Let's Roll

Remember that Patriot Act thing I was talking about in the other entry? This is my favorite sentence from the story: "The new law seemingly would remove such cases from federal court and require the FISA court to hear them in secret."




Bush administration seeks to expand surveillance law



And interestingly enough, Doug says that as he was driving home from work the other day, he pulled up next to a cop car which was labeled "Homeland Security." Not the local city police department or the county sheriff, or even the state troopers. Just "Homeland Security." 



Did anyone else get the memo about when we became an official police state? I think I may have missed the actual ceremony for the switch-over.



Oh. And one more thought on the VA Tech thing. This is terribly un-PC of me, so you may either want to step out for coffee or tell yourself not to put your fist through the screen until you've reached the end.



I get that people...way too many...have died. I get it that families have lost their kids, their siblings, enormous chunks of their lives. I do, I really do. So please know that this intends no disrespect to either the families or the ones they've lost.



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Apparently (whew!) there's no more talk of expired visas and disgruntled foreigners, which will (please!) take Homeland Security off the table in regard to the case. At least for now. And of course the radio (mainly NPR) is absolutely stuffed full of pundits and commentators debating the need for greater security, greater gun control, and the validity/stupidity (depending on who's on the panel at the time) of the school's security responses.



There's much debate on how far to restrict firearms. "If he couldn't get the guns, he never would have killed those people," vs. "If everyone took to packing heat, the gunman would have been downed in 5 seconds and lives would have been spared." And there's much debate on security versus freedom. "We expect our kids to be safe in school!" vs. "We have a free and open society, and I don't think we're willing to trade that in just yet."



It seems to me that it's totally unreasonable for all of us to sit back and wait for others to take care of us. If Columbine taught us anything, it taught us that if you find yourself in a shooting situation, you'll have to get yourself or the injured outside the building yourself, as security officials sure aren't about to rush in and rescue you. They'll let you bleed out while they're busy assessing the situation.



So if we're really, honestly interested in making the nation as a whole a safer place to be, wouldn't it be worth considering putting each and every individual person through self-sufficiency training of some sort?



I started thinking about this when I read that some of the victims had perhaps been lined up and shot execution-style. "Cho's extraordinary killing effectiveness suggests someone who was
trained, or who trained himself, in "execution-style" killing,
according to the federal source."



The Making of a Mass Killer



So I'm envisioning a guy with a couple of guns and no respect for human life busting into a classroom and ordering people to line up, and our gunman goes down the line and starts firing into people.



Have we really trained our citizenry to be so defenseless as to stand there and sort of hope the guy runs out of ammo before he gets to them? School is a place where you're certainly pressured to conform, and do just what you're told and be sheep-like. But I'd think that if you're in that lineup and you see a couple of people go down, you've gotta figure that your number is coming up. You have nothing left to lose anyway, why aren't 15 people mobbing this madman and ripping his gun(s) away? Didn't we do it on Flight 93 during 9/11? Wasn't the wanna-be shoe bomber (Reid?) taken down by fellow passengers? I know it's way too easy to armchair quarter-back, but what's wrong with us???



I remember seeing a newsy sort of show where they had a man coming into some of the public high schools and staging fake attacks to show the kids how easy it was to get killed, and then trained them on how not to be sitting ducks. (Tip: The best way to get killed is to barricade yourself into a closed, windowless room with no hope of escape. Hiding behind desks makes you an easier, unmoving target.) One of my favorite tips: Rip the fire extinguisher off the wall, pull the pin, and let loose. Fill the hallway...the extinguisher emits a sort of smoky vapor like dry ice, yet a million times better. It makes a big smoke screen, so the shooter can't see where everyone is running, which makes it harder to aim and much harder to follow you. Also ensure that kids don't hesitate to break expensive equipment, like a computer CPU, to bust open a window to escape if necessary. CPUs can be replaced. Your middle-schooler can't.  



If you really want a safer nation, don't you need a more savvy citizenry? But what are we told? "Do what they tell you to, it's safer," and "Don't try to be a hero. Leave it to the experts." Critics say that those who initiate any kind of resistance might be killed. Well, yes. But it's likely that they're going to get killed anyway. I'd much rather die trying to save my life, and the lives of others.



What ever happened to "Let's Roll?"

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