On Killing... LTC Grossman's web site is
www.killology.com
LTC Grossman describes aggressive sociopaths (whether gang-bangers, Middle-Eastern tyrants, video game-addicted shut-ins, religeous zealots or what have you) as wolves hunting the sheep, and LE/Mil as sheepdogs protecting the flock.
As a Marine turned LE, I have to agree with the Team Sergeant about the mindset of cops vs military. Cops
really like to talk about "civilians don't do this, civilians don't understand that," but almost universally have no conception the true difference between military and civilians.
A great majority think a 300 yard center mass rifle hit with iron sights is something magical.
Colonel Grossman may or may not rightfully include LE in the calssification of "warriors," but I'd have to add that a great many of them(us) are under-trained, under-motivated and over-paid. NDD may recall a reply I made to his thread on SocNet with a similar subject matter. My department did away with physical standards before I joined... as civil servants, some (or the FOP lawyers) argued that if you weren't going to physically train your force, you could not require physical fitness standards.
Razor knows, my department is the one that dealt with the Columbine H.S. shootings. He's heard my <ahem> strong views on the subject, but on an open forum, I'll just say that for the last two years, our active shooter response training (bearing the grandiose, military ninja warrior name of "RAID" for Rapid And Immediate Deployment) has consisted of
four hours of training PER YEAR, of walk-through hallway and room clearing practice (not to be confused with drills or exercises or, God forbid, training). No shooting on the move at small moving targets. No precision shooting (HA! As if). No force-on-force with simmunitions or even paintballs. No IED recognition. No secondary device awareness/avoidance.
Four hours.
Is that 'nuff said on the warrior mindset/mentality of LE? (I know, I know, this is anecdotal and a single sample... but wouldn't you think we would want to be prepared to handle things better next time if a similar situation arose?)
HOWEVER (you knew there had to be a "However," didn't you?), Colonel Grossman argues (convincingly I think) that LE patrol HAS to be the responders... it takes our SWAT Team a
minimum of 45 minutes to muster on an emergency call out. My rough estimate is it would take about 90 minutes for a dedicated SMU from the 10th SFG (assuming purely for the sake of discussion that there was such an SMU), with an element continually on standby, to reach Columbine. The shooting was over in 20 minutes. How long would it take for this military force to reach Cheyenne? Albuquerque?
A Beslam-type school hostage-taking? Heck, yeah, send in the first string, and I don't mean FBI's HRT.
But for a fire team of Mujahideen running through the halls of Elementary School, USA, the best (not perfect) solution is to gun them down like the rabid dogs they are (or "wolves," if you will) ASAP. Can LE do that at our current state of mindset, tactics, skill? I doubt it, and it will be a steep, horrific learning curve when we're caught - and we will be - with our trousers down. (recognize that "mindset, tactics, skill, etc," Razor?)
Believe me, I don't think for a second that LE is capable of conducting counter-terrorist operations, for a whole host of reasons that go beyond civil servant mindset vs warrior mindset, but the differences in mindset is the biggest stumbling block by far. If we experience school shootings of the type the Isrealis suffered in the mid-to-late 20th century, we're going to have to learn to immediately flood the area with gunfighters (of whatever flavor) and accept some casualties. I happen to think we're at war, or anyway Islam's at war with us, and the less time spent in the denial stage the better.
I've been wrong before, though