How did that work out at VPI, Binghamton etc? Cops wait outside until an hour until everybody is dead.
It's sure safer for the cops, but the disarmed dead victims? Not so good.
Posted on 04/07/2009 5:33:53 AM PDT by marktwain
Does New York massacre give new firepower to bills filed in Austin?
By Anita Miller News Editor
San Marcos — When police in Binghamton, N.Y. went looking for the gunman who killed 13 people before committing suicide on Friday, the Associated Press reported they led out “a number of men in plastic handcuffs” while they sorted out who was who.
Had there been someone in that immigrant community center licensed to carry a concealed handgun who had drawn their weapon and ethnically resembled the shooter, police might have shot him by mistake.
Tragic as it is, the New York case may serve to support the point some in local law enforcement have made regarding Sen. Jeff Wentworth’s (R-San Antonio) legislation that would allow those with concealed handgun licenses to carry their weapons on the campuses of Texas colleges and universities.
Texas State Police Captain Paul Chapa acknowledges that such a shooting could happen here, but if it does and police were to encounter a student with a drawn but legal weapon, “We’re not going to ask where the concealed handgun permit is, we’re going to shoot.”
Chapa, like the rest of the university police force, has undergone “active shooter” training at the San Marcos-based Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT).
“You go in and isolate the threat. If you go in and find someone with a gun and the call is for a man with a gun, that’s your approach,” he said.
“We don’t think more guns on campus necessarily makes a safer campus,” said Diana Hendricks, ALERRT’s director of communications and governmental relations.
Hendricks said ALERRT has “worked closely with university police departments around the country” and believes that proper training of campus police comes closer to ensuring the safety of students.
Wentworth’s bill has yet to reach the full Senate. Its language is very near that of similar legislation he filed in 2007.
Chapa said a position paper created back then by the Texas Association of College and University Police Administrators opposing allowing concealed weapons on campus is still valid today.
It states, “with regard to crimes against persons which could potentially justify the use of deadly force, such as the use of a firearm, individuals are generally safer on the campuses of institutions of higher learning in this State than they are in the communities in which the campuses are located. The majority of reported on campus crimes” at state colleges and universities, the paper continues, “have no violent component, rendering the issue of concealed carry of firearms on campus virtually meaningless in the prevention of campus crime.”
Chapa said the primary crime on the Texas State campus is theft, which raises the possibility that concealed weapons could be stolen. “If a student is going to store their gun in their book bag, we’re going to have an increase in theft of weapons.”
Wentworth’s bill, and companion legislation in the House of Representatives, “looks like it’s getting a lot of support,” Chapa said. “All we can do is kind of prepare for it. Our focus is not to deny the right of anyone to carry a weapon, he said, adding the mission of university police is “to provide for the safety and security of the communities we have sworn to protect.”
Wentworth’s’ bill is SB 1164.
Yeah, and if my Aunt had balls she'd be my Uncle.
Ah, we don't think.
No facts...just feeeeeeeeeeelings.
wow. if it’s between some psycho with an AK and the cops, i’ll take my chances with dropping the psycho and convincing the cops i’m the good guy when the smoke has cleared.
With the *average* response time for LEOs (especially campus cops), you could dispatch the perp and clean your weapon before they ever saw you.
How did that work out at VPI, Binghamton etc? Cops wait outside until an hour until everybody is dead.
It's sure safer for the cops, but the disarmed dead victims? Not so good.
And knit a sweater and complete your term paper.
As though today’s police would actually enter a building while there is shooting going on! No, they hunker behind their vehicles, dressed up in their nifty black SWAT costumes, waiting until they are sure the gunman is finished his killing spree and has killed himself. And then they wait an extra hour, ensuring there will be fewer survivors.
Anyone with a CCP could kill the shooter and conceal the gun a hundred times over before encountering an LEO, so the danger mentioned in this anti-gun article is a fiction.
Someone with a weapon who knew how to use it could have saved at least some of the 13 who were murdered.
EXACTLY.
I like what Mark Steyn said about MOST (not all) of them being...
"the world's most heavily armed and lavished equipped yellow-tape installers"
Look at the police response time on this deal. Had one of the deceased been armed, it would have been very different. Either way, the the police get there just in time to do the work of a historian. The difference is in the lives of the innocent.
All they need do is look back to the Pearl Mississisppi shooting a few years ago. Or, the Appalachian Law School incident.
Convenient how they never mention those.
Well Captain, you didn't learn a damn thing then.
If you had the same scenario played out on a campus, you have 13 dead individuals before you even arrive.
This incident only proves how vulnerable Americans are without the means to protect themselves.
Liberal logic at its finest!
Mark
And for the extremely modest, never say a word.
Yet, our Troops, when accused of "shoot first, ask questions later" are brought up on murder charges and have their names bandied about the floor of Congress as "cold blooded killers."
State police Captain Paul Chapa is incompetent and should be removed.
His statement that anyone who has a firearm out will be shot, no questions asked is a deadly threat.
That Captain should be treated the same way the he expects to treat others.
If I am ever defending a person or myself by using my firearm, I will keep his statement in mind if the police show up.
Given the "first responders" proven tendency to arrive fashionably, and uselessly late, I'd take my chances.
And indeed you should! Trust me, don’t trust the instincts of any police officers arriving to the scene. Most are young and very inexperienced. Some of those get very rattled or even downright frightened in these kind of incidents. Take my word for it as a LEO.
Since the police took an hour to enter the building the person or persons with conceal carry permits would have done what they could to protect others and then place a cell phone call to police.
Those with the permits would have made their presence felt within the first few seconds or minutes. Then 1 hour or 3 hours later police enter the building.
The person with concealed carry does what they can during the Columbine Delay.
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