Students wrestle revolver from gunman in “gun-free zone”
March 6th, 2013
Imagine you’re a high school student on the bus headed to campus when suddenly you see another student with a loaded .22 caliber RG-14 revolver on their lap. The armed student stands up, and puts the gun to another students head. The victims cries “Are you going to shoot me bro?” and the gunman responses, “Yeah, I’m going to whack you,” while you and the rest of the students on the bus watch.
Our Rebels of the Week will have to remain anonymous for their own safety. They’re names have not been reported at the request of their parents, who have also remained nameless. Three students from Fort Meyers Florida in that scenario decided to take decisive action, rushing the gunman, tackling him and wrestling the gun away. The victim told the press later, ”I’m thankful for the people that came to help…. I was scared; I thought my life was in danger.” They probably saved his life, and perhaps the lives of others, but for this they were punished by the school administrators.
The 15-year-old gunman was arrested by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office and charged with possession of a firearm in a “gun-free zone” and assault with a deadly weapon “without intent to kill.” He wsa was taken to the Juvenile Assessment Center for processing.
We’ve reported in the past that the average number of people killed in mass shootings when stopped by police is 14.29, while the average number of people killed in a mass shooting when stopped by a civilian is 2.33. Gun enthusiasts love that statistic, as well they should, but at first glance many miss that the statistics includes shooters stopped by unarmed civilians. The statistic for specifically unarmed civilians is 2.6, and 1.8 for armed civilians. Here’s the data.
Theses students should be rewarded for their bravery, and given all and celebration and ceremony of a hero’s welcome. Instead all three received an “emergency” suspension from school for “being involved in a situation with a weapon present.”
One 16-year-old suspended student, told Fox that he was confused about why he was being punished for disarming a potential murderer. “It’s dumb…. How are they going to suspend me for doing the right thing?” The mother of another suspended student speaking to WFTX expressed shock that her son would be in trouble for doing the right thing saying that school authorities should be “ashamed of themselves.”
The school is not offering any public comment about the suspensions, except to say that they are operating within the law and conducting an internal investigation, which is state-speak for, “Go away. You bother me.” The dominant speculation is that the students were suspended for refusing to cooperate with the police investigation. Further speculation suggests that they may be refusing out of fear of reprisal, as in some kind of school gang scenario. As The New American reported, “snitches get stitches.”
I’d like to offer a different speculation. What if these students didn’t cooperate with the police investigation because in addition to having the survival instinct to defend themselves and their peers from a gunman, they also completely lack confidence in the police. What if they pay close enough attention to realize that there is no situation imaginable that cannot be made worse by police intervention.
Further I’d like to speculate that the school didn’t suspend them for anything as high minded as noncooperation, but that they in fact suspended them out a slavish adherence to some asinine interpretation of their zero tolerances policy. We’re talking about a class of sociopaths that suspends a kid for eating a Poptart vaguely in the shape of pistol, that suspends a deaf kid because his name is Hunter which in sign language is vaguely a shooting gesture, and that shut down an entire school district because a student used the theme song of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a ringtone, which they interpreted as a threat.
It is a waste of time to try to apply common sense to speculate why they suspended these heroes, because apparently school administrators have no common sense.
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