Schools being a “Gun Free Zone” A) Doesn’t mean they’re gun free, B) Doesn’t mean everybody is disarmed:
A lone gunman armed with a shotgun and knife opened fire Thursday in a building at a small Seattle university, fatally wounding one person before a student subdued him with pepper spray as he tried to reload, police said.
A student building monitor at Seattle Pacific University disarmed the gunman after he entered the foyer at Otto Miller Hall, and several other people jumped on top of him and pinned him down until police officers arrived, police said.
The anits will put this case down as a foot-note. There was a “Gun Death”, but it wasn’t one of their coveted “Mass Shootings”. I don’t say “Coveted” lightly either, because we saw how they operate when the Santa Barbara killings were initially reported as a “Mass Shooting”, and we saw them clamoring for more gun laws (despite all the gun laws in the world being in place in California, and that college campus) and then going into damage control when it turns out there were only 3 shooting victims and the other three dead and injured were killed with a knife, and hit with a car.
Still I don’t want to spend much time on the shooter, he had a shotgun which most likely was a Remington 870 or Mossberg 500 just by pure statistical conjecture which is one of those sacred guns that the antis seem to dangle in front of us as a gun we CAN have, and as with other shootings this very well could have been a mass murder rather than a single murder.
It wasn’t because the students acted! They used all weapons available to them, and they acted together and subdued the killer. That being said pepper spray used indoors is risky as the sprayer is most likely to get the effects as much as the attacker, and biologically speaking it is nothing more than a distraction than an actual weapon. The defensive weapon here was the brute strength and superior numbers of the students who refused to be a victim.
Don’t “Shelter in Place” and don’t “Play Dead”, if somebody is initiating a spree killing, consider yourself dead, and act accordingly, it just might turn the tide.
Quick word about universities. I work at one. See George Washington U. Prof. Margaret Soltan’s “University Diaries” blog. any of her linked blogs, and the Pope Center’s “Clarion Call”, among other publications, for insider skinny about the academy.
Anyone who thinks human passions and the propensity for trouble are checked at the campus gates is misinformed.
Tactically speaking, using the pepper spray first, and THEN tackling the shooter, was a brilliant move. My martial arts instructor, when teaching a technique to escape from a grapple or hold (think: someone grabs you by the wrist or shirt), often threw a feinted jab to the eye or kick to the groin as part of the escape – the grabber’s natural instinct is to focus on the new incoming “attack” . . . and soften his/her grip on the wrist or shirt, making it much easier to break free.
The pepper spray was a distraction, but it was a well-timed one that kept the shooter’s attention off his gun and the people taking him down until it was too late.
Plus, you gotta love the “insult to injury” of the big, bad gunman being foiled by a $10 can of OC spray. 🙂
Anybody want to wager on wether or not having the pepper spray violated university rules?
Ha!
Probably.
Universities are like that.
I was talking to the university cops where I go to school.
We were talking about the idiocy of the school rules on campus carry.
As a citizen, I could walk across campus OPEN CARRYING all day. As a student or employee…no guns allowed.
And then he said, “You do have your knife…..right?”
And we both smiled and walked away.
Well the stupidity goes with where the power is rested. In Maine you can open carry all day long on a college campus and it is 100% legal, so Police can’t charge you with anything. Still the SCHOOL might have some power, so campus police of a private university can ask you to leave, and all the rules of trespass apply then. Not so sure about public schools, since the land is the State’s land, they might be able to ask you to leave, or ask you to leave the buildings, not sure since I CC and don’t spend much time in campus buildings these days. But as a student you are matriculating there at the school’s pleasure and if you break any of their rules, no matter how silly they may be, they can boot you from the school, and probably keep your money for the remainder of the semester.
Same goes for my current employer. 100% legal for me to carry at work, and I could invite you into my lab for a tour and (given that you have a valid MA non-res LTC) you could carry the whole time with no issues for either of us, but if I get caught carrying while I’m on the clock I can be fired for violating company policy.
The accounts I read are unclear on who exactly sprayed him. I got the impression it was something like a student hall monitor from High School days, and who knows, he may have been issued that OC spray. Most schools I know don’t have rules against OC except here in Mass where OC is considered “Ammunition” so you need an FID to carry it, and so schools lump it in with “Guns”.