He wins the gold medal for cowardice ...

[barretcreek]

https://twitter.com/scottbix/status/966832499568586752

Keeps getting better.

Violence versus Evil. NRA is espousing controlled, focused violence against planned evil.

[clintonhater]

He will have to live with it.

What does that mean? If he's found hanged tomorrow, we'll know. But if that fails to materialize, he should (in an ideal world, which sure ain't modern America) be subjected to the kind of public degradation & humiliation once imposed on soldiers convicted of cowardice before the enemy.

[clintonhater]

The NRA's prescription is more violence. That is a factual observation.

Deterrence is violence? Well, that accords perfectly with the "speech is violence" mantra currently being spouted on college campuses all over the country.

[blackhawknj]

"The NRA's prescription is more violence." ? I have been reading American Rifleman for over 50 years, I have never seen that either explicitly stated or implied.
"The Armed Citizen" emphasizes that firearms in the hands of law abiding citizens prevent violence.
"He will have to live with it." People can live with an awful lot of things. Look at these concentration camp guards caught after 60 years or more.

[Dick Hosmer]

The man was a trained police professional... what happened to him I'm sure has happened to many in their first combat experience .....

how do you think our school teachers will fair after their week long training course ?

It's fare, FWIW, and I don't believe that length of training necessarily affects the quality of a person's guts.

[dobek]

I bet the male teacher (coach) that died shielding kids would have rather had a gun - so teachers that don’t think they can be a sheepdog instead of a border collie (herder) don’t have to be armed - but I bet there are more than a few sheepdogs in the classrooms.

[S.A. Boggs]

Snowflakes are just that, when the heat comes up they melt! I am not ashamed to say that I am a coward, pain hurts and I try and avoid it if possible. I have seen the elephant, it isn't pretty. I wasn't scared until the incident was over, it often happens so quickly that all I could do was react as I had been trained to do. Watching someone die when you are helpless to stop it stays with you and that is something a person of conscious can never escape. I had a buddy who was also a deputy, a Marine who was in combat from the Canal to being injured on Iwo by a blast that put him into the hospital for two years. He also had a passion for whiskey he drank too much. One day while we were out shooting my M1 he put the rifle down and gave me a cold stare, flashbacks are hell. I understood why he drank so much then, he never went to shoot with me again.
Personally I prefer to have armed citizens in my AO then armed criminals, that is just common sense. I also don't want snowflakes being armed, can't abide a coward who shirks their duty. There is one part of Saving Private Ryan that almost makes me vomit, the scene with the coward. I can understand fear, I hate someone who won't cover his buddies 6.
Sam

[p246]

What does that mean? If he's found hanged tomorrow, we'll know. But if that fails to materialize, he should (in an ideal world, which sure ain't modern America) be subjected to the kind of public degradation & humiliation once imposed on soldiers convicted of cowardice before the enemy.

Locally where he lives he will be as they know who he is. After reading and watching more about it he chose not to engage. He was suspended and chose to retire. If you don’t have it in these circumstances you don't have it, time to move on. As far as him hanging himself I wish no ill will on anyone, there are plenty of body’s at this point. The list of errors is long and people can point fingers all day. Let’s hope they get past that and fix their problems.

[fjruple]

Doesn't help the victims, but that poor bastard has to live with that for the rest of his life.

John--

I can't remember who said a coward dies a thousand deaths but he will until one of the parents gets at him.

I had one in the first year of the last Iraq war. Everytime there would be shooting he would run and hide in the latrine. The men around him openly called him, "The Coward". I would not have believed it until I actually seen it for myself! "The Coward" was an officer from another branch of service attached to the US Marines. I personally wanted to bring him up on charges of "cowardice in the face of the enemy." But politics got involved. Unfortunately, I had to take him with me as I was just visiting on an inspection tour of the our support to the US Marines. (General Mattis was in charge of the Marines). If I had left him there one of the Marines would have shot him in the back while running from the enemy during the next firefight or so. The way politics gets involve he probably would have received the PH and Bronze Star for being a coward. I was also thinking of his family back home. But he had nerve, when we re-deployed back home he asked why he did not get a Bronze Star for Service. The Brigade Commander told him if he pushed the issue, he would bring up the cowardice charges. That ended that discussion pretty quick. The sad part is I knew this officer for 5 years before our deployment and would have never thought he would do such a thing.

[clintonhater]

Locally where he lives he will be as they know who he is.

So? He moves.

Had been visualizing one of these 50+ fat slobs often seen in small sheriff's & police depts., kept on duty to avoid conflict with the police union. But no--photo shows him to be young, well-built, athletic-looking; just no guts.

[Mark in Ottawa]

We are a 20 minute drive from the shooting sight and as you can imagine, this is front page news this morning in our local newspaper. The action (or non-action) by this deputy puts the whole concept of a police presence in schools into question. If a trained deputy with 30 years experience can't or won't act in a shooting situation then completely different solutions must be sought. The sheriff's response yesterday was to announce that some school police will be armed with assault rifles and that is a totally scary thought. I have visions of some panicked cop opening up with full auto and spraying down the school yard instead of a shooter.

There is no simple magic solution. I may be a bit barbaric but I think that a partial solution would be to learn from the Iranians and publicly hang the perpetrator while letting the parents of the victims haul on the rope. That might serve to discourage copycats and in any case, there are times when justice is insufficient and revenge is a more satisfying option.

[clintonhater]

I may be a bit barbaric but I think that a partial solution would be to learn from the Iranians and publicly hang the perpetrator while letting the parents of the victims haul on the rope. That might serve to discourage copycats and in any case, there are times when justice is insufficient and revenge is a more satisfying option.

Don't let PC define "barbarism." No punishment fitting the crime is barbaric. Sympathy for monsters, that's barbaric. Inflicting a painless death by lethal injection is merely speeding up the natural process that awaits us all, not "punishment" in any real sense of the word; in fact, it's a deliverance from all the miseries of old age.

However, one punishment might be more fitting than death: exposure to public ridicule & humiliation. Such as making the perp stand naked in stocks near the front entrance to the school, with a guard to prevent anyone killing him, but not to inhibit cursing & reviling the monster.

[Vern Humphrey]

the difference between a man and a coward is when your balls suck up into your guts in fear, a man will still act. when someone is gunning down kids in a classroom and you have the ability to do something about it, its time to man up, especially if your a police officer!

I have seen 19-year old kids go forward with their knees shaking and their teeth chattering, yet they went. This man is a coward, pure and simple.

[leftyo]

I have seen 19-year old kids go forward with their knees shaking and their teeth chattering, yet they went. This man is a coward, pure and simple.

i absolutely agree with you.

[togor]

Deterrence is violence? Well, that accords perfectly with the "speech is violence" mantra currently being spouted on college campuses all over the country.

Let me explain.

But first, credit where it is due. Without constant pressure from organizations like the NRA, we don't have these milsurps in public hands. And many arms manufacturers would have been sued to insolvency, and the business seen as a bad one to be in except for military/police sales.

The NRA wants more guns out there. Presumably only in "good" hands, but barring major changes in laws governing gun movement, extra guns into the system will diffuse into population, good hands and bad. There is some evidence that the rate of gun violence is related to the total number of firearms in circulation. If true, then more guns makes the problem worse. If it gets bad enough, the current laws get overrun by new ones.

I know that the NRA and gun lobby have been phenomenally successful holding a line. But my concern is, if that line cracks under overwhelming force, then what is plan B? Maybe it's too soon to think that way. Call it an occupational habit I've acquired.