University would weaponized hockey pucks for defense
Recent published reports from CNN and other news agencies revealed that officials at Oakland University near Detroit, MI, were considering handing out real hockey pucks to be used in the event of a mass shooting.
Self-defense experts and instructors often quip that you should “never take a knife to a gunfight,” and this classroom defense scheme seems to ratchet that up a notch or two.
According to Fox News, the university has a “no-weapons” policy that may have just taken a sabbatical, because university Police Chief Mark Gordon’s suggestion just weaponized the hockey puck.
The puck is that little hard, round disk that gets knocked around the ice. And, as Chief Gordon explained when he revealed this idea, they do hurt a lot when you get hit.
“I was a hockey coach for my kids growing up,” the chief told a reporter. “I remember getting hit in the head with a hockey puck once and it hurt.”
This is not the first foray into fighting back that came from the education field. Earlier this year, as noted by CNN back in April, a Pennsylvania school district started arming teachers and staff with miniature baseball bats. The drawback is that to use one of the small bats with any effect, the teacher must be within arm’s length, and that’s a good place to be for getting shot.
While all of this is certainly well-meant, critics have suggested that it might provide a false sense of security that could become fatal. Other school districts have quietly adopted policies that allow teachers and administrative staff to be legally armed at school if licensed and trained, and there is a program in Ohio that teaches educators about active shooter responses, including providing first aid to anyone who has been wounded.
Teen anti-gunner Hogg pushes gun control in CT
David Hogg, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student who has become a media darling since February’s mass shooting in Parkland, FL, preached gun control during an appearance at Southern Connecticut State University, declaring his intent to work with “the new Congress” in 2019, according to the New Haven Register.
Hogg, who has become a familiar young face for gun control, appeared at the John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. He asserted that research on so-called “gun violence” is necessary because it is “an issue that kills over 40,000 Americans annually.”
However, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2017, there were 10,982 gun-related homicides for the entire year. Homicides account for roughly one-third of all firearm fatalities in any given year. Anti-gunners routinely combine the number of murders with suicides, accidents and justifiable homicides by police and armed private citizens to create a more dramatic, and many argue, misleading picture of “gun violence.”
Over the past five years for which data is available (2013-2017) the firearm-related murder total has not exceeded 11,500, although there has been an uptick in the number of such murders in recent years.
“Young people can change the world as long as they believe in themselves and never give up,” Hogg told the audience.
Early in the year, retired Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens encouraged teens involved in the gun control “March for Our Lives” to repeal the Second Amendment.
The newspaper noted that Hogg “became a gun control activist after his high school was the scene of a mass shooting Feb. 14.” He is identified as a co-founder of the “March for Our Lives” student movement.
Hogg’s group, according to the newspaper, advocates for so-called “universal background checks,” a ban on “high capacity” magazines, research on so-called “gun violence” and mandatory “safe storage” and theft reporting. Rights activists contend that none of these measures appear to prevent violent criminals, but only law-abiding firearm owners.
Hogg also made headlines when he suggested that Congress impose a tax on all gun purchases in an effort to alleviate the cost of gun violence. However, he made no mention of the excise tax already imposed on guns and ammunition to fund conservation efforts and gun safety ed.
Public perception changes on gun ban in Venezuela
Here’s an after-the-horse-is-stolen story about national gun control.
As Venezuela continues to crumble under the socialist dictatorship of President Nicolas Maduro, some are expressing words of warning—and resentment—against a six-year-old gun control bill that stripped citizens of their weapons, Fox News reported.
“Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” Javier Vanegas, 28, a Venezuelan teacher of English now exiled in Ecuador, told Fox News.
“The government security forces, at the beginning of this debacle, knew they had no real opposition to their force. Once things were this bad, it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population.”
Under the direction of then-President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan National Assembly in 2012 enacted the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law,” with the explicit aim to “disarm all citizens.” The law took effect in 2013, with only minimal pushback from some pro-democracy opposition figures, banned the legal commercial sale of guns and munitions to all – except government entities.
Chavez initially ran a months-long amnesty program encouraging Venezuelans to trade their arms for electrical goods. That year, there were only 37 recorded voluntary gun surrenders, while the majority of seizures—more than 12,500—were by force.
University. “The Venezuelan rulers – like their Cuban masters – apparently viewed citizen possession of arms as a potential danger to a permanent communist monopoly of power.”
