A post-Newtown panel headed by anti-gun Connecticut Democrats Andrew Fleischmann and Beth Bye is rejecting armed guards and embracing emergency “panic” buttons, the Hartford Courant reported Tuesday. Aside from funding considerations, Democrat Roberta Willis challenged deployment of armed first responders asking “How effective is it?"
Rather than look to places like Utah, a state where concealed weapon permit holders are not prohibited from bearing arms in public schools, and a place where there have been no school shootings, Willis and her colleagues can instead look to Georgia, where “Marietta Public Schools have added ‘panic buttons’ to its schools in response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.”
The buttons are also all the rage in Alabama, where “Teachers and staff at the Orange Beach Elementary School … wear these buttons around their necks in case of emergency,” and where, “once the button is pushed, the school goes on lockdown with students locked inside their classrooms.”
“In just minutes, Lanza ... would kill 26 people in the country's second-largest mass killing,” the Courant reported in December. By the time police arrived, it was over.
Just minutes. Imagine if the Sandy Hook teachers had been equipped with panic buttons. Does anyone seriously think the obscene carnage results would have been any different?
Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine, right now wherever you are, you hear shots. Yes, there may be a “No Guns” sign at the entrance to your building, but remember the Newtown school was “gun free,” too. You hear screaming and people crying in terror. Once you figure out that’s what you’re hearing, and realize you and everyone around you are in mortal danger, you’ve got a choice. Knowing that if you’re lucky enough to survive, you might just hear approaching sirens 10 minutes from now, what would you rather do: press a panic button, or prepare to defend yourself and any nearby loved ones or innocents with a firearm?
What's that? You have no gun? You have no training? Whose choice is that, and why should your negligence and abdication of adult responsibilities have any bearing on the rest of us and our choices?
Back to our drill: No time to hesitate -- those shots and screams are getting closer. Oh, God, he’s right outside the d…
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