TN Tech Response To Report Of Unidentified Man With Bullets In Dorm Bathroom

Please see link below. Student reported seeing bullets in Johnson Hall Bathroom. Due to the vicious and completely unpredictable nature of bullets without a gun they initiated the following:

1. Public Address System Announcement
2. Building Lockdown
3. Text Message via TTU Alert System
4. Posted Information on School Facebook Page
5. Emergency Email Message Sent
6. Emergency Blog Post on School Main Page
7. Cookeville Police Department responded to the crime scene, calling in extra people.
8. Building was searched for three hours.
9. Classes were cancelled for the rest of the day.

Nothing was ever found. If they saw my loading room they might call in SWAT.

It is good the school is cautious but 3-4 campus police officers could have handled the situation with far less paranoia and drama. It could have just been a first term undergrad who forgot to clean his pockets of rifle ammo for deer season. Right now as I type this I found an empty 9mm case in my pocket, it happens.

http://www.herald-citizen.com/view/f...e=main_article

 

While I agree it seems like an over reaction now can you imagine if the opposite had been true? Say some one had a gun with evil intent and left a round in the bathroom then went on to shoot students. Every school official who under reacted to the report would be crucified by the public and would be out of their career for good.

Not sure what the official policy of the school is. But we definitely live in a better safe than sorry environment at least legally these days.

 

What ever happened to ??

Seems like someone got in a tizzy over nothing, public commentary (as in letters to the editor in every paper in the area) would be a far better teaching tool than laughing about it here, though.

 

Having legal CCW on Campus...would be infinitely more sane.


Look at england - someone finds an oxidized .22 Short laying in a garden, and they have Helicopters and sniffing Dogs and a huge hupla over it, all over the papers and so on, nor would a person even be able to touch it without becoming a criminal, etc

Insanity...


Insanity and helplessness and neurotic co-dependence is the actual curriculum of schools and universities.

Eeeeeeesh...

 

I only got one thing to say to you about that.

"Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
— Thomas Jefferson

 

That is truth.

 

That's reaching pretty far to justify a mindless panic reaction.

 

HSO, you are correct, they locked down the business hall and not the entire campus. I am glad they compartmentalized it. But they did put the rest of the campus into a complete tizzy when the they could have avoided it.

 

Yes. After VT, this kind of response is the performance of due diligence and not cause for derisive jeering.

The response did not appear to be "over the top."

Also, I may be in the minority and some of you reading this are sloppy with your ammo. From what I read, some of you have loose bullets floating around your range bag, in your pockets, under the seat of your car, etc. I don't.

So the "bullets don't go off by themselves" line strikes me as missing the point entirely. The problem is "some clown with bullets spilling out of his pockets" is wandering around. Operating in loco parentis, TTU did the right thing here.

 

The next panic will be when a couple of students openly discuss the 2nd amendment!
They were talking about GUNS!!!!

 

After VT, anyone who thinks a serious response will NOT be the result of something like this is going to be in for a big surprise.

Where are the people who failed to issue a significant response over the first signs of trouble at VT crucified? In the national media for months and years on end.

Where are the people who issued a response to a report of possible trouble that turned out to be nothing crucified? On a gun forum, for a day.

Hmm. I wonder which one they prefer.

 

I graduated from TTU in May '09. Johnson Hall isn't a residence hall, it's the business majors' building. Believe me, anyone who spends time on the TTU campus will tell you it's students are very 2nd Amendment friendly.

 

I agree with locking the building down, calling the authorities and searching the building. Sending messages out in every way possible I find to be completely unnecessary. Explain to the students, and staff in the building in question what's going on and why they can't leave and that's it.

 

I went to TTU, and my sister goes there now. She told me about this: she had a class in that building but had skipped it that day, but heard about this later.

 

A year ago, maybe a little longer, Marietta College had a huge blowout of cops invading it because someone caught a glimpse of a rifle stock under a blanket in the back of a student's vehicle, parked off campus. City police actually filed charges against the student for inducing a panic. On the advice of his parents, he left school (the country actually) to avoid prosecution on the charges. The police there should have been charged with the same charge. It was their reaction to a non-issue that caused the panic.

I tell this story because I would have never thought I'd see such an over reaction to simply the sight of a gun stock in the area of my birth and early life, Southeastern Ohio. When I was in high school, a common sight in our school parking lot was a gun rack mounted in most pickups parked there, with at least a rifle or shotgun on it, usually both.

That kind of a reaction to a report of a person with ammo is rational thought to some? There are common cleaning chemicals in most any residence, and for sure in a college dorm capable of much more danger if mixed.

 

An adult attending a college might have been near a firearm!


Who was talking about in loco parentis? This is a university full of adults, not a kindergarten. So no, it is not prudent to get in a panic over the possibility that a round of ammunition might be on campus.
What, exactly, was done to actually prevent or mitigate an active shooter incident? A bunch of hand-wringing isn't going to stop a VT situation, texting everyone's bff jill isn't going to discourage a dedicated mass murderer. Expecting adult citizens to be armed once in a while, however, DOES discourage (or at least relocate) these little violent fantasies in budding young sociopaths.

What could have been going through the .edu drones' minds? "well, we seem to have someone bent on murder on campus, but they're so incompetent and disorganized that they're just leaving booletz laying around, so we'd better call in the cavalry and lock down the building!

 

In my opinion, the VT massacre would have been alleviated (I didn't say solved, I said alleviated) had the students been able to defend themselves.

Had that kid (I forget his name, and that's a good thing) run into a legal concealed pistol holder, I am certain his day would have been quite a bit shorter, and less terrible.

I am not suggesting in any form that you should circumvent your school's policy and carry a concealed handgun for your own defense. I would never advocate, nor do it myself. Doing so makes me a danger and endangers the lives of everyone around me.

 

I think it would have been minimized or relocated, as would have most GFZ shootings.

 

I am a December '08 grad TTU and actually worked in Johnson hall my last semester so this actually hits a bit close to home.

 

My problem with the campus reaction is the same problem I have with all of the anti-bullying legislation, and all of the second-guessing and hand-wringing that went on after Columbine, and the problem is simply this:

American society today seems to be operating under the delusion that our governments and their agents can fix every problem we face.

This idea is absurd, and it is part and parcel to the argument that Americans are better off unarmed and watched-over by our police.

At the end of the day we need to face a couple of cold realities:

1. An individual determined to work harm on his fellows will succeed to some degree, given the availability of weapons and information on how to make/use them here in the U.S.A. This problem comes in lockstep with the freedoms we all enjoy; we can't have the freedoms without creating the opportunities for some miscreants to work evil.

2. Comforting as it is to blame the authorities, finger point, and accuse these authorities of negligence, we create the environment for the Minority Report. We expect police to catch the wrong-doers before they commit the crime. This is a dangerous mentality. We are asking our authorities to say, "You're going to commit a crime. We've decided to disarm you before you hurt someone."

No, sir.

Believing this kind of panic-button reaction was reasonable smacks of the "papa knows best" mentality of government, and it's a way of seeing the world I simply will not endorse, neither actively nor tacitly.

KR

 

Funny, when I was at Tech in the mid '70's, we kept guns in our rooms. I had a coupla 22 rifles and a pistol. My buds all had guns. The RA just said the only time he wanted us to see them was going out to our cars (as we were headed to the squirrel woods) or bringing them back in. Man, the arsenals we had in the rooms then.

AND NEVER A FIREARM RELATED PROBLEM. EVER!

 

thats crazy. i have over a dozen friends at NC state that all carry a knife every day. most of them wear pro gun shirts once or twice a week

 

Huh... So if I have a test I'm not really prepared for, I can get out of it by sprinkling a few .22s on the sidewalk? Good to know...

But seriously, that is quite an over-reaction. I don't know of any laws against having ammunition... Texas penal code (Ch. 40.03) only mentions weapons, nothing about ammunition. Dunno if TN has something against it though.
Overall, I'd say Kentucky Rifleman's post sums it up quite nicely.