Thursday, August 12, 2010

Even a stopped clock can find an acorn twice a day.

It's fitting that Sebastian, with a blog named Snowflakes In Hell, should link to this story in the Philly Inquirer on the difficulty in spotting potential workplace shooters, considering that it contains... you may want to sit down for this part... contains the sentence:
Spotting a weapon in a company parking lot might not tell you much. There are many parts of the country, including Pennsylvania, where it is common for workers to stash a rifle in a pickup truck for deer hunting.
Notice it just said "common for workers" and not "common for deranged, psychotic moody loner workers." Amazing.

Incidentally, in many years of working in gun stores, I never really worried about disgruntled ex-employees...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Apocryful but funny:

Guy tries to rob a gun store, walks fires a shot into the cieling and yells for bit finishing for everyone to not move.

Then realizes:

A. That the police car outside was not a decorative pot holder.

B. That every single person in the store (5) is armed.

C.In the time it took him to shoot the cieling and finish his short tirade he had 4 pistols and one 12gauge pointed at him from less that 20ft away. His pistol was still pointed at the ceiling.



Apparently he took his own advice, did not move until politely asked to gently place his pistol on the ground, and lie down with his hands on his head.

The news port quote the policeman as saying he showed "great presence of mind, but very poor planning skills."

Anonymous said...

Shootings only occur in "victim disarmament zones"

Bubblehead Les. said...

After reading the News story, I was disgusted to see them linking the Beer Distributer Shooting with Columbine. Reading between the lines, it sounds like these so-called Psychological Experts want every workplace to have Security Guards roaming the halls, ready to pounce on "potential troublemakers". My question is this: If you are going to use Columbine as an example, and you want to turn every workplace into a "Gun Free School Zone", could you explain how Va.Tech occurred, or why, in spite of increased Po-Po Presence, kids still shoot each other in school? As far as I know, it wasn't deer season in Conn., and 9mm handguns in a lunchbox isn't exactly approved by the Fish and Game to get your 6 pointer. One final little teensy, weensy fact that is conveniently ignored in these discussions: In the Jonesboro, Arkansas shooting after Columbine, didn't the Vice-Principal run out to his car and get his 1911 and ended it while the local cops were waiting on SWAT to do their job? Maybe if Conn. allowed guns in cars, 8 workers wouldn't be dead in the Beer Distribution Center.

DanH said...

Heh, I live in small town Missouri, and if you look in cars in a plant parking lot you will find more cars with guns than without.

skidmark said...

[quote]It has become a disturbingly familiar workplace scenario, statistically rare, but occurring often enough to have a ritualistic feel.[/quote] Anything that starts off with as many contradictory statements as that, crammed into a mere 19 words, is guaranteed to garner a migraine facepalm.

Sorry, but after being stopped dead in my tracksa by the need to try and decipher the opening salvo I just could not continue on to the rest of the words.

First it was that reportalists just did know much about guns. Then they became perfused and complected about the laws about guns. Now it seems that the ability to even hold onto a thought - any thought, it does not even have to make sense - has been taken away from them.

No wonder newspapers are dying off. Now if we could just figure out how to make that happen with reportalists.

stay safe.

John B said...

Not disgruntled ex-employees, just the ones hoping for an ex-employee discount?

Ancient Woodsman said...

Don't worry about disgruntled employees.

The gruntled ones are challenge enough.