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Samizdata quote of the day What’s interesting about this Florida school shooting is that events are revealing themselves in such a way that not even the most statist of gun controlling media types are able to spin the narrative to their ends. The old adage that “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away”… well, that’s a pithy line, and it hits home. It also assumes that the police are minutes away. Not in this case. In fact, the police were seconds away, yet they didn’t intervene. In Parkland, it wasn’t that the state couldn’t protect you – no, it could have. Actually, the state wouldn’t protect you. You were on your own.
What message should the ordinary citizen take away from this? That it is clear and painfully obvious they need to protect themselves.
Best justification for the 2nd Amendment in my lifetime at least.
– James Waterton
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^ – What he said, in spades!
Nonsense. Just because their arguments won’t make sense doesn’t mean they won’t try. I saw one comment (I think it was in the WaPo) in response to the “Coward of Broward” which was something to the effect of:
Indeed, Jaded. Although I think most people would just say that replacing the sheriff and changing the policy will fix the problem, and they would be partially right. IOW, most people would not see this part of the incident as having anything to do with gun rights.
The second amendment recognizes the right (which is “prior” to any justification for a state) of persons to protect themselves against tyranny.
Ability to defend against criminals (beyond tyrannical governments) is a happy secondary benefit of distributed ownership of weapons.
It’s perhaps naive to believe that the purpose of political talking points is to persuade anyone. Their primary purpose is to mobilize the base already predisposed to believe them. The only people they typically “persuade” is that 10-20% dissociative portion of the population that is essentially swayed by the last argument they heard, which can be critical around election time, but is less important generally.
“You see? The police can’t protect you. So the only thing that makes sense is to get rid of assault weapons…”
Or criminals. If we banned criminals, then not only would there be no more shootings, there’d be no more stabbings or burglaries either.
Why has nobody thought of this before?
SCOTUS has already ruled that the police are under no obligation to protect you. Officially then, you’re on your own, where and when permitted.
not even the most statist of gun controlling media types are able to spin the narrative to their ends.
But that clearly isn’t true. In fact, it is all the media (with the exception of Fox) has talked about for over a week now. You are making the mistake of assuming people, and the media, are somehow conducting a rational debate. They are not. It is mostly an emotional debate. You are also assuming that the media and much of the public thinks, as you do, that people have individual agency — that they are responsible for themselves. But the population has spent its life giving up its agency to the government in a million ways (including, for example, trusting the government entirely with the education of their children in places such as MSD high school), and so they think “protecting themselves” is almost a contradiction in terms.
Never is it mentioned how rare such events are.
There are about 100,000 schools in the USA.
If two such events happened per week. A school could expect such an event once every thousand years.
There are abut 50 million school kids in the USA.
If 100 kids were killed per year, the odds of getting killed are 1 in 500,000 per year.
That is a 99.99998% probability of not getting killed.
500 children are killed by their parents each year, stricter controls and laws are needed on parenthood.
“If 100 kids were killed per year, the odds of getting killed are 1 in 500,000 per year. That is a 99.99998% probability of not getting killed.”
Oh, absolutely. And, per capita (contrary to popular belief), the US isn’t even the most dangerous place in the world for such things. Not by a long chalk.
But, as Fraser says, this isn’t about logic and reason. It’s about (manipulating) fear and panic (in order to disarm the public).
Fascinating article, Sam. Thanks.
One official can be a gutless coward, but three in the same department? ‘Sounds to me like they were told to stand down until ‘x’, (assuming there’s an X).
The fact that the sheriff is Muslim, an arrogant son of a bitch blaming everyone else at CNN’s staged “Town Hall meeting” gives me pause too. Add to this the several video interviews of eye witness students claiming multiple shooters being suppressed and we have something that stinks as bad as the Vegas Shooter (apparent) cover-up.
That’s exactly true. In fact SCOTUS did so twice. But the issue remains, if they’re not willing to defend kids from an armed gunman, then why the hell are they there.
Sam, indeed. Someone should make school shootings illegal. More laws cure crime…right?
“Shut up, Crime!” ~ the Crimson Bolt
Yeah, the popular Islamic surname “Israel” should’ve given it away.
(C’mon, this ranks right up there with “be quiet, Mohammad, and eat your gefilte fish.”)
😀
Thailover: The sheriff is not a Muslim but one of his deputies is. The deputy, whose name escapes me at the moment, goes about to the local mosques telling the congregants that they are in immediate danger of attack right there in the mosque and encouraging them to go armed. There is a you Tube video of this which I have seen. The problem I see with this is that the only person likely to attack Muslims in their mosque would most likely be another Muslim. Christians don’t do that. Yet.
That sheriff is indeed “an arrogant son of a bitch.” I very much doubt that he will survive (in the political sense) the next election.
The contrast between the reaction to the hours SWAT waited to head into Pulse nightclub when Muslim nut job #28392 shot that place up in June of 2016 vs the vitriol & anger directed at this one sheriff who waited all of four minutes is pretty amazing.
This lone sheriff didn’t have armor and was by himself and waited 4 minutes. Everyone freaks out at him for waiting 4 minutes and many people are saying he didn’t do his job and was a coward.
SWAT is heavily armored with badass weapons and there were dozens of them and they waited HOURS. Nobody important blamed SWAT for anything to my knowledge. And 99% of the public seems to view SWAT as having done its job during Pulse shooting.
Now, I don’t disagree. I do think the guy should have gone in to protect the kids. But the lack of outrage about SWAT waiting HOURS to head into Pulse nightclub as many people were LITERALLY bleeding to death on the floor inside Pulse night club is in my opinion ridiculous. That was negligence or dereliction of duty on the part of SWAT and there’s no real outrage. I don’t understand why.
Like what the fuck was SWAT waiting for? The Pulse gunman if you recall had a simple demand: the USA must stop bombing Muslims in Syria and then he would stop killing people inside Pulse. Do hostage negotiators have a stellar track record of changing the minds of Muslim fanatic nut jobs about the goodness/badness of bombing Muslims? or they have a great track record of getting the Department of Defense to change foreign policy for the sake of saving hostages’ lives? No and no. So why exactly did SWAT wait hours to storm Pulse while people were bleeding to death?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_nightclub_shooting
That’s coming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAAMGatMHss
“MSNBC Host Melissa Harris-Perry – We Own YOUR Children!”
The police weren’t even seconds away, they were right there. This is the main raison d’etre of the police department.
If I were that Sheriff, I would be ashamed to show my face, never mind draw pay.
And “You cannot depend on us, your Masters, for protection” is the ultimate anti-Progressive fact. That’s why the Media isn’t nearly as full of it as the approved narrative, which is “take guns away from people we don’t like because they kill children”.
https://www.sott.net/image/s22/452058/large/0000000000000000000000000_52_6.jpg
As is now being reported, there was a deputy inside the school who sheltered under a stairwell, and 3 more in cars outside who all took cover behind their cars, so why exactly were they there in the first place? The ones outside also became a barrier to the medics, not letting them in until they had satisfied themselves that the danger was over.
I don’t know how Broward County does it, but most sheriffs in the U.S. are popularly elected. At a guess, if this is the case, I’d have to say that Sheriff Israel may soon be joining the ranks of the unemployed. Elected or not, popular sentiment may well speed the process up.
Sadly public opinion does appear to be turning in the “Gun Control” direction – the cause of liberty not being helped by President Trump being a Pragmatist and trying to go with the flow (rather than turn it round).
At heart the problem is, as always, that the left has a near monopoly both of the education system and the mainstream media – even the internet is increasingly under the control of the left (with dissent being ruthless crushed by the “left coast” internet companies – such as Google).
The left present themselves (especially in Hollywood) as “creative individuals” and “rebels” – actually they are totally conformist and act as single unit, essentially a “hive mind”.
But that does not mean the left are not powerful – think of a vast swarm of human sized Army Ants.
Of course this is true. I think the point is is that nobody with an interest in protecting the 2nd Amendment is going to be moved by this incident. The MSM guilt trip – which really has been astonishingly brazen this time – might play to all the people who you’d expect it to play to, but they were already fully signed on to the anti-“bitter clinger” agenda anyway. CNN’s full court press isn’t going to change any minds due to the known and undisputed facts that have emerged since its ridiculous ‘town hall’ setup. Even the silly things Trump said yesterday about grabbing the guns first and then later on heading to the courts for some due process after the fact – well, that’s going nowhere fast.
@Paul Marks
even the internet is increasingly under the control of the left (with dissent being ruthless crushed by the “left coast” internet companies – such as Google)
I am at heart an entrepreneur. I am pretty tied up with the other things I am doing, but I want to say to all you other entrepreneurs out there, there is a MASSIVE opportunity here. The Fox News of the internet. What I mean by that is someone create a search engine, video sharing site and email platform that declares that it will not sneak into your email, will not ban you or demonetize you, and will only give up your information to the feds after a fight. There is a burgeoning market for that service. Google has certain advantages, but loyalty to search engines, video share sites and email providers is very, very weak. I remember when Altavista ruled the waves.
Setting something like that isn’t really super hard, the software is mostly available open source, and you can scale, scale, scale on platforms like AWS and Microsoft.
I’m not saying it is another google, but executed well it is 5% of google, and who wouldn’t want a piece of that.
Like I say, think Fox News of the internet. (Sorry Brits, translate to whatever is the equivalent network over there.)
Fraser, there has been no shortage of such efforts over the past few years, but they all suffer from the lack of Network Effect – which does not apply to businesses such as TV networks and cable stations, and other news outlets, because those are not based on interactivity. (Search engines are an exception to this, but for now there has been no serious competition). This does not mean that the current internet “monopolies” are going to last forever, not even close. But the barrier is still very real, and it will take either time or a serious crisis (most likely both) to tip the scale in favor of some new entrants to the market.