Henry Bornstein
Vail, CO, Colorado

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February 12, 2013
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Vail Daily letter: Off on their own rants

It is obvious after reading Mr. Quinn's and Mr. Shipley's letters that they and Dave Kraft, Karl Lundgren, Stephen Johnson, Jim Gonzales and Michael Cacioppo, etc., all must have failed to read my letter carefully or not at all. If anyone of them did so, they either did not understand what I wrote or chose to ignore what I wrote.

Further it is also obvious that every one failed to do any research concerning my quotes and comments, thus no one replied with a relevant response from any credible verifiable source that would prove that anything I wrote was incorrect.

Why am I not surprised? These are typical Republican-NRA followers' responses, to wit: attack and insult the writer (Cacioppo is a king at this), ignore and/or distort what was written and provide no identified credible, verifiable support whatsoever of their claims. Instead they then go off on their own rant on totally unrelated subjects so they can advance their own biased beliefs.

I will try to keep it simple, so that my attackers might be able to understand what I wrote. The basic premise of my commentary was as follows: As a result of the Sandy Hook, Conn., school shooting, Wayne LaPierre (vice president and spokesperson for the National Rifle Association) and the people who responded to my letter, along with millions of gun nuts who seem to treat anything the NRA states as a bible, think that we should have armed guards in the approximately 98,817 K-12 schools.

My conclusion, based on the facts and statistics I researched and cited, was that that arming 98,817 schools would be a major mistake, practically and economically. This action would accomplish nothing and would be a complete waste of money, estimated to cost $7.5 billion per year. I stand by my position. My detractors have provided absolutely nothing that proves me wrong.

I did not mention a single word about gun control nor anything related to gun control, nor did I make any reference whatsoever to the false and ludicrous NRA and right-wing interpretation of the history and founders' intent with respect to the Second Amendment. This is a separate issue.

I did not raise or discuss the issues raised by Terry Quinn (shootings in churches, medical offices or home invasions) and Gonzales (Oregon mall shooting, a theater shooting in Texas, which is the most liberal gun state next to Arizona, home invasions).

These issues, as well as the many other opinions raised by those named above, are irrelevant and totally worthless in terms of the specific issue I have discussed and to which they have not directly responded.

I had trouble even reading Quinn's irrelevant "examples." Here are two: "Bornstein mentioned colleges and universities. Don't Colorado's major institutions of higher learning have armed campus police?"

So what? College campuses are much larger than a single school building. The ability of campus police or school armed guards to arrive before any shooting incident occurs is impossible.

Just look at the Aurora shooting, where in 12 were killed and 52 wounded; the New Life Church; Columbine and Rossi shootings; the 22 school shootings I described that occurred since 2000; the courthouse shooting in Tyler, Texas; the shopping mall shooting in Tacoma, Wash.; the bar shooting in Winnemucca, Nevada; the high school shooting in Pearl, Miss.; the middle school shooting in Edinboro, Pa.; Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas, wherein a single gunman killed 13 people and wounded 29 others; and the Sandy Hook school wherein 20 innocent children and six teachers were killed.

Not a single one of these incidents could have been prevented by the presence of an armed guard, campus police or regular police because the armed guard, etc., would not have appeared until after the shootings.

The following is even a more ridiculous comment:

"Those like Bornstein who frown on armed protection in schools should ask President Obama why he sends his kids to Sidwell Friends School, which does have armed security guards."

After the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901, Congress directed the Secret Service to protect the president of the United States (and his/her family). The president and his immediate family are protected wherever they go. This particular example has zero to do with the issues being discussed.

At Quinn's suggestion, I did Google the New Life Church shooting, which was presented by Quinn as an example of how the presence of an armed guard could protect innocents from being killed or injured.

His example was irrelevant from his perspective, but was relevant to my commentary. Further, he did not present the whole story, to wit: "That morning, 24-year-old Matthew Murray shot and killed two parishioners and wounded three others after having killed two other people and wounding two the night before at a training center for Christian missionaries in Arvada. Assam, a member of New Life serving as a volunteer security guard, fired repeatedly at Murray, wounding him and pinning him down. He then shot himself." (Denver Post)

But, of course, Jeanne Assam was not aware of the existence of the shooter until after he fired his weapons, killing two and wounding three, before she could respond.

What makes anyone in their right mind, especially the responders named above, think that an armed guard at the Sandy Hook school could have prevented the killing of 20 innocent children and six teachers?

Apparently, Kurt Lundgren thinks so. In a letter Jan. 9 in the Vail Daily, he said: "The fact is, if someone at Sandy Hook would have been armed with a 12-gauge shotgun instead of their cell phone, everyone would most likely be alive today."

I suppose that if that person was Lundgren, he believes he would have saved everyone. I doubt it. He would have probably been killed before he even saw Lanza.

Further, Lundgren failed to explain how a person with a 12-gauge shotgun would have been able to stop the Sandy Hook killings. Or for that matter, the Aurora killings and injuries or any of the other shootings I described in my letter.

What if Holmes or Lanza walked into a police station with an AK-47 and started firing at people in the entry room? Would they not have killed and wounded numerous people before an armed police officer would have been able to shoot back? Of course!

In my original commentary, I made the following statements: "Between 2000 and the Dec. 14 shooting in Connecticut, there have been 22 gun attacks in schools, four of which were in universities-colleges. One security guard at a Minnesota school in 2005 was killed. In 2010 and 2011, there were no shootings at all." (Wikipedia.)

"Does anyone honestly believe that any one of the 98,817 guards (wanted by LaPierre and his followers) would have prevented any of these 22 shootings? If the attacker was armed with a military weapon such as the Bushmaster .223-caliber assault rifle, Sig Sauer 9-MM, and a Glock 9-MM, all used by Adam Zanzer in the Sandy Hook elementary school, what is the likelihood that an armed guard would not have been killed?"

"If one accepts this lunacy, then we should also have armed guards in all shopping centers; (all churches), all movie theaters; all (schools) universities-colleges; all sporting events, such as baseball and football stadiums, etc.; all restaurants and bars (e.g., Richard "Rossi Moreau); and any public event where numerous people gather. Very few of these places ever search anyone who comes in, so anyone can sneak an AK-47 or a similar weapon or a handgun into any of these locations and shoot dozens, if not hundreds, of innocent people."

"According to details disclosed in court, at most 90 seconds elapsed between the first 911 call and police intervention in the movie theater, yet Holmes was able to shoot 70 people." He killed 12 and wound 58.

The arrival of an armed guard, the police or any security officer is always after the shooting. No police officer or armed guard has ever arrived prior to these shootings.

There are 310 million guns in the hands of people in the United States. The current population is estimated to be 315 million. This means that the number of guns is equal to 98.4 percent of the population.

So I have two questions: Why on Earth do we have this number of gums in the United States? And why do so many people possess or allegedly need such weapons? The claim that gun nuts need such weapons to protect themselves from potential foreign invaders and/or from the takeover of this county by our own government is as ludicrous as it absurd.

Henry Bornstein

Beaver Creek

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The VailDaily Updated Feb 12, 2013 11:21PM Published Feb 12, 2013 11:19PM Copyright 2013 The VailDaily. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.