The Cost Of Fear
You may have seen the news about the shooting at the office of the governor of Colorado:
… a man in a dark suit some described as a tuxedo appeared outside the offices of Gov. Bill Ritter. He refused to drop a handgun, and was shot and killed by a patrolman on the governor’s security detail.
The man said before he was shot, “I am the emperor and I’m here to take over state government,” said Evan Dreyer, the governor’s spokesman.
No one besides the gunman was injured.
Now they are talking about new security measures and the need to install metal detectors at the entrances.
What part of “No one besides the gunman was injured” don’t these people understand. The system in place worked. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Before banning sippy cups, snack packs, or “cremains” how about taking a minute to thank the people who did their job in a competent manner, and not question their worth by adding a lot of expensive equipment.
24 comments
How about having law enforcement carry and use incapacitating non-lethal weapons (in addition to the good old guns). Then they can receive training on how to spot an obviously mentally ill person, such as what seems to be the case here…
Design the weapon and they will buy it. Nothing currently available is totally effective, and may even be less than normally effective when dealing with people on drugs, or with mental problems.
When they saw the gun, that’s all they saw.
The only effective way of dealing with mentally ill, but potentially violent people, is manpower, and a lot of it. You almost never have the people available, and people are going to be injured, regardless.
We really need a real, effective, stun gun.
“… incapacitating non-lethal weapons…” – CD and DS
cat daddy and dr squeeky, I’ll let Bryan answer on the merits because he’s the one qualified to do so, but I’m curious just what you consider to be “incapacitating non-lethal weapons.” Clearly, TASERs don’t qualify on the “non-lethal” characteristic, as an increasing number of police department policies recognize in the face of TASER-associated fatalities.
I’m just saying, forgive the unavoidable pun, that there’s no magic bullet here. There appears to be no dispute that the man, whether insane or drugged up or whatever, was carrying a handgun and threatening to use it. As committed as I am to nonviolent means whenever they can be made to work… and that’s pretty committed; ask anyone… I don’t think it would be fair to place at risk the police officers, the governor and other people who may have been present by insisting or even suggesting that the officer should have used a TASER instead of a gun.
The outcome is undeniably regrettable. But the real question Colorado authorities should be asking themselves here is how a crazy got hold of a handgun. As Bryan notes, the protection protocol ain’t “broke,” and shouldn’t be “fixed.” But perhaps the background checks required to obtain a handgun need to be tweaked.
Bryan, we were posting at the same time. Let me add in response that I seriously doubt there will ever be a truly effective “stun gun” because there are too many variables: the body mass of the person involved, their neurological and cardiovascular condition, where the electrodes land, and as you noted, whether the person is on drugs. I have read one case in which a man became still more violent after he was “tasered,” was then tasered again to disable him, and ultimately died after the incident, whether of the effects of the TASER or not.
That “stun” setting on Star Trek phasers, where the weapon itself apparently figures out all those factors in real time? That’s fiction, and probably always will be.
Bryan is right and there is no reason to change the security afforded the governor as it is apparently capable of doing its job. As for the poor bastard that got whacked,and don’t want this to come across the wrong way but, he was obviously somewhat deranged and if armed dangerous and just made another argument for Darwin.
I think you’re right, Steve. You would be hard pressed to find a greater supporter of the Second Amendment than me, but we have to stop selling guns to people with mental problems. It’s Virginia Tech again. I can’t believe that this guy had no record of mental health problems, the purchase check should catch them.
It’s for their protection – when cops see guns they react with deadly force.
Instead of playing around with lightning guns and xray lasers, DARPA really should be funding research on an effective non-lethal weapon. Tasers have too many problems, and electronic stun tools share those problems. They remind me of the cattle prods used in the South during the civil rights movement, so I’m prejudiced against them and admit it.
Counter-insurgency fighting would be a lot more effective if so many people weren’t killed. Hostage situations would be simple to handle if you could render everyone unconscious from a distance. There has to be a way.
OT: CD, my condolences on the loss of Sebastian. I can’t comment at your place or I would have left a note.
For the record, this tuxedo-clad penguin has never been in Colorado, and despite his iffy mental state, has no intention of purchasing a handgun anytime soon.
There isn’t much you can do if someone has a gun. You can ask him to put it down, like the folks in D.C. who had their backyard reception crashed by a gun-wielding mugger and invited him for some wine and canapes, “just put the gun down you don’t need that here” (he did, wonder of wonders! And after his second glass of wine, he left, after requesting, and getting, a group hug!). But if he doesn’t, then you’re justified in escalating immediately to deadly force if you have that option at your disposal, because the assumption is that he means to use said gun to kill someone. And you don’t want something that *maybe* will stop him. You want to put lead into him, immediately, enough lead so that you *know* he will be stopped.
It is, however, bad form to manage to shoot the guy you’re supposedly protecting when you’re doing this. Folks have now worked all the trajectories and such and discovered that Gov. Huey Long of Louisiana was probably done in by his own trigger-happy bodyguards losing track of where their charge was while they were pumping bullets into the perp.
— Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Having worked personal protection while in law enforcement for visiting dignitaries, you are always supposed to know where your principle is. We used Hydroshock loads because they “splash” instead of ricochet and they have good knock-down characteristics. They also tend not to penetrate like a full jacket which is a definite plus in an urban environment or building. As my range officer used to scream, if you can’t see the target, you shouldn’t be pulling the trigger.
I don’t doubt the story at all Badtux, there have been “friendly fire” incidents for a very long time, and they happen in all too often in law enforcement. That’s why I didn’t like working with the Secret Service protection guys, as they tended to carry automatic weapons.
I would really like that “phaser on stun” because you don’t get a lot of information from a corpse.
Given it was the early 1930’s, the bodyguards would have been armed with .38 revolvers with relatively low power unjacketed ball rounds, which don’t exactly “splash”. Long was hit by only one round which appears now to have been a ricochet from one of his bodyguards’ guns (i.e. it missed Weiss, bounced off the marble, and got Long), but it was a gut shot and the incompetent surgeon who sewed Long back up missed a spot with predictable results in the pre-antibiotics era. And yeah, the “phaser on stun” woulda been helpful there at preserving the life of the principle, as well as in finding out what set off Weiss. Oh well.
Gunfire inside a concrete/stone structure can get pretty exciting, like an accidental firing inside an APC according to a cousin.
Does this mean Carlisle Floyd will have to rewrite Willie Stark?
Not during a Repub administration, Steve.
Alright, there are clearly problems with nonelethals at this point and if the subject has a gun, he/she is fair game, governor or no governor involved. Having worked with the mentally ill who commit crimes, including violent crimes (which is a very small minority of the mentally ill, despite what “tough on crime politicials may lke to say), I feel for the guy. However, he did have a gun… So, I’ll go another way… No guns, no incident… For those 2nd ammendment buffs… no guns for the mentally ill, no incident..
Bryan, thanks for the thought about Sebastian… I may start doing the friday cat blogging, which would include the “Little bastard” also known as Sparky, and Macey (who may now fit the bill for “Fat Bastard the second”).
You have a point, CD, and it is important. We need an effective, non-lethal method of stopping people, even people with guns. Shooting around people is too dangerous, even when it’s justified. There has to be a better way. There also has to be a better procedure for checking on people before they buy weapons.
If this guy was having delusions, as was apparently the case, I can’t believe he hadn’t had a mental health referral, and that should have been caught. I’m not saying that once you have been diagnosed you should never be allowed near weapons, people do get stabilized and some problems are cured, but a mental health professional should be able to flag someone and prevent a weapons purchase.
There’s always room for more cat blogging.
hmmm… looks like about 20% of us ordinary folks are mentally ill but that less than less than 10% of jail inmates are mentally ill.
guns for everybody or guns for nobody, i say.
we already demonize the mentally ill in our society, we don’t need to be piling on background checks on them too. incidents like columbine and virginia tech [did you notice michael vick’s alma mater? it’s a lovely part of the country, but is there something in the water?] are frightening and spectacular and stunningly sensationalized by the media, but not a lot of people are actually killed in mass murders staged by crazies.
Most people have never heard of “suicide by cop,” but it was beginning to be noticed in squad rooms back in the 1970s. You go on the call and you are confronted by an individual with no prior criminal history acting in a manner that demand a deadly response. Often hostages are involved, but there is no apparent underlying reason for the situation.
Killing people is not an easy thing, even when it is totally justified. A lot of cops quit after a shooting, even though there was no doubt that it was the only way of bringing the situation to closure. It is really hard when looking at the situation afterwards you conclude that you had been an unwilling participant in “assisted suicide.”
There is no reason for a gun shop owner to know why someone isn’t permitted to buy a gun, only that they can’t. I would leave the call and flagging to mental health professionals, who would also have the right to remove it. We do it for cops in a lot of jurisdictions, requiring desk duty and mental health counseling after a shooting. If it’s a good things for trained officers, it’s a good thing for untrained citizens.
Civil Service in New York requires the Minneapolis Multiphase Personality Test and a psychiatric interview as part of the hiring process for law enforcement. It reduces the number of gunslinging whackos who carry badges.
It reduces the number of gunslinging whackos who carry badges.
i can’t argue with that.
If it’s a good things for trained officers, it’s a good thing for untrained citizens.
i’ll look like an idiot for arguing with this one, but i’m going to [somewhat] anyway.not with the counseling part; if i were king of the world, there’d be a free walk-in mental health clinic on every other street corner, and the counselors would be paid handsome salaries. but keeping databases on folks? we’ve seen how well that works with no-fly lists and sex offender registries.
Killing people is not an easy thing
what i used to do. i don’t know if it was a national policy or not, but the chapter i belonged to included in its list of clients any police officers, firefighters, or dispatchers involved in a traumatic situation.
….suicide by cop… no prior criminal history…
but too often i’d bet these same people have no prior history of treatment for mental illmess, either. we could start keeping lists of “people who act oddly sometimes” just in case, but i’d top every last of them.
i lean towards the “wine and canapes and group hugs” form of self-defense myself. my associations with mentally ill people have never been in a professional capacity, but they’ve been varied and frequent and they bear out cat daddy’s point: damned few of them are that violent.
Hipparchia there was a large mental facility in an adjoining jurisdiction when I was in law enforcement, and the only interaction we had with the patients was to take them back when they got lost in our area. They never caused a problem, which is more than I can say for the people who called us when one of the patients was in their area.
There was only one patient that I made sit in the back, but that was because he would start taking things apart to see how they worked, not because he was a threat.
That’s why I want the call made by a professional and not a bureaucrat. There are plenty of things that would cause people to seek professional help that have nothing to do with their being a threat to themselves or others.
The problem with all of the current lists is that it is easy to add names, but damn hard to remove them. That has to change. There needs to be a formal protest procedure to correct errors on the list.
that would be the nature of lists. that you can’t get off of them.
A lot depends on the civil liberties consequences of being on the list.
* A list that gets you jailed on an executive order is pretty damned severe. (Don’t get me started.)
* A list that prevents you from flying in a commercial aircraft has the potential to change your life a great deal. (I honestly don’t know if I’m on the no-fly list, because I haven’t tried to fly in a long time, but I’ve read and heard that people who regularly participate in antiwar demonstrations frequently find themselves on those lists. My evidence is admittedly anecdotal.)
* A list that prohibits you from owning or carrying a gun has consequences that depend a great deal on your need for a gun.
I don’t own a gun, let alone carry one, because I have made a conscious decision not to “need” one. I.e., all other things being equal, I’d rather be killed than kill someone with a firearm, only to discover that I shouldn’t have. I’d make a terrible law enforcement officer: my indecision would be the death of one or more people, probably including me. YMMV.
And yes, I support the Second Amendment, as interpreted by the courts over the decades. But I wish that not so many people would exercise the right, and that among those who do, they would have sufficient internal stability to self-restrict when appropriate. Perhaps that is a foolish hope on my part, akin to hoping for a “group hug” solution to an armed robbery.
It does seem to me that restricting firearm ownership in at least those cases in which people have shown violent tendencies or a violent history… yeah, I know, that’s awfully vague… is a fairly minimal civil liberties infringement compared to no-fly lists or “enemy combatant” designations.
The basic problem with all of these list was been the problem with credit reports for years. There needs to be a process to challenge inclusion on any of these lists and it has to be in a law or it will be ignored.
Of Course, one of the problems of challenging inclusion on the lists, is that you get your name on another list. This is the technique used by some spammers that allow you to have your name removed from one list, but gets you put on a list of confirmed good e-mail addresses.
the other nature of lists is to proliferate.
i still think i’d rather take my chances with the crazies. even if they do get it together enough to get a gun, they don’t always remember the bullets.
how about taking a minute to thank the people who did their job in a competent manner
[per instructions]
thanks, guys. you did a good job.
Most of the gun dealers I’ve dealt with won’t sell ammunition with a gun, but then they have to know you or you have to be recommended by people they know before they’ll sell you anything. Some of the idiots who sell guns will allow people to load clips in the store, which is a good way to get robbed.