Gunman Drill in North Carolina

This is pretty crazy.  Elizabeth City State University decides to hold a mock gunman drill:

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported in Wednesday’s editions that an armed man burst into a classroom Friday, threatening to kill students. The drill came eight days after a gunman killed five people and himself in a classroom at Northern Illinois University.

Anthony Brown, vice chancellor of student affairs, said ECSU was testing its response to such shootings. E-mail and text messages were sent five days before the drill, notifying students, staff and faculty, he said.

“The intent was not to frighten them but to test our system and also to test the response of the security that was on campus and the people that were notified,” Brown said.

But not everyone got the word, including assistant professor Jingbin Wang, whose American foreign policy class was held hostage.

“I was prepared to die at that moment,” Wang said Tuesday of the moment the gunman entered the room.

What would you do in that situation?  The report says it was a “red” plastic model gun. I’m guessing the type that officers use for training.  Breda notes, relaying a story about a mouse she found in her garage:

A campus police officer posing as a gunman burst into a classroom, where he proceeded to hold the students hostage and terrorize them with a fake gun for 10 minutes. Not one of the students fought back. Not one thought to pick up a chair or a desk, or even a book, to defend themselves. They all lined up against a wall and passively waited for death.

One of the students said, “I was prepared to die at that moment.” Several students say they considered leaping from a window.

My mouse had more courage than this. Against insurmountable odds, it growled at me and prepared to fight, even to its death. The college students who meekly bared their throats to those who wanted to rip them out are dead already – they just don’t know it.
The will to live is life.

Even with an obviously fake gun, I would at least challenge the “attacker”.  Hell, he might even get drawn on if he’s acting really erratic.  I sincerely hope that most of the students knew this was the drill, and decided to play along.

Need Some Pro-Gun Representation

It would appear the proprietor of TopGlock is feeling awful about the fact that he sold a pistol to the Virginia Tech scumbag and the NIU scumbag.  He’s started a web site, which includes a forum, open to both sides in the gun debate.  Right now it looks to have some anti-gun representation.   Readers with more time than I have might want to go there to make sure the pro-gun side of the debate is represented.

I don’t think Eric Thompson has anything to feel bad about, any more than a car dealer should feel guilty if he sells a car to a guy who ended up causing a drunk driving fatality.  The moral blame is on the muderous scumbag, not the person who legally sold them the tools.

Hat tip to reader Kaveman, who heard about this on NPR this morning.

Undermining the Cause

This isn’t going to help shut up Bloomberg:

NEW YORK (AP) — A South Carolina gun dealer who sued New York’s mayor for saying his shop engaged in “criminal behavior,” has asked judges in two states to put his case on hold so he can fight an unrelated criminal charge.

Licensed firearms dealer Larry Mickalis was indicted earlier this month on a charge that he illegally sold a rifle to an ex-convict two years ago at his pawn shop in Summerville, S.C.

The charge was a surprise development in the merchant’s ongoing legal battle with New York City, and his attorneys have now asked courts to freeze the civil litigation until the criminal case is resolved.

Recall that ATF was steamed that Bloomberg’s antics interfered with several ongoing federal investigations.   I’m guessing this was one of them.  Either way, this isn’t a good development.

Raining on The Brady Parade

SayUncle puts a damper on their Brady Act anniversary celebrations:

1.4M? Sounds impressive. It’s 1.9% of all transactions. But how many were arrested? You know, for breaking the law because they were illegally purchasing guns? 1,400 were. And only 9,575 were even investigated. And only 135 were charged. 46% of rejections were due to felony convictions. 161K rejections were appealed and 57K of appeals were successful. (all data from the DOJ).

They have to lie.  It’s the only way they can win.

In the Vise

Once they have your back against the wall, and your political power has been neutered, they will continue to tighten the vise:

EIGHTY per cent of Central Victoria gun dealers will be driven out of business and attempts by farmers to control vermin will be undermined if recommendations of a licence fee increase are accepted, dealers claim.

The Regulatory Impact Statement is part of a State Government draft proposal on changes to firearm regulations recommending lowering some licence fees including rifles by 11 per cent, professional hand guns by 17 per cent, increasing others such as sporting hand guns by 97 per cent and firearm dealer licences by up to 647 per cent.

A & L Guns owner Rod Flower said his licence fee will increase from about $1380 to $7400 for a three-year period under the new price guidelines.

‘‘This will close down 80 per cent of the businesses and will affect country Victoria more than anywhere else,’’ Mr Flower said.

They don’t care.  That’s the whole idea.  It’s for the children, after all.

Obama’s Waffling on Guns

Cam Edwards outlines some Obama’s contradictions on guns:

But if he holds with the statement that he believes in the individual right to keep and bear arms, but the D.C. Gun Ban somehow passes constitutional muster, I think it’s fair to ask (as Jacob Sullum suggested when I interviewed him today) Senator Obama to name an example of a gun control law that he thinks does or would violate the 2nd Amendment. As it stands, Obama’s turning an “individual right” into something the goverment can violate at will.

It’s hard to really condemn Obama on this when President Bush’s own administratation will be arguing the same thing in front of the Supreme Court in a few weeks.  Obama is just lip service.  Bush is lip service, and is willing to throw us a few table scraps every now and then.  I think we deserve better out of Bush that we’ve gotten, and if gun owners fail to push McCain over the top, McCain will only have Bush to blame for it.

AHSA Whores Itself on Kos

Apparently I’m now one of Wayne LaPerre’s right wing attack dogs.  I feel happy I managed to engage Bob Ricker in the comments over at Bitter’s.  Let’s look at some of what Bob had to say:

Me: So how many members are up to so far Bob?

Bob: More than enough to cause the “whackos” in the gun rights movement serious problems.

So we’re all “whackos” now eh?  AHSA claims to represent shooters.  I am a shooter, by most anyone’s definition.  They think I’m a whacko.

Bob: I don’t understand why you self defense whackos are so concerned about how AHSA elects its directors or our how the organizations finances work.

Because self-defense is oh so whacko.  Normal people have no desire for self-preservation!  Either way, the reason to be concerned is because it speaks to whether AHSA is a real grass roots organization, or a front to give anti-gun Democrats political cover to keep crapping all over your rights.  Good thing the plot didn’t work.  So Schoenke says on Kos:

And remember, NRA rarely acknowledges defeat. That’s why they lead off their attack on AHSA with references to old wins in the 1994 congressional elections and Bush’s win in 2000 despite his having lost the popular vote.  However, the NRA attack dogs fail to mention that Democrats did take back the Senate in 2000 by defeating pro-NRA candidates in Washington, Missouri, Michigan, Delaware and Florida.

I’m not even going to get into why none of these matter, but it’s good to see AHSA showing its true colors here, as a tool of the Democratic Party.  Keep digging guys, that hole of irrelvancy you’ve been working on isn’t quite deep enough.