NRA calls for armed police officer in every school
The National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, gestures during a news conference in response to the Connecticut school shooting on Friday, Dec. 21, 2012 in Washington. The nation's largest gun-rights lobby is calling for armed police officers to be posted in every American school to stop the next killer "waiting in the wings." (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
Posted: Saturday, December 22, 2012 6:00 pm | Updated: 7:44 pm, Sat Dec 22, 2012.
Posted on December 22, 2012
The NRA wants to make schools what police often call “hard targets.”Guns and police officers in all American schools are what’s needed to stop the next killer “waiting in the wings,” the National Rifle Association declared Friday, taking a no-retreat stance in the face of growing calls for gun control after the Connecticut shootings that claimed the lives of 26 children and school staff.NRA CEA Wayne LaPierre said Congress should immediately appropriate funds to post an armed police officer in every school.
“Idiots,” one local official responded when told of the call for police in schools.
Many law enforcement personnel said it just isn’t practical.
“Back in my days in the legislature we would all have great ideas about things but before they were considered on the floor of either house it had to have a fiscal note attached to it…an explanation of what it would cost,” District Attorney David Heckler said. “(The NRA recommendations) have got to fail that.”
For many local police, it becomes a money issue. There are more than 132,000 schools in the United States, according to the Department of Education.
“In a perfect world an officer could serve as a deterrent, however, in most cases, police don’t have the manpower or the money to make it happen,” Buckingham police Sgt. J.R. Landis said Friday.
Some members of Congress who had long scoffed at gun-control proposals have begun to suggest some concessions could be made, and a fierce debate over legislation seems likely next month. President Barack Obama has demanded “real action, right now.”
The nation’s largest gun-rights lobby broke its weeklong silence on the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School with a defiant presentation. The event was billed as a news conference, but NRA leaders took no questions. Twice, they were interrupted by banner-waving protesters who were removed by security.
While Congress acts, LaPierre said the NRA would develop a school emergency response program that would include volunteers from the group’s 4.3 million members to help guard children.
Falls Lt. Henry Ward said the NRA’s suggestion is just not plausible. Ward said there are 15 schools in the jurisdiction covered by the Falls police department, which would require 15 police officers to staff them weekdays and an additional 10 officers to cover days off, vacations and training days. Ward broke down the lower-end cost of a police officer — including salary, yearly training expenses, equipment and benefits — to be at a minimum, $100,000. So to staff all the Falls schools with an officer would cost Falls $2.5 million.
Pennridge Regional Police Chief David Mettin said it would lead to seven more officers for his department, which he said was not feasible.
“If we ensure the safety of the schools, someone with the intent to kill would move to the malls, hospitals, mass transit hubs,” Mettin said. “Under the NRA ‘solution’ we would then add police to all of those locations as well.”
Some had predicted that after the slaughter of a score of elementary-school children by a man using a semi-automatic rifle, the group might soften its stance, at least slightly. Instead, LaPierre delivered a 25-minute tirade against the notion that another gun law would stop killings in a culture where children are exposed daily to violence in video games, movies and music videos. He argued that guns are the solution, not the problem.
“Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else; as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work,” LaPierre said. “And by that I mean armed security.”
The NRA talk about utilizing volunteers and retired military and police officers for school security worries Ward.
“I’m two years away from being eligible for retirement and my skill set is not where it used to be,” Ward said.
To have 100 percent round accuracy capability under stress an officer would have to spend his entire day training on the range, according to Ward.
Heckler offered a different solution than putting armed men in schools. He said he would like to see a bi-partisan, non-aligned committee examine the facts about what happened in Sandy Hook and other mass killings.
The district attorney, a former state legislator, former judge and noted gun afficionado, said the committee should be made of people in the middle, not those who want to ban all guns or those who think that there should be no restrictions on gun ownership.
“I really believe we have failed the part of our population that has problems with mental health, and for some time,” Heckler said.
There is a federally maintained database of the mentally ill — people so declared by their states — a 1997 Supreme Court ruling that states can’t be required to contribute information has left significant gaps. However, creation of a mandatory national database probably would have had little impact on the ability of suspected shooters in four mass shootings since 2011 to get and use powerful weapons. The other people accused either stole the weapons used in the attacks or had not been ruled by courts to be “mentally defective” before the shootings.
Heckler said he authored the part of the Pennsylvania’s uniform firearms act that prohibits several people, including those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from legally owning guns.
“That would not have caught (Adam Lanza),” Heckler said. “But perhaps we can revisit that.”
Heckler said he had hoped to push the issue much farther at the time, but events in Sandy Hook have opened the door to real mental health care reform, he said.
This is not the first time Heckler has expressed his concerns about inadequate care for the mentally ill. After a Perkasie police officer shot and killed a handcuffed Michael Marino, 26, of Quakertown, Heckler criticized state policies that for decades have taken the mentally ill out of care facilities and, in his words, “into conflict with police.”
Marino, according to investigators, knocked over two officers while handcuffed and off medications meant to govern his mental health. One of the officers subsequently shot and killed Marino. And that’s not the only case of a violent or even deadly confrontation between mentally or emotionally unstable people and Bucks County police in recent years.
He called gun violence pandemic, noting that it isn’t just a problem in terms of mass shootings by people that often we learn later were mentally ill, but also “young males who are not adequately socialized, not fully mature human beings,” who have no aversion to taking another life.
Ward and Heckler both agreed with many of the assessments the NRA made in their statement, including the violence in video games. But it’s not just that there is graphic violence and depictions of death. Kids are learning advanced tactics playing Halo and Medal of Honor and other “shooter” games.
“They are learning how to clear corners, clear rooms,” Ward said. “(The kids who kill) are acting like military because they’ve done it 3,000 times.”
Heckler was also critical of graphic depictions of violence throughout American culture. He questioned why we don’t shelter children, especially young children, from violence and distorted affects of violence like we shelter them from sex and distorted images of sex.
“The problem is society,” Ward said, summing up his analysis. “It’s not so much what’s in a person’s hands that is the problem, but it is what is in their hearts and heads.”
“Idiots,” one local official responded when told of the call for police in schools.
Many law enforcement personnel said it just isn’t practical.
“Back in my days in the legislature we would all have great ideas about things but before they were considered on the floor of either house it had to have a fiscal note attached to it…an explanation of what it would cost,” District Attorney David Heckler said. “(The NRA recommendations) have got to fail that.”
For many local police, it becomes a money issue. There are more than 132,000 schools in the United States, according to the Department of Education.
“In a perfect world an officer could serve as a deterrent, however, in most cases, police don’t have the manpower or the money to make it happen,” Buckingham police Sgt. J.R. Landis said Friday.
Some members of Congress who had long scoffed at gun-control proposals have begun to suggest some concessions could be made, and a fierce debate over legislation seems likely next month. President Barack Obama has demanded “real action, right now.”
The nation’s largest gun-rights lobby broke its weeklong silence on the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School with a defiant presentation. The event was billed as a news conference, but NRA leaders took no questions. Twice, they were interrupted by banner-waving protesters who were removed by security.
While Congress acts, LaPierre said the NRA would develop a school emergency response program that would include volunteers from the group’s 4.3 million members to help guard children.
Falls Lt. Henry Ward said the NRA’s suggestion is just not plausible. Ward said there are 15 schools in the jurisdiction covered by the Falls police department, which would require 15 police officers to staff them weekdays and an additional 10 officers to cover days off, vacations and training days. Ward broke down the lower-end cost of a police officer — including salary, yearly training expenses, equipment and benefits — to be at a minimum, $100,000. So to staff all the Falls schools with an officer would cost Falls $2.5 million.
Pennridge Regional Police Chief David Mettin said it would lead to seven more officers for his department, which he said was not feasible.
“If we ensure the safety of the schools, someone with the intent to kill would move to the malls, hospitals, mass transit hubs,” Mettin said. “Under the NRA ‘solution’ we would then add police to all of those locations as well.”
Some had predicted that after the slaughter of a score of elementary-school children by a man using a semi-automatic rifle, the group might soften its stance, at least slightly. Instead, LaPierre delivered a 25-minute tirade against the notion that another gun law would stop killings in a culture where children are exposed daily to violence in video games, movies and music videos. He argued that guns are the solution, not the problem.
“Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else; as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work,” LaPierre said. “And by that I mean armed security.”
The NRA talk about utilizing volunteers and retired military and police officers for school security worries Ward.
“I’m two years away from being eligible for retirement and my skill set is not where it used to be,” Ward said.
To have 100 percent round accuracy capability under stress an officer would have to spend his entire day training on the range, according to Ward.
Heckler offered a different solution than putting armed men in schools. He said he would like to see a bi-partisan, non-aligned committee examine the facts about what happened in Sandy Hook and other mass killings.
The district attorney, a former state legislator, former judge and noted gun afficionado, said the committee should be made of people in the middle, not those who want to ban all guns or those who think that there should be no restrictions on gun ownership.
“I really believe we have failed the part of our population that has problems with mental health, and for some time,” Heckler said.
There is a federally maintained database of the mentally ill — people so declared by their states — a 1997 Supreme Court ruling that states can’t be required to contribute information has left significant gaps. However, creation of a mandatory national database probably would have had little impact on the ability of suspected shooters in four mass shootings since 2011 to get and use powerful weapons. The other people accused either stole the weapons used in the attacks or had not been ruled by courts to be “mentally defective” before the shootings.
Heckler said he authored the part of the Pennsylvania’s uniform firearms act that prohibits several people, including those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from legally owning guns.
“That would not have caught (Adam Lanza),” Heckler said. “But perhaps we can revisit that.”
Heckler said he had hoped to push the issue much farther at the time, but events in Sandy Hook have opened the door to real mental health care reform, he said.
This is not the first time Heckler has expressed his concerns about inadequate care for the mentally ill. After a Perkasie police officer shot and killed a handcuffed Michael Marino, 26, of Quakertown, Heckler criticized state policies that for decades have taken the mentally ill out of care facilities and, in his words, “into conflict with police.”
Marino, according to investigators, knocked over two officers while handcuffed and off medications meant to govern his mental health. One of the officers subsequently shot and killed Marino. And that’s not the only case of a violent or even deadly confrontation between mentally or emotionally unstable people and Bucks County police in recent years.
He called gun violence pandemic, noting that it isn’t just a problem in terms of mass shootings by people that often we learn later were mentally ill, but also “young males who are not adequately socialized, not fully mature human beings,” who have no aversion to taking another life.
Ward and Heckler both agreed with many of the assessments the NRA made in their statement, including the violence in video games. But it’s not just that there is graphic violence and depictions of death. Kids are learning advanced tactics playing Halo and Medal of Honor and other “shooter” games.
“They are learning how to clear corners, clear rooms,” Ward said. “(The kids who kill) are acting like military because they’ve done it 3,000 times.”
Heckler was also critical of graphic depictions of violence throughout American culture. He questioned why we don’t shelter children, especially young children, from violence and distorted affects of violence like we shelter them from sex and distorted images of sex.
“The problem is society,” Ward said, summing up his analysis. “It’s not so much what’s in a person’s hands that is the problem, but it is what is in their hearts and heads.”
13 comments:
More guns will make us more safe? Then why isn't the U.S. already the safest nation on earth?
This guy's one and only job is to help sell more guns, exploting tragedy all the while. He is succeeding beyond our sickest dreams.
The same people that want to bust all the teachers unions because they're incompetent now thinks they are competent enough to be required to carry guns.
In my opinion, one of the big problems with gun control in the U.S. is that guns weren't regulated until the
1960's. Prior to that they were readily available to anyone wanting to purchase one, or more at any given time from anywhere without any paperwork. Even when gun control came into the spotlight in the 60's and it was realized that there needed to be some type of accountability, but even then it was clear that it was already too late. There were already millions of guns out there in the U.S. & no way of tracking them.
I have no idea what the answer is to the problem of a gun being in the wrong hands.
Put a teacher in every gun store?
The same people that want small government want the federal gov't to spend whatever it takes to put armed cops and/or Paul Blarts and Al Radostis into every school?
Prediction: Very little or nothing will change.
Who cares. As long as my taxes don't go up, cut programs and teachers and sports and take away their pensions too. It's not like education is important. And making school safe for kids and teachers will only cost me more money. Nobody's shooting up my job, but I don't have off all summer and get paid.
At last, a voice of reason, someone who gets that it's all about ME.
There they go again, the parasitic takers trying to take take take our hard earned tax dollars for their guns.
Columbine had an armed guard.
VA Tech had a Police Department.
Ft. Hood was a Military Base.
I'd be hard pressed to name a societal ill that more guns can't cure.
Pro-gun rights US petition to deport Piers Morgan
Associated Press – 51 mins ago.. .
LONDON (AP) — Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition calling for British CNN host Piers Morgan to be deported from the U.S. over his gun control views.
Morgan has taken an aggressive stand for tighter U.S. gun laws in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting. Last week, he called a gun advocate appearing on his "Piers Morgan Tonight" show an "unbelievably stupid man."
Now, gun rights activists are fighting back. A petition created Dec. 21 on the White House e-petition website by a user in Texas accuses Morgan of engaging in a "hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution" by targeting the Second Amendment. It demands he be deported immediately for "exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens."
The petition has already hit the 25,000 signature threshold to get a White House response. By Monday, it had 31,813 signatures.
Morgan seemed unfazed — and even amused — by the movement.
In a series of Twitter messages, he alternately urged his followers to sign the petition and in response to one article about the petition said "bring it on" as he appeared to track the petition's progress.
"If I do get deported from America for wanting fewer gun murders, are there any other countries that will have me?" he wrote.
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