{"id":77940,"date":"2018-02-25T11:44:54","date_gmt":"2018-02-25T16:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=77940"},"modified":"2018-02-25T11:44:54","modified_gmt":"2018-02-25T16:44:54","slug":"anthony-swofford-i-was-a-marine-i-dont-want-a-gun-in-my-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=77940","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Swofford: I Was a Marine. I Don\u2019t Want a Gun in My Classroom."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

Yesterday, I wrote a bit about veterans rushing to the microphones of the media to get their few minutes of fame, or notoriety, by embracing the current fear-mongering about Armalite-style rifles designed by Eugene Stoner more than 50 years ago. Today’s example is Anthony Swofford, an assistant professor of English and creative writing at West Virginia University who writes in the pages of the New York Times<\/a>. <\/p>\n

His bio<\/a> says that he was a Marine Corps scout\/sniper in the Gulf War, but, I have my doubts, because after a few hundred words about how restricted access to ammo and the extensive firearms training in the Marine Corps, he writes this erroneous BS which is supposed to refute the premise that by having armed teachers, that alone will keep someone with ill-intent from entering a school to kill students;<\/p>\n

People attack heavily armed institutions all too often, as with the mass shootings in 2009 at Fort Hood in Texas and in 2013 at the Washington Navy Yard. Assailants in such cases aren\u2019t typically worried about losing their lives in the process. Usually, losing their lives is part of the plan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Folks who are not on the range, firing their weapons, are disarmed – their weapons are locked up in an arms room and the ammo is stored in a secured ammo storage facility guarded by other armed personnel charged with keeping the ammunition locked up. Military personnel are forbidden to bring their own firearms to the base where they work, unless their firearms are locked up and under the control of the unit commander.<\/p>\n

Swofford continues with more illiterate BS;<\/p>\n

At the White House on Wednesday, President Trump suggested that if a football coach at the high school, Aaron Feis, had been armed, he would have saved even more lives than he did, perhaps even his own, because rather than simply shielding students from gunfire, he could have drawn his weapon, fired and killed the assailant \u2014 putting a tidy end to the rampage.<\/p>\n

This is absurd. More likely, had Mr. Feis been armed, he would not have been able to draw his weapon (a side arm, presumably) quickly enough to stop the shooter, who with an AR-15 would have had the coach outgunned. Even if the coach had been able to draw his weapon \u2014 from where? his athletic shorts? \u2014 any shots he managed to fire would have risked being errant, possibly injuring or killing additional students. As some studies have shown, even police officers have missed their targets more than 50 percent of the time. In firing a weapon, Mr. Feis would have only added to the carnage and confusion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure who started this utter bullshit about how someone with a pistol is automatically “outgunned” by an adversary with a rifle, but that’s just wrong. The guy with a rifle might have more bullets, he might be able to engage targets at a longer range, but if the fellow with a hand gun has been trained better than the guy with a rifle, he has the upper hand in a short range gun fight. If Mr Feis had been properly trained, the only carnage and confusion he would have brought to bear is on the gun man.<\/p>\n

Last month, the State Legislature in West Virginia, where my university is located, introduced the Campus Self-Defense Act. This would prohibit colleges and universities from designating their campuses as gun-free zones. If this act becomes law, I will resign my professorship. I will not work in an environment where professors and students pack heat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Adios, MFer. I guess you left your stones on the clerk’s desk when you picked up your DD214. Enjoy your life as a problem rather than a solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I wrote a bit about veterans rushing to the microphones of the media to get their few minutes of fame, or notoriety, by embracing the current fear-mongering about Armalite-style rifles designed by Eugene Stoner more than 50 years ago. Today’s example is Anthony Swofford, an assistant professor of English and creative writing at West […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dumbass-bullshit"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Anthony-Swofford.jpg?fit=464%2C442&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-kh6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/77941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}