In last week’s piece (Observations from the UT Tower) I deftly argued that swarms of armed protectors are no answer to school safety.  Though I had somehow overlooked published reports that a Rangeview, CO high school student had been accidentally shot by a school employee who doubled as an off campus security guard, it took all of one day for my premise to become probative when police officers shot and killed Hofstra University student Andrea Rebello in her apartment while confronting an intruder.  The cops reported entering the residence to find one Dalton Smith holding Rebello in a headlock, pointing a gun at her head.  When Dalton swung his weapon towards an officer, the officer discharged eight shots; seven hit Dalton, the eighth… not so much.  Eugene O’Donnell, a former New York City police officer and professor of law and police studies at John Jay College, offered the following exculpation: “Once he grabs the girl, literally the whole situation is condensed to nano seconds and the officer and his partner have to make decisions nobody’s really equipped to make under those circumstances [emphasis mine].”

Okay, maybe we shouldn’t expect perfection from the Utica, NY police department, but what of the FBI?  Special Agents Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw, members of the elite hostage rescue unit, bungled a training exercise last week.  Attempting to rappel onto the deck of a seaborne ship, they fell.  And died, which, as you might expect, earned the pair unquestionably failing grades.  So while the NRA opines that “the only way to stop a Bad Guy with a gun is with a Good Guy with a gun,” I would offer the following revision: The only way to stop a Bad Guy with a gun is by taking away his gun.

I had also posited that Wayne LaPierre’s minions had surreptitiously trumpeted stories of victims of being stabbed and hacked up as a way to make guns not look so singularly evil.  Almost on cue, then, comes Caleb McGillvary, aka “Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker,” who first gained fame by using his axe to disrupt an attack on a California utility worker.   Needless to say, the positive press — which included an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live – was having a paradoxical effect on public opinion.  But all ends well for the NRA now that McGillvary has been arrested for murdering 73-year old lawyer Joseph Galfy, Jr. after an apparent sexual encounter.  It’s high-fives all around at NRA headquarters in Fairfax, VA since unlike the Andrew Cunanan gay-world murder of fashion icon Gianni Versace, forensics show not a single shot was fired.