When you’re at work and you see someone coming into that school and they’re ready to hurt or kill one of our kids or teachers, I want you to shoot them graveyard dead. And if you can’t shoot them graveyard dead, then we don’t want you in this program and the door’s over there, and this job is not for you.
Andrew Pollack
July 14, 2018
(Update: Pollack was quoting the Polk County sheriff and may have misunderstood the exact words used.)
5 months after Parkland: What are activists doing to protect students?
[Last February, Pollack’s daughter was murdered at Parkland. Since then (plagiarizing from the article) Pollack advocated for the passage of a bill that requires every school in Florida to appoint law enforcement officers or armed “guardians.” Gov. Rick Scott signed it into law in early March.
While I understand the sentiment expressed and give him a pass for his special circumstances that attitude may get someone into trouble. Example, the perp sees the LEO or guardian and drops his gun and is in the process of surrendering. The LEO or guardian should not proceed to “shoot them graveyard dead”. Even if they needed a piece or two of hot lead to reconsider their morning activities once they are no longer a threat you should stop shooting. You can’t walk up to a perp who is curled up in a fetal position, whimpering, and crying then put a couple rounds into his head.
You may shoot until they are no longer a threat then you must stop shooting.
That said, it’s really great Pollack and others got this bill passed and the LEOs and guardians are now being trained for dealing with active shooters. It’s an important part of what should be a multilayer security plan for any place where there a large groups of soft targets.—Joe]
As I understand it, Pollack was quoting Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who at the time was addressing his school resource officers.
Oh! You are right. I thought the wording was a bit messed up when I copied that but didn’t take the time to get it straightened out.
Thanks.
I would add one clarification: ” …if you can’t shoot them graveyard dead, … this job is not for you.” Doesn’t mean you HAVE to shoot them graveyard dead, just that, if you take this job, you must be ABLE to shoot them graveyard dead when required. JMHO.
The first sentence in the above quote says something stronger than your take. And it was this sentence that I took issue with.
Yeah; the point is to stop, and not necessarily to kill. It’s your job as a defender to stop a violent attack. That’s on you. If the perp happens to die in the process, that’s on him, but his death is certainly not the goal or the point. That’s an important distinction that is often ignored for reasons I cannot understand.
Also I’m not sure there can be different levels of “dead”. If you’re “dead” or “graveyard dead” you’re still dead. It seems to me that someone is attempting to be melodramatic with that term, and I see no room for melodrama in this matter. That, or there’s a reference being made to some heathen spirituality wherein it is believed that, depending on the treatment of the body or some such, the dead person may be denied some feature of an afterlife. I don’t see any room for that sort of bullcrap either. Therefore if someone is talking about “graveyard dead” I think that person should be called on it. It’s just dumb.
More importantly, there’s no need for any new “program” or for “arming teachers”. The use of either term, or any similar one, exposes the person as missing the point entirely.
All that need be done is for government to get its fat nose out of the way, in which case those teachers and those other school employees who would go to work armed for the purpose of defending innocent life will not be prosecuted for doing so.
No none in government ever wants to simply get out of the way however, because in that case they would not be able to take credit for any subsequent improvement in the situation. “Governor Bob’s Illustrious Program” exults and elevates Governor Bob, and it grows the bureaucracy because there must be people to administer Governor Bob’s Illustrious Program, and so Governor Bob grows his alliance. Governor Bob, and all of his horses and all of his men, simply pissing off and getting out of the way, as great as it would be for the people, does nothing for Governor Bob or for the Alliance. Non-interference, therefore, is simply unacceptable.
Worse still, if government simply gets out of the way, and things get better, then they become culpable, by implication, for those worse outcomes during that period of their perpetration of interference. The Alliance becomes immediately and deeply threatened, because it is now exposed, and they cannot allow that.
They can’t stop, see? They can’t let go. For their own sakes they must double down on the interference lest they face their guilt, and they’ll do anything to avoid facing their own guilt. There’s possibly our main obstacle, right there.
I agree. Progressives would rather kill a thousand people than admit that they made a mistake.
I call B.S. on this namby-pamby bit of rhetoric nit picking. If a perpetrator approaches a defenseless group of people with the evil intent to kill and maim them, then that individual forfeits all the “feel good” protections afforded by our system. They need to be killed………… Not housed for the rest of their lives at taxpayer expense. Hamurabi’s code……… Eye for an eye. Even if they are not successful at their mission. Take out the trash…
Jeez someone’s a Negative Nancy…
In any incident that appears to be a terrorist action, I am for damn sure going to be putting an anchoring shot (or two) into every head that I can target. One MUST consider that bombs are a common component of these situations, so I don’t want any injured terrorists deciding it it time to hit the switch that sends them to allah/glory/whatever.
In this case you are stopping an articulable threat. It’s no different than if they were about to shoot someone.
Another potential situation is if there are multiple perps. It may not be feasible to secure Perp1 -> PerpN-1 while PerpN is active.
Lots of other situations are conceivable. My initial point was that you may get into serious legal trouble if you execute people you didn’t have to kill in order to protect innocent life. I didn’t make that nearly as clear as I could have.
The threat has been neutralized when it changes shape or catches fire.