
Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT - xiesx
http://emergency.mit.net/emergency/
======
rickdale
I just want to say as an American, I am so fed up with all these gun stories.
I understand there is debate about gun control and this and that, but we are
having a much larger cultural problem here. The attitude of helping your
neighbor or even someone less fortunate is slowly disappearing and being
replaced by a fear for protecting what we have, as if someone else is after
it. In my mind it's cyclical, if we help those in need, they really won't be
after what we are trying to protect. As for the random gun violence, its
enough already.

Being born and raised in Flint, and the victim of gun violence (father was
murdered outside his work for 20+years over <$600) I always tell people Flint
might be the murder capital of the world, but we aren't the random murder
capitol of the world. For whatever its worth, its true.

~~~
giardini
"I just want to say as an American, I am so fed up with all these gun
stories."

Me too. But it won't end soon.

Currently every shooting in every city is a candidate for promotion to a
national media campaign that is focused on gaining additional restrictions on
firearms, especially at the federal level (but also state level: Colorado is
at this moment passing new highly-restrictive state firearms laws).

Every opportunity to alarm the citizenry about firearms, every chance to get
parents' blood-pressure up with false or real reports of gunmen afoot will be
invoked by the media. It's both good for their business and it's good for
their political agenda.

In essence, this is an orchestrated attempt to use the Newtown shootings and
the subsequent heightened public sensitivity as leverage to advance a long-
present liberal goal to register and confiscate all firearms.

~~~
flexie
"In essence, this is an orchestrated attempt to use the Newtown shootings and
the subsequent heightened public sensitivity..."

Oh please. Who orchestrated that? The media got together? The government?

There is nothing odd in requiring safety from other people's activities,
whether that's their their reckless driving or their gun fetish.

~~~
damoncali
It's not like it's a hidden conspiracy. Gun control activists have explicitly
stated that they need to take advantage of the emotion following the shootings
to push their agenda. And yes, the goal of many of them (including the author
of the assault weapons ban currently proposed) is confiscation. She said it
herself.

~~~
reader5000
Yeah it's totally irrational to seek the most obvious way to prevent
recurrence of the shooting massacre of 20 children, which happens with a
marked regularity. Only a New World Order could explain why people want to ban
guns.

~~~
damoncali
The snark is unnecessary. Gun control advocates have had these goals for
decades - long before Newtown - and openly speak about them. There is no
tinfoil hat, no new world order. Just a political agenda by a minority of the
political spectrum that uses tragedy to their advantage without apology.

~~~
reader5000
That still doesnt make any sense. It's like say in nuclear energy. There are
two camps: one side says it is safe the other says it isn't. However, if
evidence of more and more nuclear tragedies accumulate, one side looks more
and more correct than the other. That side isn't "using" a nuclear tragedy to
"further their own agenda", they are simply using it to demonstrate they are
correct.

~~~
damoncali
I'm just responding to the claims that there is an orchestrated attempt to use
Newtown emotion to further gun control and confiscation. There undeniably is,
and it's not some crazy notion of the tinfoil hat crowd - but the admitted and
public goals of some people in power.

They have stated that they need to act now or they will lose the emotion
required to pass such laws. That is not demonstrating that they are correct -
it's the equivalent of "act before we have time to calm down and think,
because we know we are in the minority on this."

------
create_account
"Scene is clear. Call unfounded. No threat to public safety in #CambMA #MIT"

[https://twitter.com/CambridgePolice/status/30533598012521267...](https://twitter.com/CambridgePolice/status/305335980125212672)

~~~
nickpinkston
"Call unfounded" - I wonder if that means they got a prank call or maybe
someone saw some geek costume with fake gun/armor

~~~
jere
About a year ago, a student's umbrella was mistaken for an assault rifle at
the university where I work and we were on lock down for hours.
<http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/10387437/>

------
kiranb13
"Police responded to report of man w/ gun inside building on Mass Ave. Police
searched building w/ negative results."

<http://twitter.com/CambridgePolice/status/305324628149153792>

Also, follow the Tech's coverage here: <http://twitter.com/thetech>

------
graiz
Update from Cambridge Police: Scene is clear. No danger.
[https://twitter.com/CambridgePolice/status/30533598012521267...](https://twitter.com/CambridgePolice/status/305335980125212672)

------
NelsonMinar
MIT, like most schools in the US, has an explicit policy that no one is
allowed to have a firearm (or sword!) on the campus.
[http://studentlife.mit.edu/mindandhandbook/policiesandproced...](http://studentlife.mit.edu/mindandhandbook/policiesandprocedures/weapons)

------
sergiotapia
How many people need to die before people in the US realize that having easily
obtained firearms is not a good idea?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Guns also save lives. And nations without guns are not violence-free at all.
Its a spurious connection, made by lazy thinkers.

~~~
citricsquid
Nowhere will ever be violence-free.

If guns are not the cause of violence and banning them isn't for the better,
why is England a less violent place than America? The gun murder rate in
England is 0.1 murders per 100,000 people, in America it's 3.2.

The problem America has is not exclusively caused by guns, it's a problem with
culture too, but it seems strange to argue that connecting the high presence
of guns to the high number of gun murders is "a spurious connection, made by
lazy thinkers".

~~~
TDL
What happens when you include stabbings and beatings?

~~~
citricsquid
A popular misconception is that England has just as much violent crime as
America but it's redistributed across other weapons, the reality is that every
country counts violent crime differently. If someone were to break into my
apartment in England while I was out that is a counted as a violent crime,
whereas in America it wouldn't be counted. The only fair way to compare
countries is to compare specific crimes (eg: Murder, Robbery) comparing
"Violent Crime" doesn't work.

For 2011/2012 there were 549 homicides in England[1], for the same period
there was ~14,000 in the US[2]. The population of the UK is 62 million, the
population of the US is 313 million. There are 6x more people in the US but
28x more homicides, most of which are firearm related. If you remove the
firearm homicides from the America figures they become almost the same as the
UK figures (in per 100,000 people).

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/14/crime-
st...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/14/crime-statistics-
england-wales) [2] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-usa-crime-
stats...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-usa-crime-stats-
idUSBRE85A1JZ20120611)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Wait - your numbers come out to something far less than 28X. 28x the homicides
divided by 5x the people = 5.6x the rate?

~~~
citricsquid
28x is based on the raw figures (500 vs. 14,000) not adjusted for the
differences in population.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yeah, cause it looks worse that way. How to lie with statistics!

------
joshcrews
@CambridgePolice is reporting Scene is clear. Call unfounded. No threat to
public safety in #CambMA #MIT

------
wr1472
I'd be interested to know how Americans who live in countries with strict gun
controls feel about not being able to carry a weapon? Do they feel any less
safe?

~~~
tres
I can say that when I was stationed in Germany that I felt safer.

I grew up around guns. I was a pretty good shot -- expert with the M16, M60.

But I own no guns now. I never will.

I simply don't understand how someone can feel safer around a loaded gun. It's
a fallacy to think that because you've gone through training, or that you go
to the range, or whatever, that you are better equipped to handle a weapon;
it's akin to claiming that you are safer walking around with a lit stick of
dynamite -- just because you have done it a lot.

Which leads to why I felt so much safer in Germany. It wasn't the idea that
criminals didn't have guns, it was that every empty-headed fool didn't have
one. The real problem is that I am subjected to every fool's second-ammendment
rights. It's not just that they can blow their own head off with their
foolishness, but that me and my family are also endangered by them.

Although they may be our family, friends and neighbors; although they may be
good people; they endanger us through their "rights." I would much rather live
in the "danger" of a place where only criminals, police and soldiers carry
weapons than to live in the "safety" of a place where any fool with a pinch of
paranoia who has watched too many action-adventure apocalyptic movies can play
soldier.

------
damoncali
Now that this has been shown to be a false alarm, we can relax with some
unintentional humor from the beloved Department of Homeland Security:

<http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/active_shooter_poster.pdf>

This is a real thing.

~~~
ycombobreaker
Interestingly, I got "Access Denied" when I click that link in my primary
browser. I can copy-paste the link into another browser and load this, so I
think they're actually checking my User-Agent and blocking me because it is
empty. Our beloved DHS.

~~~
damoncali
Well, you know. Terrorists and all.

------
BryanB55
I'll start by saying we do not have a gun problem in this country. We have a
people problem. Speaking of people problems, I started reading these comments
in hope of finding a different attitude than what I have been hearing around
the topic of gun control lately. To me, HackerNews has usually been a place
with more educated and informed comments but I didn't really find that here.
I'm still finding misinformed people who have never fired a gun before,
researched crime statistics or seriously thought about this issue making
comments about how people "do not need to protect themselves"

I'm a gun owner, in fact I own many guns, I also carry a gun every single day.
I'm also an honest and law abiding citizen. I have several years of defensive
training with firearms and improvised weapons. I attend shooting matches and
training schools with other law abiding gun owners nearly every weekend.

I can tell you that the vast majority of people who have a gun are good people
and not the <1% of psychotic killers we have been seeing on the news lately.

I see some people here saying "There's some reason you have police, military,
para-military and federal agencies so that citizens don't have to handle this
aspect of security."

To me, this is a really misinformed comment. Does anyone here really believe
that when your life is imminent danger that you are better off with a cell
phone in your hand calling the police and waiting for them to arrive than you
are with a gun in your hand using everything you possibly can to protect
yourself and your family?

Does anyone here really believe that criminals follow laws? If a movie theater
has a sign out side saying "This is a gun free zone, no guns allowed" do you
really think that a psychopathic killer or angry criminal is going to turn
around and go home because the sign said they can't bring a gun into that
movie theater?

And does anyone really believe that criminals follow laws? Lets ban magazines
that hold more than 7 rounds. Sounds like a great idea right? So that criminal
that is planning to go kill some people today is going to wake up and decide
that he is going to load his firearm to only the legal capacity. Or he is not
going to go purchase a gun illegally, buy it off the street or steel it.
Because that would be illegal and we all know that criminals follow laws...

So forget the constitution and the 2nd amendment for a moment, because I know
people like to argue about what the Founding Fathers really meant by it. Do
you really believe that we should not have the right to protect ourselves from
active shooters, murderers, rapist and cold blooded killers with a highly
affective tool just because a select few people have used that tool to do
evil?

If guns didn't exist and everything else were the same and these evil people
still had intent to do harm do you really believe that they would just give up
because they had no other way to harm people? A gun is only a tool, just like
a knife, a car, or a screw driver. All of which can do some serious harm to a
person. Should we ban those things too?

I know some people are sheep and guns are not for everyone, they expect and
hope that if they get put in a bad situation that the police will be there to
save them. Just remember that it is NOT the job of the police to protect you.
Their job is to uphold the law and to react to those breaking the law. It's
fine if you personally want nothing to do with guns but that doesn't mean you
have the right to tell others that they shouldn't be able to protect
themselves.

So if you really want to make comments on how gun control should be and if
people really need guns to protect themselves, please do some research first.
I encourage you to look up how many guns that are purchased legally are
actually used in a violent crime. Look at the crime rates of cities with
strict gun laws and look at the data on the increase of gun purchases vs. the
decrease in crime over the last few years. The FBI has some great statistics
for this[1].

Here's a interesting video from a Sandy Hook father whose child was at Sandy
Hook the day of the shooting and how he feels about guns:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhXPlCjr0Vw>

[1][http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-
the-u.s/2011/c...](http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-
the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/violent-crime/violent-crime)

~~~
tome
_Does anyone here really believe that when your life is imminent danger that
you are better off with a cell phone in your hand calling the police and
waiting for them to arrive to save your life than you are with a gun in your
hand using everything you possibly can to protect yourself and your family?_

In the UK, yes we really believe this.

~~~
BryanB55
I'm interested in hearing your thought on this in more detail. Can you explain
how the police in the UK are able to get to your house fast enough in the
middle of the night when someone breaks in? It takes hardly even 30 seconds to
kick in a door or break a window and enter a home. Are you really capable of
calling the police, having them respond, enter and clear your own home before
that person does harm to you and your family?

What about someone who enters a business, gas station, whatever, one day and
starts executing people on the spot? Is a cell phone really your best tool?

Maybe you are not capable of protecting yourself or not ready to deal with
that yet but if I put myself in that situation and was also not capable or
ready to protect myself then I would hope that an upstanding citizen next to
me or in the same situation as me was prepared to stop the threat.

In a lot of situation where you can be seriously injured or killed in seconds
by an evil person I really can't think of any possible way that the police can
help me. Keep in mind that most criminals are surprisingly smart enough to not
commit a crime with a uniformed police offer standing next to them and
unfortunately you will not always have the police standing next to you.

~~~
alanctgardner2
I'm always really interested in the straw man 'home invasion' fantasy that the
pro-gun lobby brings out. Why would someone invade your home with a weapon?
For financial gain? Just for jollies[1]?

The thing about giving everyone a gun is that it makes every crime that much
more likely to be fatal. In Canada, for example, if I break into your house
for your TV and you catch me, we're sort of at an impasse. Maybe I have a
knife or a hard-to-get, illegal gun, but more than likely I hadn't thought it
out. I'll run away, you'll call the cops.

Compare to the US, where I'd get a gun before I break into your house, because
why not, they're everywhere. Now I want some crack, break into your house, get
startled and shoot you. Or you shoot me. By introducing guns into what would
have been a non-violent crime, you've significantly increased the risk of
injury or death for all parties.

This is not to say that it's impossible to get an illegal gun if you think it
might be beneficial; as in your 'holding up a convenience store' example. But
why would I cap a bunch of random bystanders, and turn my potential armed
robbery charge into first-degree murder? If I do have an illegal gun, and I
know everyone else is unlikely to be armed, I hold all the power. The gun is
merely a tool to keep people in line, I don't have to shoot anyone to achieve
my goal. If I think everyone has a concealed carry, suddenly the situation is
fraught with peril for everyone.

Gun control in the US is some terrible, bad-faith arms race where everyone
'needs' to defend themselves against these random, nun-toting boogey men.

1\. One would argue that mass shootings are this sort of irrational behaviour.
However, they tend to involve legally purchased guns, and they represent a
very small proportion of gun-related deaths.

~~~
BryanB55
Fair enough, so you would assume that the burglar would run away. What if they
don't? A few years back in one of the wealthiest areas of Florida, I had 3
people enter my home one night while I was asleep and take computers, tvs,
etc.. At the time I never owned a gun and didn't wake up to notice there were
people in my home.

They were later caught by police and found to be over 6 feet tall with
baseball bats, crowbars and a history of violent crime. Had I gotten up that
night and walked into something unexpected I would prefer to have something to
help me through the situation... Just my opinion though.

To me, a gun will help level the playing field. I have some empty hand combat
skills but I surely wouldn't bet my life that I could take on 3 large men
armed with baseball bats who didn't want to get caught and were clearly
displaying reckless disregard for other people.

I just really don't think bad people are some imaginary "boogey men".

~~~
alanctgardner2
Frankly, your story is the perfect, one-in-a-million anecdote.

\- Your house is broken into. Not really a routine occurrence.

\- The people breaking in don't have guns. If any of them had a gun, and you
had a gun, now it's a proper disaster.

So you're weighing all the risks of easy, legal gun-ownership ( lower barriers
to shooting sprees, accidental discharges ) against being in this precise
scenario, which happened to you one time. Further:

\- I'm going to take it on your word that 'history of violent crime' means
beating up random homeowners. I can only imagine in the business of
housebreaking and fencing stolen goods you probably have some extra-judicial
problem solving, which might involve beating up other people you've had
criminal dealings with. This is quite different from murdering suburban
homeowners in cold blood.

\- Further, of course they had crowbars, they were housebreaking. The police
didn't catch them at your house, so you can't really confirm the number or the
kit they had at the time, just how many people the cops nabbed later.

The really telling thing is your comment about hand-to-hand combat. Why the
hell are you looking for a fight, anyways? Is punching a random burglar going
to help your odds of getting out safely? This is the really perverse american
attitude, that it's not sufficient that you avoid bodily harm, but you need to
dominate and punish the intruder yourself, because they've wronged you. If
you're open to appeasement or trying to get away quietly, you save yourself
significant risk of injury.

~~~
notdrunkatall
>Frankly, your story is the perfect, one-in-a-million anecdote.

No, no it's not. Homeowners defend themselves against home intruders all the
time with guns. Google is your friend.

~~~
alanctgardner2
I read that as "homeowners shoot people all the time". I meant that his
scenario, where there was a real threat of violence, was rare. It's entirely
possible for you to shoot a guy who would've run off. That doesn't mean it was
necessary, or defending yourself.

~~~
notdrunkatall
It's a rare scenario, and one that's not a problem until you're the one with
an intruder in your house, the place where your family sleeps, and all you
have is a bat (or whatever) because people who never thought they would be in
that situation have seen to it that guns were outlawed.

------
lifeisstillgood
While I do hope this turns out to be a false alarm as below, the fact I know
about this from the UK and can mail my friends visiting to check on them is to
me seeing the glimmers of a worldwide immune system for humankind, able to
react instantly.

Again, do not wish to detract from a potentially dangerous situation - just
from 3000 miles away my second reaction was to be glad our grandchildren will
live in a qualitatively different world.

------
tokenadult
"Authorities found no evidence of a gunman reported to have been on the MIT
campus on Saturday morning. Their search was prompted by a tip to the
Cambridge Police Department (CPD), which is now calling the incident a 'false
report.'"

[http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/police-find-no-
evidence-o...](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/police-find-no-evidence-of-
gunman-reported-on-campus-0223.html)

All's well that ends well.

------
monochromatic
Long rifle? Seems unlikely to me, but we should probably ban them.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=long+rifle&tbm=isch](http://www.google.com/search?q=long+rifle&tbm=isch)

~~~
MrUnknown
I am sure banning them would have prevented this situation from ever
happening.

~~~
monochromatic
Yeah, I guess my sarcasm wasn't apparent.

~~~
MrUnknown
It's OK, neither was mine it seems judging by its reply.

------
socalnate1
I'm sure he is just a law abiding citizen, going about his patriotic business.
After all, the vast majority of gun owners are law abiding, so I'm sure we
have nothing to worry about. </sarcasm>

------
fakeer
Good that the man was not found there(in a sense that no one was harmed).

I still would like to understand few things.

Of course I shall not be able to understand how it feels to have a gun when
you want it(and afterwards take a decision on how to use it. To defend
yourself or flash in malls or kill children for fun or out of depression) as I
live in a country where having fire-arms is either a luxury for powerful and
rich (mainly because of license red tape and high license fee) and operational
equipment for criminals.

But I still don't understand that how can guns be allowed in such a manner
when they don't let you handle a gas cylinder at a public place or a take a
metallic fork on an air-plane. I mean I just want to understand the logic
behind it, if there's anything other than the logic that "the gun lobby makes
sure it's open" - just like the tobacco lobby the world over even though it's
perfectly clear that it causes cancer(i.e. it kills).

I mean this just doesn't add up. There's some reason you have police,
military, para-military and federal agencies so that citizens don't have to
handle this aspect of security.

There's one more doubt - is it as easy and as simple to get a gun in USA as
it's projected in films or in the media? That looks like going to a store and
asking for a new mobile handset. Maybe the latter is more complex.

~~~
notdrunkatall
>But I still don't understand that how can guns be allowed in such a manner
when they don't let you handle a gas cylinder at a public place or a take a
metallic fork on an air-plane.

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms
is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

-Thomas Jefferson

You can't fight tyranny in government with metallic forks and gas cylinders.

~~~
hemancuso
Given the massive mismatch of firepower, training and numbers between the
government and the very best armed/trained groups within the civilian
population I have trouble believing that anyone can still make this argument
at any intellectual level.

~~~
splat
Is that really true, though? The US has a large military, but it pales in
comparison to the number of armed civilians. Just look at the number of
hunters in this country. In Wisconsin alone there are 600,000 hunters. That
would make them the ninth-largest army in the world. There are more hunters in
just the four states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and West Virginia
than there are in the entire U.S. military.

Obviously the U.S. army has far more firepower than a group of hunters. But
even a much, much smaller band of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan has been
able to create substantial problems for the U.S. in its own in guerrilla
warfare against the U.S. military. Is it really so implausible that a group
orders of magnitude larger would not be able to stand a chance?

(Keep in mind, too, that if there ever were to be a serious rebellion in the
U.S. you'd probably have a lot of desertion from the U.S. military. In fact,
some of them might even bring some of that firepower to the other side.)

~~~
tomkin
This is a really poor argument. First, what's "tyrannical" to you? There are
various degrees of "tyrannical", just as there are various degrees of
terrorism. Can you expect the entire country of gun owners to react all at
once? Because I have some evidence that suggests otherwise.

You're hoping for some "flipped switch" type of tyranny that _never_ happens.
Even Hitler's madness took place in phases and wasn't universally recognized
as a threat.

This idea of immediate revolt is a fairy tale. One that other gun-less
countries watch in awe. Don't you think its time to move on and concentrate on
more important issues?

~~~
notdrunkatall
You're arguing that because people might not suddenly decide to revolt en
masse that... what, exactly? That a revolution is therefore not possible, and
that we should then give up the right to bear arms?

How ironic that you would accuse him of making a really poor argument when
yours is about as poor as they come. I hope no one upvoted that drivel.

~~~
tomkin
Your _right_ to bear arms is silly. Incredibly silly and archaic. You live in
2013, not in colonial times. While the amendment made perfect sense then, it
makes no sense now.

The pro-gun movement seems to be completely ignorant to the staggering
evidence that guns in citizen's hands are unnecessary at the least and
dangerous at the worst.

Society: an organized group of persons associated together for religious,
benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes.

As the above dictionary definition suggests, a society is based on a
collective set of ideas, rules and order so that all within the society can
live peacefully. Remove the guns and the strange associated chest-thumping,
less people die. It's really that simple.

You used to be able to drink and drive, until we all realized it was for the
betterment of the society to change that. You _lost_ that right, too. Guns are
no different.

~~~
giardini
"... the staggering evidence that guns in citizen's hands are unnecessary at
the least and dangerous at the worst."

Not true.

US citizens are more effective than police in handling firearms:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/02/21/disarming-t...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/02/21/disarming-
the-myths-promoted-by-the-gun-control-lobby/2/)

<http://actionamerica.org/guns/guns1.shtml>

scroll down to "Armed Citizens Make Fewer Mistakes Than Police"

~~~
tomkin
This doesn't prove guns solve problems. It just makes it clear that police can
be incompetent. This is the most bizarre argument. You're argument is that
police do a poor job, so average people should do the job? Here's an idea:
spend some more money on creating a more competent police force. So silly!
Let's see, my employee isn't doing his job well, so I'll just call in another
developer to bring competency. Talk about spinning the tires.

Please, America. Spend some time wondering how other modern countries get by.
You'll have no choice but to conclude it is possible to get by without guns.

~~~
bmelton
That ignores the geographic disparity of our nation. It would be relatively
easy to create a rapidly mobile police force in somewhere like New York City,
but nearly impossible to create an efficient police force in Glendo, Wyoming.
Houses are, at the closest, acres apart from each other. Going grocery
shopping can be a half hour trip each way from a nearby farm.

Police cannot be readily available in places like this (or in New York really,
but for entirely different reasons).

~~~
tomkin
Yes, the US is so special. Again, other countries have sub-urbs, country
residents. Come on, really? This is your defence? That America has vast
countryside? Jesus fucking Christ. Can't think of any other country that has
this geography? REALLY?

~~~
bmelton
If you know of a way to increase the police force in a way that is efficient,
affordable and repeatable such that people living 45 minutes away from the
nearest police station would still be able to have relatively good assurance
that said police would be there to stop crime from being done to them, I'm
sure we'd all love to hear it.

In the absence of such knowledge, I think it's fair to point out that police
are generally reactive. In the case of murder, they obviously weren't able to
prevent the crime. As it stands, the sheer amount of crime we have speaks to
the ineffectiveness of our existing police departments, and while they could
almost certainly be made better, they can't likely be made perfect.

In the case of an assault against me, my home or my family, my call to the
police is not going to be made until I have at least assured the relative
safety of myself and mine enough that making a call would be prudent. This
means that, if someone is pointing a gun at me, if you give me the choice of
whether I should have a cell phone in my hand or a firearm, I'll take the
latter. Police are the first responders, but I believe that self defense is a
personal responsibility, especially as Warren v DC[1] concluded that the
police aren't under any obligation to protect me, despite whatever slogans may
be painted on their vehicles.

Of course, this ignores that nobody should have to defend their purchase of
firearms in the US to anyone. It's a Constitutionally enumerated right, and
according to our founders, a "natural, God-given right". Ignoring the theistic
rhetoric, that means that I am able to possess a firearm, and most definitely
for the purpose of self defense.

If you could figure out such a way that would prevent me ever needing to use a
firearm for self defense, as well as ensuring a means to prevent government
tyranny, then perhaps I would consider relinquishing that right. Until such
time, I will exercise that right lawfully and responsible and hope that I
never need to use a firearm in defense.

[1] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia>

------
maeon3
Could it be a stunt by a particularly intuitive student to prevent a shooting
incident by creating a false alarm, to get everyone to tighten up security,
thus reducing the probability of an actual shooter event really happening?

Shooters are probably smart enough to pick their targets, and they would be
unwise to pick one that's on edge from a recent incident. </conspiracy theory>

~~~
Symmetry
Or it could have been someone carrying a pipe which the witness mistook for a
gun from a distance. I believe the last time there was a report of a gunfight
on campus, the shooters turned out to have Nerf weapons...

~~~
noahc
I remember in 2004, when I was a freshman on campus we had Airsoft guns in the
dorm and our cleaning lady actually picked them up for us and put them in a
cup so we could reuse them for future dorm wide airsoft wars.

My how things have changed so many short years.

