“The Coming Storm” – Pulling triggers

Go to my article: Active Shooter: The Coming Storm (FBI: Train now!) That’s – how to say it? – a highly monitored post by the FBI. Pretty much every college, university, school district, public, private, or government entity, even military, nuclear facilities, here and overseas, whatever, have seen that post and, clearly from the stats, shared it with others. It’s still very popular especially after tragic events as we’ve recently seen in Dallas.

But there are those who simply will not admit that there is a coming storm, so let’s make an analogy shall we?

This storm slammed into me yesterday evening up in Graham County. It was unavoidable, scary, and there were plenty of warnings and watches, and yet I noticed people ignoring it altogether as if nothing at all were going on all around them. The above picture is to the West. The one below to the North-West:

The system is moving fast and is literally dropping dozens of slow moving funnels down from the bottom of the massive, extremely low-lying thunderhead with lightning everywhere. The picture below is to the North. It’s also throwing out funnels horizontally:

It’s overtaken me within seconds:

I do have a phone-video of this, but don’t know how to reduce the size and get it into a format workable on WordPress. At any rate, here’s a close-up of a part of this massive system just above ground-level. Don’t tell me you don’t see a right-side profile of a face of an old guy with white hair and beard with joe-cool sunglasses and open mouth with buck-teeth looking to your right:

You would think I was on drugs seeing a face in the clouds, right?

Back to: Active Shooter: The Coming Storm (FBI: Train now!)

Here’s the deal. Much violence is wrought by druggies on a drug-induced high / low / hallucination, or, now, by those in full use of their faculties but on an adrenaline rush pushed by ideological radicalization, whether it be with ISIS, some sort “Black Power” movement, or the idiocy of “White Aryan Supremacy”. Besides a super-abundance of drugs, there’s a lot of KKK around here in Western North Carolina. I’m Jewish, and a Catholic priest, and I do assert that black people are people just like anyone else. I remember one lady telling me: “Oh Father George! We’re not racist around here! Take ol’ [N-Word] Joe for instance. We treat him and his [N-Word plural] just AS IF they were real people!” Um… no. She got the reprimand of her life from me, but, I’ll tell you this, there was absolutely no talking to her, and she had just been to church!

If you’re suffering a home invasion or you are witnessing a violent crime, you have to assume that the aggressor is either on drugs (and therefore cannot be reasoned with by definition) or is on an ideological adrenaline high (making them invincible and unreasonable by definition). Other than that, robbers are arrogantly violent, and there’s little chance of reasoning with them either, but there might be. I guess that since I have no fear and want what is best in the long term for anyone, yes, even a very possibly mortally dangerous aggressor, I would look for a way to make someone back down by way of reason or non-deadly force. But the nano-second that they continue to aggress in a harmful manner against myself or others, I would like to think that I would be right there with well placed overwhelming force. I didn’t say nor mean lethal. Overwhelming is good enough. Sometimes there is no time for such niceties, however. For instance, when someone is pumping bullets into a crowd. Then you don’t wait. You provide overwhelming force the instant you have a shot. But if I were you, I would do this, if you can, with the FBI:

Go to: Active Shooter: The Coming Storm (FBI: Train now!)

In speaking with a gun-instructor recently about the opinions I’ve developed over the years regarding our vets and PTSD and how various militaries deal with this right around the world, he recommended to me a couple of books which, it goes without saying, I never heard of before, it being that I’m the most unwell read priest in history. Anyone come across these? I would like to read them only because they were personally recommended. Apparently, they are filled with psychology that uses reason and a great abundance of experience. I like that. They’re by an Army Ranger who has also written against violent video games that train kids to kill.

• On Killing
• On Combat

Then, recommended by a fellow priest, the following is by a USMC guy (like my dad!):

• Left of Bang

As far as that goes, for light reading, I would like to plow through:

• Gone Tomorrow

Outside of the Narnia series when I was kid, the only other novel I’ve read in my life is The Sum of All Fears, and only because I forced myself to do it. But I did like it, especially the style of in media res switching to in media res switching to in media res. What a fright! I used that style to write my own 750 page ecclesiastical thriller: Jackass for the Hour: The Murderous Intrigue of Interreligious Politics. But reading, or writing for that matter, just isn’t good enough.

Go to: Active Shooter: The Coming Storm (FBI: Train now!)

Oh, and the bit about “pulling triggers” in the title of this post? People tell me they wouldn’t know how to deal with the regret of possibly killing someone. To that I say, just get over it. A positive contribution to the virtue of justice is not something to regret. To say that you regret original sin, or the prevalence of drugs in society, or the insanity or clarity of a mass murderer terrorist…. well, fine… regret all you want, but DO the right thing.

Watch just the first seconds of the video above. See the guy on the mid-way landing of the staircase? All the warning signs are there. If I had the perspective of the camera, and I had a gun as a deputed security guard in a school allowing such guards guns, in as much time as it takes just there for him to show his gun and turn, two seconds…. Yes, I would shoot him, and in the back, but first in his keister, and before his first shot. What if it was a water-gun? It’s his fault. We’ll get him the help he needs. What if it’s unloaded and he’s a suicide? Well, then we’ll get him the help he needs in a psychiatric institution.

The storm clouds above took about fifteen seconds to roll over. It only took this guy two seconds to show his gun and turn to aim. It would take me a half second to pump four bullets into both sides of his keister. He would be falling down the steps with me literally jumping fifteen feet down the stair case and landing on top of him, breaking his ribs and basically immobilizing him enough for me to easily slip his gun out of his hand, or, if failing that, pumping a few more bullets into his torso.

I regret that that’s the way it is. I regret we’re not in heaven right now. I regret whatever brought him to such a pass. He probably had a horrible life. But, that’s between him and the Lord, not him and I. Get that? Between him and the Lord. Period. Pulling triggers is sometimes O.K.

And that coming storm? It’s here.

Go to: Active Shooter: The Coming Storm (FBI: Train now!)

P.S. 

Gun fatalities of law officers killed in the line of duty are up 63% this year.