Can anyone here imagine a group of ten ordinary American police officers standing, cowed, behind building corners and simply watching such a slaughter? I doubt it. There may be tactical considerations, and some reasonable self-preservation making a degree of caution possible, but a two-man team with AKs and grenades would not last long even in a place like Los Angeles. Transplant that same situation into most of the rest of America, that beyond the deep-urban elites, and the conclusion of the attack would be swift, brutal, and total, and not in favor of the attackers.
Let those same terrorists figuratively come ashore in a place like Pennsylvania, Texas, or Wyoming, and the police would be arriving only in time to distribute body bags and take pictures.
Cherry River Blog
December 4, 2008
Mumbai
Via David Hardy.
[As pointed out in the comments to the post: one word, “Columbine”. But from both Columbine and 9/11 (flight 93) the police and private citizens learned valuable lessons. Sometimes fighting back NOW is the proper course of action. As long as people have the tools to fight I think the proper mindset will surface when the situation presents itself–even if it is somewhat repressed by modern society.–Joe]
Damn, right as I’m clicking to comment, I see that my comment was already made. Columbine.
A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
– George S. Patton
What about VT. The police just sat there for hours doing nothing. To say it can not happen here is nothing more than ostrich syndrome.
“Let those same terrorists figuratively come ashore in a place like Pennsylvania, Texas, or Wyoming, and the police would be arriving only in time to distribute body bags and take pictures.”
I would like to believe that. There is evidence of it, I suppose. Regular citizens got their rifles and kept the University of Texas tower sniper pinned down, back in 1966. Interestingly, a regular citizen even accompanied police to the top of the tower to confront the sniper, though today I would think that sort of thing extremely unlikely. Here in Moscow, ID, one guy with a pistol tried to respond to the courthouse shooting a couple years ago, but to little avail. It’s hard to say. Each event has its own mood and character.
My cousin used to work outside Sacramento as a high-reach crane operator. One evening whilst imbibing a few liquid libations in a local tavern, the talk turned to gangs and drive-bys. My cousin, being a good kid of the Mountain West from WY, calmly told his friend they don’t have drive-bys in WY. When asked why not he responded “If you drive through any residential area in the state, you will find roughly every other vehicle is a pickup and in the back window of those trucks you will find a rifle. If you tried to do a drive-by there, they would give you a sporting chance of about 200 yds before they shot you through the back of the head.”
Says alot about the mindset. A somewhat decent deer or elk hunter could even the odds long before the fuzz arrived. You’re right, they’d show up just in time to draw chalk outlines on the concrete and take statements. Probably along the lines of “How far?” “Really? You got him with a head shot from a .243 at 250 yds? Damn…Good shootin’, just remember you got school tomorrow.”
One thing to keep in mind is that, when some such “issue” arises, no one knows what’s going on at the time. In the above-linked Wikki article, people on campus heard the shots, but didn’t think much about it until people started getting hit. Even then there’s a moment or two of confusion, and further; the news doesn’t spread instantly or accurately. One woman even saw the guy with his rifles, and had assumed he was going to shoot pigeons up there.
If we somehow knew for sure that there was “a terrorist attack at the northwest corner of 3rd & Main happening right now” along with some other details like “there are three of them and they have AKs and hand grenades”, it would be one thing, but few know what’s happening at all in many cases until it’s over, or until the cavalry has surrounded the place. The only rapid response would have to come from the people on the scene at that moment. On the VT campus they were all conveniently disarmed and ready for slaughter.