, have been trained, and you are a handgun-licensed individual, you should be able to carry a gun anywhere in the state.
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Governor Rick Perry of Texas
I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn’t exist, or he’s irrelevant to me and we have killed fifty-four million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition. Believe me, that is going to have consequences too.
And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that’s what’s going on.
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Christian Radio Host James Dobson
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People carrying concealed pistols are not the ones shooting innocent victims. It is criminals who have no intention of following any law that are the perpetrators of these crimes. Strict gun-control laws do not stop criminals from committing evil acts, they merely infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens who might be able to take action against evil if given the chance.
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Ari Adler, spokesman for Michigan House Speaker, Jase Bolger
I haven't made a decision one way or another on it ... I need to see what it says. But the shooting gives you clear pause to say, 'Would this be appropriate?' That was a terrible thing to happen.
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Michigan Governor, Rick Snyder, noncommittal about whether he will sign a law allowing concealed handguns in schools and day cares
UPDATE:Gov. Snyder of Michigan will VETO concealed guns bill:
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How the NRA Defeats National Tragedies
First it scares people into thinking the government is coming for their guns. Then it quietly asks the public to pray for the victims of the next rampage.
. . . The “appropriate time” never arrives. It’s an ingenious communications strategy, one that removes the NRA from stories about the latest national outrages. When the outrage fades, the NRA returns in full flush. Just a week before the Newtown, Conn., shootings, Arulanandam told a reporter that the NRA was “planning for the worst” and had “told people to plan for gun bans and a Supreme Court stacked with anti-gun judges.”
David Weigel on Slate
