The Correct Way to Respond to Mass Shootings
In times of sheep, we must be lions
Last week, at Pickleberry Township in Pennsylvania, at the Weatherborough Unified High School, 27 kids were shot dead by a raving lunatic, a terrorist, as has been described by the media.
(Editor’s Note: This is not true, of course. I made that town up and that school up, just now, as well as the horrifying event described; don’t bother looking it up. But this fictional tale describes an event all too familiar to parents, students, teachers and loved ones throughout the country. I do not wish to unduly alarm people by naming a real school, a real shooting, as that might reopen wounds or cause new ones.
Rather, I’d like to tell the fictional story of the WUHS mass shooting event to illustrate how the tactical playbook has been thus far in responding to school shootings, which will serve to illustrate in contrast how our police departments can adapt and adopt new tactical developments seen from across the world to more quickly resolve the extreme, serious situation such as a mass shooting. Let’s consider this fictive shooting in full.)
At around 9:23 AM, as students were settling in for first period, an at-the-time unknown assailant infiltrated the supposedly secure school compound armed with a fully-automatic M4 Carbine. He also, as is now known, possessed a variety of other guns, tools, and explosive devices. Over the course of the next sixteen minutes, he proceeded to shoot several students and teachers, nearly 100 of them, before himself being shot dead by Officer Criggsby of the Pickleberry Township Police Department.
Most commentators, police officials, and families of the bereaved agree that first responders responded still too slowly in response to the sudden assault. Indeed, having reviewed the police radio chatter myself, it is almost as if the police did not respond at all. So we must admit that the status quo does not work; we need a better response.
First, let’s accept a mass shooting for what it is: a hostage situation, with all the non-terrorist individuals being human shields for the terrorist. Human shields only work if the enemy thinks we are too cowardly, too weak to take decisive action. We must show them our resilience, our resolve, our courage. We have the most moral, most upstanding, most righteous military force in the world. But it doesn’t count for anything if we are too frightened to use it. We should not care if you take one person or even a hundred people hostage, we must say, with determination, that we will achieve final victory no matter the cost.
Rather than rely on some brave local cop to deal with the terrorists, let us employ our massive tactical air advantage as a nation. Obviously, this is the correct move. Consider how big a school can be. Consider how many hiding holes a terrorist can find. If the school has tunnels, a terrorist could hide in there for weeks. And these incidents must be resolved in seconds lest the tragedy and thereby harm escalate. In addition to this consideration, at the time of a shooting, no one knows who a suspect is. It could be anyone. All they need to do is shed their tactical gear and they become a student or a teacher. To say nothing of the fact that the terrorist shooter might have allies on the inside, might have allies even within the local community. Therefore: courage, resilience, strength should be the response.
Local air assets should be dispatched at first alert of a terrorist incident. This should be a doctrinal response, a military directive. In this case, it is a school. Utilizing air-to-ground missiles on drones, helicopters, and fighter jets, the entire facility can be laid low in a matter of mere seconds. Once all building structures have been reduced to rubble, the Army should be dispatched to set up a cordon, not just around the high school but around the entire town. No food, medicine, or water should get in. After all, we must not allow these terrorist killers safe refuge, nor the ability to misuse civilians as human shields.
As ambulances, firefighters, and the press begin to arrive, they should also be targeted without hesitation by the Army and Air Force. Some ambulances should of course be allowed to pick up the wounded (potential terrorists) so that regional hospitals can also be struck (potential terrorist base camps; of course they would use hospitals as human shields). And then of course for every subsequent strike, the cordon is lengthened.
As for the residents of communities within the cordon, they should be concentrated into smaller and smaller patches of rubble and tents, denied all amenities, with free-fire zones declared arbitrarily. Should we detain any residents, they should be employed in either labor camps (via the German labor model) or be entertained by enhanced interrogation techniques until they divulge crucial national security information. As this is done, Army bulldozers should be employed to clear out the topsoil of the all the land. All the buildings, all the monuments, even the cemeteries should be dug up and thrown into a landfill. We can do the same to the corpses of terrorist resistance fighters (which include most if not all residents by the termination of operations).
Then, once the area has been mowed down and the population cleansed, we can settle it with new, preferred peoples, ones who are not terrorists. A big beautiful riveria can be built there, and the world can admire our ingenuity and our commitment to building ecologically friendly, abundant housing.
Even then though, the government should still recognize how important it is to mow the grass. Every few years, we should be cleaning up neighborhoods and communities like this. We don’t have to wait for a school shooting, but it does give us a convenient excuse. That way, we can have a permanent process of settlement, depopulation, settlement, which will keep property prices stable and allow for more abundant housing.
It wouldn’t even cost us that much. As stated, the German labor model reduces labor costs, and the thing we need the most of to accomplish this policy goal would be munitions factories. There’s indeed little else indeed we need for our country to function like this, with labor camps attuned to maximize efficiency and production delivering new and better munitions to our brave men and women on the front lines against terrorism.
If we want to end school shootings, mass shootings, and want to protect the Second Amendment (as we ought to), this is how you do it. We must be firm like lions, and not react like sheep. And when we have made our country all lions, we lions will feast on the sheep.
Every man a Lion King!
In case you couldn’t tell: Free Palestine, Free Gaza. Otherwise: this will come home to roost. It already has for the most part.