the police are only minutes away."
Anyone who's been around the self-defense arena for very long has probably heard this little truism more than once. The Binghampton shootings reinforces the dead-on veracity of this maxim. In a statement by Police Chief Joseph Zikuski on the shootings, he showed that sometimes the police are MANY minutes away.
The chief defended the time it took officers to go into the building — an hour to 90 minutes.
"If some crazy lunatic decides to pick up a gun and go someplace and start shooting people, I really don't have the answer how long for us that could prevent anything like that," Zikuski said.
"What I will tell you is that the police did the right thing," he said. "We have procedures and protocols."
Remember this the next time someone exhorts you to leave your own self-defense to the police and just dial 911. Procedures and protocols are fine, usually, but sometimes exigent circumstances dictate actual thought over mechanized rote.
Oh, by the way, Chief, I do have an answer on how to, at the very least, keep the body count down: responsible armed citizens. Had someone in that facility been armed, although no one can guarantee it, I'd be willing to bet things would have turned out less favorably for the murderer. But, with the average resident of New York state rendered helpless by governmental decree by not being allowed to be legally armed, a tragedy occurred instead.
No one can predict what will make a weak mind snap. The best we can do is be prepared to take defensive action when it happens, be that defensive action running away or defending yourself with a weapon, especially a firearm.
Take care.
DAL357
2 comments:
It's just insane. 99 times out of 100, the place that gets shot up is in some sort of gun-free zone or state. You never hear of police stations, Army bases or guns shops for that matter, getting shot up.
"What I will tell you is that the police did the right thing," he said. "We have procedures and protocols."
You can bet that the "procedures and protocols" are designed to reduce the risk of officer injury and reduce the risk of liability on the part of the department, not save people.
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