Tag Archives: Gun Violence

NRA Promotes Guns as Retail Therapy…

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Have you ever seen someone who just ordered a new gun over the web?  I did recently, and it reminded me of how I act when I get a new sweater from Amazon delivered to my house.

They carefully, even reverently, unwrap the new gun, they touch the barrel, inspect the handle for scratches, and read the info that came with it… then they put it away in their idea of a safe place, to be brought out and enjoyed almost like an object of art.

Many of these people never shoot, only hunt in the meat aisle of the local Giant store, and would never shoot anyone, but the NRA has done a great job of SELLING GUNS, and like me having too many sweaters, these people have too many guns.

These are the guns that kill the little boys playing in daddy’s bedroom.  These are the guns that the one little girl accidentally fires and shoots her brother in the leg.  These are the guns found by criminals during a robbery and uses them to rob a 7-11 store.

These are the guns that Adam Lanza collected with his mommy and used to kill the little children at Sandy Hook elementary school.

And this idea of gun ‘collecting’ and gun ‘worship’ is something the NRA has created, promoted and continues to encourage – hence the fear of any kinds of limits on their ‘collections’.

Can’t we get these people to collect actual ART, cashmere sweaters, fancy belt buckles or anything else instead of these lethal weapons disguised as ‘collectables”?

 

Assessing School Security Takes on New Dimensions after Sandy Hook Tragedy

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After 30 years of security risk assessment experience and working with hundreds of schools, hospitals, facilities, I have to say that schools have not taken school security seriously.

Obviously there are the social pressures including mental health screening, proposed assault weapons bans, gun owner screening, etc., but these are the thing that won’t change overnight.  EVEN IF THEY ARE LEGISLATED, it takes time to implement, and
implementation may not be perfect.

TODAY IS THE DAY TO DO A SCHOOL VIOLENCE ASSESSMENT – not tomorrow, not after new gun laws, not after the holidays — TODAY.

There are indicators you can look for to see if your school is at risk of an active shooter incident.  And ways to be prepared if the unthinkable happens and an active shooter comes to your school.

Strong, simple access control is the most effective solution, and yes, this may mean that
a plain glass front door or window is not enough.  Glass is easily broken, and yes, it means that all staff must be a little more accountable, and it probably means a red phone or connection to the local police.

There is a simple school risk assessment program that will give guidance on what you need to do TODAY, what controls you need to implement, what threats are most likely to occur.  These can be accessed on the www.riskandsecurityllc.com website.

Some things are preventable, some aren’t.  But lockdown drills, alarm systems, and active monitoring of cameras are just a few of the 60 controls every school should have in place to protect our precious children.

And this comes from the grandmother who’s 3-year old twins turned 3 yesterday!

 

Arming the Office – What Happens When We Let Employees Bring Guns to Work

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One of my colleagues wrote to me so passionately about the terrible gun violence he witnesses every day, that I wanted to share it with all of you.  You can call it a ‘Guest Blog’ from the Field — a Hospital Security Director in a Major U.S. City.

The gun lobby had several recent legal “wins” for the gun rights advocates in Texas, Indiana, and Tennessee.   Apparently lawmakers and gun rights advocates find it a sane and reasonable  policy to open up the workplace to armed employees.

It t is also clear that our lawmakers are not satisfied with our current national gun carnage. Currently, we shoot to death about a 100 people a day in the United States, including 25 children killed every three days.  And this tally accounts for only those killed by guns.

This doesn’t include all those I see on a daily basis who are shot, crippled, maimed and ruined by the daily shooting gallery in the USA.   In order to continue to make money and sell more guns, the gun rights advocates, and  the legislators they have paid off, corrupted and stripped of reason,  are intent on even greater carnage and human tragedy.

Every day I witness the extreme becoming mainstream, and even commonplace.  
Guns are now finding their way into the workplace, brought into churches, brought into our colleges and universities. They are brought to hospitals, and shot off over highway bridges.

The logic is totally missing.  We are already a nation awash in fear and loathing.  We hate people  we don’t know and don’t understand.  The answer to this problem is NOT to arm EVEN MORE people and have guns readily available to everyone.

Obviously, the recent horrors of Arizona and the slaughter of innocent people in a Safeway parking lot,  has already been forgotten by security professionals and criminologists.  There is no condemnation or follow up  about a terminally troubled young man and the ease in which he purchased a semi-automatic pistol and 30 shot clips.

There has been no rallying cry to address the ease in which tormented and troubled and dangerous individuals on the margins of our society can easily obtain weapons of human mass destruction.   These realities are not relevant and cannot be discussed. And in today’s political climate to even MENTION this makes one a pariah, or a “liberal”, or a “communist”.

 I have been in the Security and Prevention profession for over 35 years, so I can easily dismiss the attacks from gun rights advocates and zealots.  And in fairness,  I have found many gun rights people to be in fact reasoned and decent and willing to engage in reasoned discourse.

What troubles me, and why I wanted to write directly to YOU,  is that the vast majority of professionals in the Security profession totally bypass, ignore and in fact, minimize the reality and tragedy that is our national gun slaughter.   As a profession,  we have done nothing to challenge these trends,  or address them, or at the very least,  debate the current flood of laws designed to turn American work places into armed camps.  

And this in my view is nothing less than a tragedy.