If you really want to stop a bad guy with a gun, hope for a good woman with a large and brave heart.
Antoinette. Wow.
Thanks to her, this time there will be no funerals with tiny caskets, no candlelit vigils and no families broken by grief.
No one was shot Tuesday after a man slipped into an elementary school just outside Atlanta with an AK-47-style assault rifle, 500 rounds of ammo and “nothing to live for.”
Why?
Not because we listened to gun advocates who said we should arm teachers with weapons.
Not because we took the advice of the National Rifle Association, which said schools should have armed officers.
Not because we heeded the school board directives to make frightening “intruder drills” part of every curriculum.
You can write the rest of it . . . .
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
Whatever Works 
I saw that the President called her. Good for him and HOORAY for her! You think LaPierre called the shooter?
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What LaPierre needs is to be put on a high dosage of psychotic medication…
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Hi Don: he does get a bit red in the face, doesn’t he.
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This is the most heartwarming story of the last many years, I think. Human kindness it’s overflowing.
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Perfect Elyse. As for the human kindness, you of course wrote those words before reading down the thread for the comments from some of our gentlemens. They seem not to want to give Antoinette even an inch of credit.
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No. I rarely read the comments. Some of your commenters are not my style.
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Bless her for her cool actions under pressure….
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“No one was shot Tuesday . . . ” That speaks volumes. The good side of human nature won that day.
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imagine, words worked better than bullets. What a concept.
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I’m glad that worked for her and she’s a very brave woman. It means nothing though because the young man probably never really wanted to shoot anybody unlike some of the other ones out there.
Shooters like that are like suicidal people; they come in two types, those who really want help and those who really want to do it. You can talk the first down but you’ll even hear about the latter until it’s too late.
That all being said, responses don’t have to be a binary toggle, an XOR if you will (callback to Moe’s earlier post 😀 ). We can arm teachers, conduct drills, and give people in the schools basic conflict de-escalation / negotiation training.
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jonolan, you say ‘it means nothing’ because he wasn’t really meaning to kill. But you’re wrong – it means everything, because she wasn’t a Zimmerman ready to shoot first and ask questions later. And that was why it was so noteworthy.
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Two things:
One – It meant nothing because her actions aren’t applicable across the board because she got lucky enough to run into someone who didn’t really want to kill anyone. If she’d tried that in any of the other cases that have made the news she’d be a corpse.
Two – Please, Moe! Zimmerman didn’t shoot until he was attacked by Martin and beaten to the ground by the young thug. That’s very far from “shoot first and ask questions later.”
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Was not Tayvon ‘standing his ground’ against what he perceived as a ‘stalker’.?
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Not according to the evidence at hand, Moe. Going by the evidence, Zimmerman approached Martin; they exchanged words (I assume Zimmerman was an ass); they then parted, but Martin ran after Zimmerman and gave him a beat down.
Even Stand Your Ground won’t protect you if you pursue the person.
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The evidence you cite is the word of the only surviiving witness, George Zimmerman.
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That’s right, Moe. And you were also right to note that Travon may have thought he was facing a “stalker”, except I would have used the word “mugger” instead. I have mentioned this before, but with little result. Why is it nobody seems able to picture a white-on-black mugging? If one can get over that mental hurdle, then Travon’s motivation for attacking the unknown armed man challenging him at night seems very straightforward to me.
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I know Jim. Neither the ‘professional anti-gun or anti-racist’ talkers on TV nor their leftist hosts ever make that point.
” attacking the unknown armed man challenging him at night ” puts it perfectly.
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Well, Jim. That’s a big hurdle. One, why would a propertied man of some means mug a Black teen in his own neighborhood? Two, White-on-Black street crime is almost nonexistent, not that Black-on-White street crime is particular prevalent either, just comparatively far more so.
Note – We’re dealing with the “law of SMALL numbers here” as most (80%+) street crime is intraracial.
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@jonolan: a point of fact – you describe Zimmerman as “a propertied man” (charmingly antique use). He was not, is not. That house belongs to his soon to be ex-wife’s parents.
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The idea that Trayvon was beating George up was basically the story as it was told by the defense. There was also a medical expert on the stand who stated that Zimmerman’s injuries didn’t match the idea of him getting his head pounded into the ground.
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And the words of the eye-witnesses, Moe, such as they were; and the general findings of the forensics…
As for the “unknown armed man challenging him at night” – We have exactly zero evidence to support the thought that Martin knew Zimmerman was armed. It certainly seems unlikely that he did since he’d likely have not attacked Zimmerman if he had known he was carrying.
But, yes; I understand your point, Moe and Jim. Martin was too Black to be guilty and Zimmerman was too White to be innocent.
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It was, forgive the phrase, a dark and stormy night, and with nobody else around, one man, not in uniform, challenges another in an area where there has been recent mischief. It turned into a fight-or-flight situation and when adrenaline kicks in, so often does instinct. And I’m not saying Travon saw the gun, just that he might have. Why might he attack instead of running? Because you can’t outrun a bullet.
All I’m saying is that such a scenario is possible. Based on the accounts I’ve read, Zimmerman was found not guilty because of lack of evidence, but that does not prove he was innocent.
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Except that there was an eye-witness, Jonathan Good, whose testimony didn’t match your fantasy.
Deal with it. Zimmerman probably royally pissed off an already pissed Martin. Martin then moved from words to violence, which turned out to be a fatal mistake. Simply put, it’s Darwinism in action.
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I looked up the account of Good’s testimony – he was a neighbor who stepped out of his apartment just in time to see the end of the fight. The fact that he saw them fighting only proves that Martin fought instead of running and to expect someone in that situation to use any restraint is unrealistic, especially when he’s still a teenager. And then, it said this by the way:
So, deal with that.
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Further point of fact: ‘general findings of the forensics” now very much in doubt as the assistant pathologist publicly disagrees with some of those findings.
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Jonolan,
I have to wonder how many people in prior mass shootings acted in similar ways to this woman, but we do not know about them because they were not successful. The proposition that this is a viable alternative for protecting school children amazes me.
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Victoria Soto tried something similar in Sandy Hook, though we’ll never know how much chance she had to engage the shooter beyond trying to misdirect him. She died.
As I said before, there’s generally two types that do this sort of thing and only one of them can be talked down. The trick is in identifying which type any individual is.
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Alan and jonolan – I agree that indeed there were probably plenty of prior instances where what she did failed. And there are probably plenty of prior instances where an armed intruder failed and was taken down. And we’ll never know which type of individual that intruder was.
When the shooter succeeds it’s a tragedy. When an Antoinette succeeds, it’s a triumph. Just is what it is.
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Yes. It’s a much of triumph as when the school resource officer and an armed teacher or student put the attacker down. In both cases innocent victims were spared and that’s all that matters.
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Fortune, some days we are just fortunate. 🙂
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Indeed T4T – and the good fortune accrued to the kids in that school
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Two hundred forty-three handguns, nine rifles, and two shotguns. Nineteen people under arrest.
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