Category: Preparedness

Arming teachers is *optional*, not mandatory. Jeez.

Evidently there’s an enormous number of people who seem to think that proposals to arm teachers (or, more accurately, to remove the prohibitions on people carrying concealed at schools) are something that would be mandatory. That is, that teachers would be forced to carry a gun.

Take, for example, this article from the Daily Beast. The summary at the top says, “The Daily Beast asked educators what they would do if they or their colleagues were asked to carry guns in their classrooms. None supported the idea.” No shit. Nobody’s going to ask them to (let alone make them) carry guns if they don’t want to. In the states that allow for armed teachers, nobody is being forced to be armed against their will and, indeed, few people other than the armed teachers themselves and a select number of administrators know who is armed.

The vast majority of the people interviewed in that article seem to think that they’d be mandated to carry, while nothing could be further from the truth. How this misconception keeps spreading, I don’t know, but I suspect it’s intentional at this point.

One interesting response from a former teacher quoted in the article is, in part, “More guns in any equation equals more death, not less.” Does it, now? If someone kills the deranged madman murdering innocent people, the life of the murderer was lost but the lives of a multitude of innocent people would have been saved. That seems like a net-positive thing to me. In other words, not all deaths are bad.

The former teacher also states, “The number of times a teacher stops a mass murder with his gun will be dwarfed by the number of times a teacher kills a fellow staff member or student, intentionally or otherwise.” without presenting any evidence of this have occurred ever in the history of armed teachers.

An elementary school teacher is quoted as Tweeting (*sigh*), “The thought of a loaded weapon in my 1st grade classroom scares the crap out of me.” The thought of a mass murderer slaughtering me and my students while we are made defenseless by immoral laws scares me a lot more, but your mileage may vary.

A recent college professor says he’s oppose being armed for several reasons: “First, education has always been collaborative, and students knowing I was armed would undermine that relationship.” Would it? I’ve collaborated with many people while one of us or the other (or both) have been armed. No issues there. Of course, you could resolve the problem entirely by not telling anyone you’re armed. Concealed means concealed, after all.

“Second, the presence of firearms leads to an increased likelihood of accidental gun related issues/deaths… even among trained individuals.” To quote the Wikipedia, “[citation needed]”.

“Third, my wife said she would divorce me if I started carrying a gun.” To each their own, I suppose. Personally, I encourage my wife (who’s a teacher) to carry if given the chance, but ultimately it’s up to her. She’s pretty supportive of the idea.

“And fourth, perhaps most importantly, this isn’t what I signed up for. Police officers and military join knowing firearms are integral. If guns become the norm among teachers, the type of person who pursue academic careers with change. I would posit, for the worse.” I seriously doubt guns would ever become “the norm” among teachers, but I can’t really see how having academic positions filled by people who are upstanding, responsible citizens with a strong sense of self-sufficiency and a desire to protect both themselves and those in their care would be a downside. If anything, that sounds like a great plan to me.

That said, I’d like to see the lawful, concealed carriage of arms (whether guns or other arms) become a normal, everyday thing for responsible, law-abiding citizens as means of resisting criminal predation.

Tactical Observations

Today’s shooting of Congressional members, staff, police officers, and others in DC (as well as the workplace shooting at a UPS center in San Francisco) prompted me to come out of my frantically-writing-my-PhD-thesis self-imposed eremitism and point out a few observations:

  1. The bad guy starts with the initiative. They choose the time, place, and manner of their attack. Thus, they hold all the cards when the shit hits the fan.
  2. Immediate armed resistance is crucial to taking the initiative away from the bad guy. The Capitol Police officers on protective detail responded immediately and in a coordinated way, were able to suppress the shooter, draw his attention toward them (and away from unarmed, defenseless people), and hold his attention until they were able to neutralize the threat. (“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”)
  3. Being skilled in martial arts or having short-range weapons (e.g. baseball bats) are not bad things in and of themselves, but are essentially useless when the bad guy is armed and out of your immediate reach.
  4. Being unarmed in a gunfight means you lose. You may make it out alive, but that’s a matter of luck.
  5. There’s only two types of people guaranteed to be present at a crime: the perpetrator(s) and the victim(s). Even for an extremely high-priority emergency (bad guy shooting members of Congress in broad daylight, in a public place in the DC metro area), the police are still minutes away. You need to be able to provide for yourself as best you can until they show up and, even then, they need time to evaluate the situation and act.
  6. Cover and concealment are not always available. Still, be constantly aware of where cover and concealment are, and how you can get there from where you are if the need arises.
  7. Hits from a rifle are not always lethal or incapacitating. (I’m curious if the shooter used FMJ ammo. CNN says he had an SKS, but we’ll see if that’s actually the case in the fullness of time.)
  8. Although most shootings involve only a handful of shots, not all are so lucky. You don’t need to be Rambo, but having a spare mag or two won’t hurt.
  9. A gunfight is not likely to be a stand-up, bad-guy-at-7-meters, in-open-view, with-good-lighting type of affair. Train accordingly.
  10. You or others around you may be injured in the course of a gunfight. Train accordingly (e.g. off-hand shooting, shooting while immobilized, etc.) and ensure you’re equipped and trained to effectively provide first aid.
  11. Having good training and good coordination with others (e.g. a partner, family members, etc.) is crucial.
  12. Having a gun is not a magical talisman that will protect you from being shot.
  13. Gun-free zones aren’t. Every UPS facility I’ve visited requires visitors and employees to go through metal detectors and remove anything from their pockets whenever they enter or leave the facility. This didn’t stop the bad guy and didn’t help the victims.
  14. Gun control groups are ghouls.

MI5 boss: “we cannot hope to stop everything”

From the BBC:

The threat is growing, MI5 is stretched, some of its capabilities are at risk.
All of that means something is likely to happen. That was the bleak message from [head of the UK’s MI5] Andrew Parker.

While I disagree with Mr. Parker’s assertion that the security services need more powers to intercept and monitor all communications (which, in the UK, they pretty much do already, so I’m not sure how they’d increase that ability), I do agree that it’s unreasonable to expect 100% safety or 100% success in stopping bad guys from doing bad things.
Thus, as always, the answer is to be reasonably prepared to take care of oneself in various situations until the cavalry arrives: in this case, having a gun and the training and will to use it effectively if the need arises while hoping that one would never face such a situation.
Consider, for example, the photos taken of the killers in Paris by citizens sheltering on nearby rooftops. Had one or more people on those rooftops been armed, even with handguns, they would have been able to fire from an elevated position on the unsuspecting bad guys. At the very least, this would have caused confusion on the part of the bad guys, distracted them, and slowed them down — hopefully until the police could arrive.
Alternatively, if directly confronted by armed bad guys intent on murder, being armed gives one at least a fighting chance of surviving the encounter. Success is not assured, particularly when it comes to defending oneself from heavily armed attackers who had the element of surprise, but it’s better than nothing.

911 should be part of a plan, not the whole plan

One of the key points of disagreement between pro-gunners and anti-gunners is on the concept of whether or not it is necessary, or even appropriate, for an ?average? citizen to have ready access to a lethal weapon in case they are attacked. Anti-gunners often hold that the proper course of action when one is threatened by another is to call the police and let them deal with the problem. To the average person this might sound like a perfectly reasonable answer, but it reallyisn?t. The giant hole in the anti-gunner self defense plan is that even the best police response is going to be minutes out in a situation where seconds define the boundaries between life and death.

– Tim at Gun Nuts Media.
Read the whole thing. Lots of good info.

Ballistic Monte Carlo Methods

This is a paragraph I never thought I’d see in the academic literature:

“[W]e advocate the use of ballistic-assisted (i.e. projectile-based) random sampling methods because they are both easily accessible and parallelizable. In particular, shotgun-assisted random sampling seems very suitable becaues of the presumed abundance of shotguns in cataclysmic times and the speed at which they can generate samples.”

– Vincent Dumoulin, F?lix Thouin – “A Ballistic Monte Carlo Approximation of ?“

Awesome. That’d make for an amazing grant application.
See here for a summary article that explains things for non-mathematicians.
Edit: Somehow I borked the initial post by forgetting the title and screwing up a link. I’ve now corrected these errors. If you’re still seeing those errors in your feed reader, please refresh the feed.

Transportation Independence

A few months ago there was a Teamsters strike in Tucson that resulted in the city bus service being interrupted for several days.
The newspapers reported that many thousands of people had no means of transportation other than their own two feet (and some not even that) and the bus. These people were unable to make it to work, to appointments, etc. A few of my college-age friends were among them. Bad Times ensued.
Now the BBC is reporting that Eurostar train service between the UK and Brussels will be interrupted due to strikes. I’ve had the pleasure of riding on the Eurostar and have noted that it’s usually filled with all number of people, including many business-types. No doubt there will be many people affected by this disruption.
While it may be difficult to find practical alternatives for long-distance transportation like the Eurostar (though one can make it from the Guildford, UK to Monte Carlo by ferry and car before a train can get you there, according to Top Gear), there’s really no excuse to not have one’s own local transportation.
At the very least, get a bicycle. While it might take an hour and a half for an average person to walk five miles, walking across town is more of a hassle, as there’s lights, intersections, and the like. It’s likely to take much longer. A bicycle, however, is much faster than walking, isn’t limited to roads like a car, is less expensive to purchase (my Giant Cypress was about $150 on sale), involves no insurance or expenses other than a helmet, at least one U-lock, and maybe a replacement tube or two in case you run over glass. A bike can fit in even the smallest apartment.
A motor scooter or motorcycle, particularly a well-maintained used one, is also a wise choice. Inexpensive to buy, inexpensive to insure (state minimums in AZ are about $75/year with Progressive, though I prefer full coverage at about $300/year), and inexpensive to keep fueled up and maintained, they’re great choices for both short-and-medium ranged travel. One also needn’t work up a sweat when commuting to work. Every European city I’ve been in has been chock-full of scooters for these very reasons.
While there’s not much one can do about fuel availability (see the fuel strikes in France) — other than riding a bike, owning oil wells and a refinery, or having a solar/wind charger for an electric vehicle — being completely dependent on a third-party for basic, everyday transportation needs is a Really Bad Idea. If one takes the bus or subway to work every day, that’s fine, but one should have an alternative available if the need arises.
[Update June 16, 2011: Due to an oddly large amount of spammers targeting this post with spam for limo services and the like, comments are now closed.]

Be Handy, Save Money

Problem: Motor scooter idles rough, frequently stalls at idle, and generally runs poorly. It wasn’t always like this.
Spendy: Mechanic wants ~$70 for diagnosis and repairs.
Handy: Open carburetor access hatch. Inspect for obvious defects. Find cracked vacuum hose.
Cheap: Spend $1.39 for new vacuum hose. Replace hose. Scooter runs great.
While being specialized skills can be a definite perk, just having a base level of “handiness” can be…well…handy. Knowing how to troubleshoot, find, and fix problems with commonly-encountered things (e.g. computers, guns, vehicles, home electrical appliances, plumbing, etc.) can be rewarding, useful, and cost-effective.
Just don’t hurt yourself too badly while learning. 🙂

Where Not To Go

A recent Fark thread about zombies brought disaster preparedness to the fore in my mind.
Specifically, it made me think about locations that, at first glance, may seem to be an excellent place to flee to in a disaster, but are actually a very bad idea.
One of the prime examples is a big-box store, like Wal-Mart, Costco, etc. Here’s my analysis:
Pros

  1. Large, windowless building. Rolling metal shutters allow entrances to be secured. Doors only open outwards, and are made of steel.
  2. Substantial reserves of food and water.
  3. Large, flat roof makes it easy to observe (and by extension protect) the surrounding environs.
  4. Large steel racks of goods can be used for various other purposes, including elevated sleeping platforms and barriers.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? However, if there’s a major disaster, there’s numerous cons as well:
Cons

  1. Most people are poorly prepared for an emergency, and so will flock to such a store if a disaster is imminent ((They always seem to buy bread, milk, and eggs. Why? When faced with a natural disaster, “french toast” is not the first food that comes to mind.)). They’ll probably head in even greater numbers to such a store during a disaster (witness all the looting that took place in New Orleans after Katrina, for example).
  2. These stores have huge amounts of perishable products (e.g. meats, milk, etc.) that will rapidly spoil if the power to their freezers is interrupted. One would need to quickly remove these products from the store and deposit them a suitable distance away before they spoil, particularly if one is going to remain there for more than a day or two. Spoiled food can attract predators and harbor diseases.
  3. Sanitation is a problem. While one can flush a toilet by pouring water into it (useful if the water service is out), this wastes considerable amount of water. It also assumes that the sewer system is still operational, which may not necessarily be the case. Big-box stores tend to be surrounded by enormous parking lots, and digging a latrine through asphalt is quite challenging.

While a big-box store may appear to be an attractive place to go during a disaster, I submit that it’s a bad idea.
To me, it makes much more sense to be reasonably prepared at home — a week or two of food and water per person doesn’t take up that much space and isn’t that expensive. Get a few other basic supplies (( Firearms and ammo are assumed.)) , like? flashlights, batteries, a water filter, some means of starting a fire, a shovel/entrenching tool, toilet paper, some cash, a tent and some sleeping bags, and you’ll be set to ride out just about any plausible disaster until help arrives.
If an actual zombie attack occurs, we’ll be screwed anyway.