Excerpts from this week's Blood

 

Ol' Remus

 .........these guns were stolen from a person who possessed them legally, which person he then murdered. This is not "easy access to guns". Connecticut has some of the most draconian gun laws in the nation, there were no "loopholes" involved. As for the semi-automatic thing, the six-shooters of the Old West were semi-automatic in the sense of one trigger pull, one shot. Give it a rest, nobody's buying it but the ignorant and the ignorant by choice, journalism majors and Rupert Murdoch for two. 

And not that anybody would notice from the press reports, the AR15-like long gun was found in his car [Update: ABC News says the long gun was used in the killings, but MSNBC is reporting otherwise]. They managed to finger the wrong man for most of the day but, oddly, first reports itemized the things they want banned, embellished with imagined scenarios, non sequiturs and invented details. Anti-gun partisans, particularly in the news media, trade in inferred guilt, dubious facts framed with purple prose, clever gotchas, selective stats or misstated data and other misdirection, even though facts about guns and gun control are readily available, one "good enough" source being Just Facts . 

FedUpUSA had this to say:

Nothing about what this mass-murderer did was 'law abiding' and it is my understanding he didn't buy the guns or own them.  He stole them (so he didn't follow that no stealing law).  Then he shot their owner (and he didn't follow that no killing law).  Then he proceeded to find targets that were the most vulnerable and ones that would put up no resistance and had no way to defend themselves. This is what criminals do.  They prey on the weak and defenseless. They don't follow laws! So, what makes anyone think he'd have followed gun laws any  more than he did the laws against theft and murder?  They don't and they won't.  That's why they're called criminals. (Hat tip: Karl Denninger at Market-Ticker)

Stewart Rhodes says:

Anti-gun nuts trust the government with guns, but not the people, and insist that the lowly citizen must be disarmed and helpless in the face of murderous assault, and must wait on slow responding armed government employees, who will not be there when the attack starts, and most often can only really clean up the horrendous crime scene afterwards.

In other news, there were some concurrent murders but guns aren't involved and so they rate only routine attention from the news media:

Four people set on fire during assault in North Denver, at ABC Denver

Tashawn Cheatham strangled 13-year-old Briana Naylor, set fire to family's home, at ABC Phoenix

Caseworker was 'chased down street with butcher's knife and stabbed to death' during routine visit to client's home, at the Daily Mail

and this from China, on the same day as the Newton massacre:

China school knife attack in Henan injures 22 children, at BBC News, "Security at China's schools has been increased in recent years following a spate of similar knife attacks in which nearly 20 children have been killed." and from BBC in 2010: "Nine people died in a kindergarten knife attack on 12 May. The same month, a man was sentenced to death for stabbing 29 people at a kindergarten in Jiangsu... A local newspaper quoted parents as saying that their children's injuries were so bad they could barely recognize them."

An effective remedy is simple and obvious:

The best way to stop the mass murder of students and teachers is to do these things: First, repeal all laws or policies that now require schools to be "gun free zones". In each school, seek out teachers who have concealed carry permits and any more who would be willing to get a permit. Then give them extra training in shooting proficiency, the law and morality of using deadly force, and allow them to be armed in school.
Old Greybeard at sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com

If federal law is preventing teachers from saving their own lives and the lives of their students, then they have two choices:  tempt fate, gamble on death, or break the law, defy school policy, and carry a weapon... To teachers I say: Forget the law.  If you're not armed, you won't get them before they get you and the children around you. That is all you need to worry about.
Brandon Smith at alt-market.com

The tragic mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut underscores that fact that in 1996 our own congress turned public schools into gun free zones, making them ideal killing grounds for lunatics. (Where they will only find unarmed victims.) Please contact your legislators and encourage them to rescind the Gun Free School Zones Act (reenacted by Congress, Sep. 30, 1996 --P.L. 104-208.) If even a minority of school teachers were armed (as they are in Israel and South Africa) then slaughters like this could be prevented, or at least minimized.  James Rawles at survivalblog.com

The shooter didn't walk in, he broke through a window to enter the building.  The school appears to have been appropriately secured on a physical level, although obviously the glass broken through was not armored. What was missing was someone—anyone—in the building with the means and willingness to present effective resistence to an armed criminal intent on murder.  From all reports the staff did what they could, having no defensive weapons and no locks on the classroom doors, to mitigate the assault.Karl Denninger at market-ticker.org

We must advocate for arming teachers and administrators. Yes, I realize this would create an "Only Ones" situation, something I intend to work to rectify if and when that plateau is reached, and my ultimate goal would be for parents, or any peaceable visitors, to also bear arms on campuses if they so choose as free individuals. But unless someone can show me how we can get there from here, it would be, as the antis like to say, "a good first step."
David Codrea at examiner.com

People have asked for examples of some shootings in which a civilian armed with a gun intervened and brought down the shooter—so here they are.
Eugene Volokh at volokh.com

Finally, about worst case school security:

Remus remembers a time when the custodian kept a shotgun in the boiler room. Law enforcement was his backup. And during season older students and not a few teachers kept guns at school to hunt or to carry when walking their traplines on their way home. There's a difference between believing such things could work and having seen it work first hand. As in all things, the solution is a return to traditional ethics and morals, responsible liberty, and common sense armed vigilance. The experts have had their chance. Their "maximum security, zero tolerance, gun-free zone" notion stands revealed as no security at all.