A small town in Massachusetts is considering the idea of teaching children to fight back against armed attackers in the classroom.
Georgetown Police Chief James E. Mulligan told FOXNews.com the proposed technique was intended to be a “last ditch” thing to be used in cases where a gunman has been able to thwart police and get inside a classroom alone with students.
At least they’re moving outside the victim mentality which hampers real security in our schools. We should certainly teach our kids to defend themselves. This, however, is the wrong tack. A child with a book or backpack has a very low likelihood of thwarting a determined attacker who has a gun. The correct response is to allow concealed carry permit holders—staff and parents—to carry their own weapons on school campuses. As it stands, the only people in our schools who have guns are the bad guys, who ignore gun-free zone laws. Allowing responsible, licensed citizens to be armed on campus will only increase the safety of our children.
A company in New Jersey is coming out with a small, single-shot “Palm Pistol” which is intended to be easy for the elderly or disabled to use. While I do believe this market segment has a need for reliable self-defense, this just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. A single shot just isn’t going to cut the mustard in many situations. Such a gun would certainly be better than nothing some of the time, but for just a little more money (less than $500) you can get a decent .380 semi-automatic which has a reasonable trigger pull, acceptable power (with hollow point ammunition), and low recoil. Those characteristics would provide a much better self-defense weapon for most of this market.
The controversial miniature figure, created by Seattle-based Will Chapman as part of his BrickArms military fighters line, is a bearded militant with a face-covering hood, a tiny toy assault rifle, a little grenade launcher and plastic bombs that can be attached to an explosives belt.
I wish they’d had these when I was a kid, because our good guys and bad guys were indistinguishable unless we painted them. Where can you get yours? Go to the BrickArms site. These are GREAT! While you’re at it, head over to Fireworks.com and add some bang to the action. (Disclaimer: firecrackers should only be used under responsible adult supervision. You could put an eye out or something.)
It took a genius from Harvard publishing a study in the British Medical Journal to tell us what radio talk show host Dennis Prager has been telling us for years. When I saw the announcement of this profound insight, I immediately thought to notify Mr. Prager, but see that he beat me to it.
Keep up the good work, sir (by whom I mean Mr. Prager, not the aforementioned Harvard genius). But, you know, your wisdom can’t possibly be worth much because you don’t have sufficient data to support your conclusion:
The study was only conducted in a single community, so it would take more research to confirm its findings.
(Aaargh! Why academics are so easily—and constantly—surprised by the obvious is a topic that would take volumes to cover. Maybe I can get a government grant to do a study.)
It’s not really news that the state of California is flat broke. It’s also not surprising—that’s what happens when you spend more money than you take in. California has some of the most generous social programs in the nation, programs it is increasingly finding it can’t afford. Now reduced-cost and free school lunches are on the block.
“Without quick action by the governor and the Legislature, districts will be forced to make a series of unacceptable choices to dip further into their own bare-bones budgets, serve less nutritious foods and not comply with California’s nationally renowned nutrition standards, or reduce cafeteria staffing,” Supt. Jack O’Connell said in a statement.
I know this will come as a shock to many truly compassionate people, but it’s not the government’s job to feed people, even children. That responsibility falls on parents. According to the Census Bureau (Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005, Current Population Report, P60-231, August 2006, hat tip to The Heritage Foundation) almost two-thirds of America’s poor have cable or satellite TV, a third have cell phones in addition to traditional land lines, and so on. The list of monthly expenditures on what are, in fact luxuries, by the “poor” is quite long. Good grief! My wife and I have never been poor, but we couldn’t justify the cost of a cell phone in our budget until just a couple years ago. But we fed our kids, and so should all parents.
The entitlement mentality is bankrupting California and is pushing the rest of the nation down the same path. It was a renowned Democratic president that once exhorted the American people to ask what we can do for the nation rather than the other way around. It’s a shame we value his popular image more than his words.
A Philadelphia man was sentenced to life last week for the murder of Jason Shephard. You probably didn’t hear about it in the news, though. Why? The murderer, William Smithson, is gay. He kidnapped Shephard, drugged him, and tried to rape him. When Shephard fought back Smithson killed him.
Where’s the media outrage over this senseless murder? You won’t hear any because the liberal media only care about such crimes when the victim—not the perpetrator—is gay. This was a true hate crime. The perp should have received the death penalty.
What happens when you swing a chair at a police officer? You risk being shot and killed. The only really disturbing aspect of the incident is how much space the article takes up trying to paint the assailant as a wonderful, innocent soul. Yes, an innocent soul that happened to be swinging a chair at an officer. (The Times’ original article re the incident covered the facts without the beatification.)
A few hours after the shooting, at 12:45 p.m. on Nov. 13, the police said that the shooting appeared to be within the department’s guidelines. While the man did not have a gun or knife, the department said the officer was at risk of being killed or seriously hurt with the chair, the key criterion justifying the use of lethal force.
The officer was about to clean his gun after giving his daughter a safety lesson! Apparently he skipped class when they covered the first rule of gun safety: treat every gun as if it loaded (until you personally verify that it is not). Good grief! Now the gun grabbers are going to yammer away again about how unsafe guns are.
After a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by a mob during yesterday’s Black Friday frenzy, police are trying to identify individuals from the store’s security tapes. I, for one, hope they’re able to do so and prosecute. I also hope the man’s family will sue Wal-Mart for a crippling sum. What has become of our society when retailers hype a sale to the point that saving a few buck is worth more than a man’s life?
Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers stepped over him and became irate when officials said the store was closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.
You’ve got to be kidding! People were actually upset because they couldn’t keep shopping? How unbelievably self-centered our society is becoming. What’s the value of a human life? “Uh, yeah, we just trampled that guy to death so we could save $10 on a Wii for Christmas. I mean, come one, I’ve been waiting in line all night and he was in the way.”
They should’ve just rounded up everyone in the store and ID’d them to make hanging prosecuting them easier.