Chris Hicke explains how the NRA’s talking point collapsed in a single afternoon.
Last Thursday, a gunman terrorized another school, Seattle Pacific University, with a shooting spree that killed one student and injured three others. Taking place not even two weeks after the UCSB shooting, this event has me wondering if it’s too much to ask for mass shootings, especially at schools, to be a little less common in the United States. Hell, I want to know how many times these have to happen before we consider it a problem we need to deal with, instead of… what? A normal part of everyday life? The price we pay for gun lovers to exercise their rights? At what point are we going to say “enough is enough” and take action to keep our citizens, students, and children safe?
For as horrible as the SPU shooting was, there are some aspects of the shooting that strike me as a silver lining, for lack of a better term. Among them, there is the fact that the shooter, who I refuse to name, was stopped by a student building monitor, Jon Meis, before his rampage claimed any more victims. What makes this a unique and important event is that the guard was armed only with pepper spray, and subdued the shooter while he reloaded his shotgun. Other students then aided Meis in holding the gunman until the police arrived to arrest him.
Daily Kos summed up the importance of this chain of events quite succinctly:
“So here we have a situation which suggests that a smaller clip – one which necessitates a greater rate of reloads when the gun murderer can potentially become vulnerable – is possibly a contributing factor in the subduction of a rampaging gunman… if you want to determine details about the psyche of an individual who would perpetrate such a horrific crime for the purposes of possibly reducing the number of such events in the future, that interview requires a live suspect rather than a dead one.”
The SPU shooting, horrible and unfortunate though it was, shows that legislating reducing clip size can provide more openings for bystanders to safely subdue a shooter by forcing him or her to reload their weapon more frequently. The fact that Meis was armed only with pepper spray, additionally, destroys the NRA’s vaunted talking point that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” If that’s not proof positive of how wrong Wayne LaPierre’s is, I don’t know what else will prove it.
As a bonus, with the shooter arrested instead of dead, we now have the ability to get first-hand information from him regarding his motivations. This is information that we can put to use to prevent these incidents before they happen. We can learn nothing about methods and planning from another dead body, and not everyone is a thorough as the UCSB shooter when it comes to writing and videoing their manifesto for us to examine.
I’m sure we’re all tired of these shootings happening. The events are horrific, the deaths tragic, the discussions heated and unproductive. As I’ve written previously, I come across these stories by pure chance; I hate looking them up and reading about them because of how horrible they are. I’m tired of butting heads with people who see any attempt at discussion or regulation as an infringement on their rights, disregarding the pain the victims and their families suffer, and acting like anyone who disagrees with them wants to disarm them completely (though I’d argue that’s a legitimate course of action in some cases). As much as I do not want another shooting to happen, I can only hope that outcomes like this one show that there are ways to stop them that don’t involve arming every single person in the country.
The chances are good that if the pepper spray was a hand gun he may have been dropped before any one was hurt.
I would be happy to comment but the last time I did regarding the NRA, my comment was deleted;
Indicating what, exactly, Tom Brechlin? That you’re unable to discuss the NRA without resorting to rudeness, name-calling, threats of violence and overall inappropriateness?
The day Tom threatens anyone with violence is a cold day in hell. You’re lying.
Tom, the sin you committed was interrupting the echo chamber- they don’t take kindly to that around these parts.