By Tim Inwood

My first memory of encountering the “anti-self
defense culture”, which I call the “culture of sheep”,
was a cold morning in January 1975. I was in the sixth
grade and was riding the school bus. Suddenly, another
student sitting in the seat ahead of me turned and
began striking me. This was completely unprovoked. Naturally I struck back in defense. The bus driver separated us and drove on to Holmes school. Before I
knew it, I was before Principal Will Allen. Also
standing there was Mark, the kid who started the
fight.

Allen asked what happened, and Mark told a tale
that was strewn with as many lies as Bill Clinton used
in his “I did not have sex with that woman” lecture.
Will Allen then turned to me for my version of what
happened. I told him I was sitting there talking with
my friend Tom Gray and suddenly I was being pummeled
by Mark. I did nothing to provoke him and had said
nothing to him.

Now, Mark was a behavior problem who
did things like this frequently. I had a clean slate
and had not gotten a swat since Kindergarten. So Will
Allen believed me. However, since I had defended myself, I was in trouble too. We were both offered the choice
of swats or having to stay indoors during recess for
two weeks. I was flustered.

“Why am I being punished?” I asked.

“Because you fought back,” I was told.

I was
stunned and disgusted in the same instant. Though I
did not realize it in these terms, it was my first
memory that I and the other students were being
conditioned to be victims - to accept the idiotic
culture of sheep. If attacked, submit and hope for the
best. This concept is unnatural to humans; it
certainly goes against the grain of my instincts.

Just how this cower, cringe and hide in the face of
danger concept ever caught on is beyond me. I rejected
that early conditioning the liberal public schools
tried to thrust upon me. Ever since that injustice
the anti-self defense culture, the culture of sheep,
has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Their
philosophy is not only unjust, it is down right stupid
and deadly.

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Since the tragedy of Virginia Tech in April, the
“sheep” have been demanding new gun control laws. While they have been bleating for more of the failed
policies of the past, many of us at BuckeyeFirearms.org have written
about how the solution is not more gun control, but
more guns in the right hands could have stopped this. We have written about the fallacy of blocking the
ability of the law abiding to defend themselves. After
all, in our view Virginia Tech’s tragedy was magnified
by the ridiculous stance that Virginia Tech and other
schools in Virginia have taken by blocking their
students and faculty from carrying arms for defense. Under Virginia law they can, but the schools have
rules threatening to fire faculty and expel students
caught carrying arms. So they were rendered
defenseless.

The anti-gun left has argued that if the
students had been armed that it could have been worse. They say had a student pulled their own gun that they
might have missed Cho and hit someone else. A rather
silly point to make when we know everyone in the room
gets killed in the end…

They then tell us that even if
armed it was unlikely anyone would have acted. After
all, who would be crazy enough to draw a weapon against
someone who already had the drop on you? No one would
do that, they tell us… History shows that the anti’s
blow that argument too. Yesterday I happened to be listening to the Neal Boortz
radio show and heard about something I had not caught
at the time of the incident, probably because the news media did its best to
ignore the following very interesting story about a student
fighting back.

On March 21, 2005, Jeff Weise went to the Red Lake
Senior High School in Northern Minnesota. He was
decked out in Columbine copycat garb: black trench
coat and combat boots. He had spiked his hair and was
armed with a .40 caliber Glock pistol, a .22 pistol
and a 12 gauge shotgun. He bypassed passive security measures, which included a metal detector, video cameras, and even the vaunted "no-guns" signs, all of which were installed with promises of "protection".

Earlier in the day this twisted punk had killed his
police officer grandfather and his grandfather’s
girlfriend. He then stole his grandfather’s guns and
patrol car, using the car to drive to the school.
Weise’s rampage lasted a little over ten minutes. He
shot and killed eight people. He wounded seven others.
That is what the press told us at the time and little
else. Strangely, this incident did not get the wall to
wall coverage that Columbine got in the press. This
was after all the next-largest slaughter in an
American school at the time.

Now I think we may know
why the media did not make a big thing of what
happened. You see, someone in the classroom fought
back. We are not supposed to do that, and to talk about
self-defense would be poor form. They probably did not
want to encourage anyone to think we should fight back
in such situations, after all someone else might get
hurt… What other reason can there be for ignoring the
story of fifteen year-old Jeff May?

You see, Jeff May was working on an algebra problem
when Jeff Weise came into the school shooting. The
first victim was an unarmed security guard manning a metal detector. Derrick
Brun was shot dead on the spot. It might have ended
there, had he been armed. We will never know. But
making sure he was unarmed was a recipe for disaster.

When Weise blew out the window next to the door of the
classroom May was in, he leaned into the room and
shot 62 year-old English teacher Mrs. Rodgers, who had
cried out to God to help them. He then asked if anyone
else in the room believed in God and began shooting
the students. Jeff May, armed only with a #2 pencil,
charged Weise and stabbed him in the side with his
pencil. Sadly the pencil was deflected as Weise was
wearing his dead grandfather’s body armor. The two
boys fought on the floor. As they struggled Weise
managed to turn and fire his pistol into May’s face.
The bullet entered his right cheek fracturing May’s
jaw and lodging in his neck, near the spine.

The surviving students estimated that May had tied up
Weise long enough in that struggle to have saved the
other dozen students in the room, as police officers
were now arriving at the school. Four police officers
now engaged Weise in a gun battle striking him several
times. Weise then shot himself in the head, ending the
incident.

Jeff May spent months in the hospital recovering from
his wounds. The young man is a hero. He
saved lives and only now is his story getting much
play. I thank Readers Digest and Neal Boortz for
turning the spotlight on this story and getting the
truth out. Pity he only had a pencil to defend his
class.

Sadly, this story and how the press did not give it
full coverage, is not unique.

In 1997 in Pearl, Mississippi, a 10th grader named Luke
Woodham killed his mother and then went to school with
the family
30-30 deer rifle. He shot nine fellow students.
Woodham was stopped by Vice Principal Joel Myrick. Myrick had armed himself with his Colt .45 pistol. However Myrick had to run to his car off campus to get his pistol. Why? Because Myrick was complying with
misguided laws concerning guns near schools, so he had to run a good distance to his car and back to the
school. That time spent running to get his gun cost
lives. He stopped Woodham long before the police
arrived. Columbine people remember. Bring this up and
they will give you a puzzled look.

Telling this story will get the same reaction: On January 16, 2002
Peter Odighizuwa, a failing student at the Appalachian
School of Law, decided to go on a killing spree. After
talking with a Professor
Rubin, he then went to the offices of Dean Antony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell and shot them at point
blank range with a .380 pistol. He then shot and
killed Angela Dales and wounded three other people. Two students elsewhere on campus heard the shots and
responded with their own personal firearms. Tracy
Bridges and Mikael Gross, armed with their own
handguns, subdued Odighizuwa until the police arrived. They stopped his rampage with privately owned pistols.

These stories, and others like them, received scant press
attention. Self defense and the positive use of
firearms is usually ignored by the national news
media. Just listening to the
press since April 16th, it is not difficult to see the obvious bias against private gun ownership as well as
their delight in vilifying the NRA. I have news for
them, the NRA is not just a handful of lobbyists. It
is made up of five million of their fellow citizens.
The NRA membership dwarfs all the anti-gun groups put
together. Researchers estimate over two million
defensive gun uses a year. Again, ignored. So with
their deep ingrained bias they often ignore positive
stories about private self-defense that do not fit
their mental template of how things should be, truly a malpractice of their duty as the “objective” fifth
estate.

It is time to get over irrational fears of
inanimate objects and allow those who are willing to
be the first line of defense not only for themselves,
but also
be there to help protect others from the sociopaths
among us. Ohio has had Concealed Carry since 2004 and
it has been a model of success. It is time to do away
with all the "no guns" zones and allow us to be safe
everywhere. It is time to end the rule of the “culture
of sheep.” After all we were born men and women - not
wool bearing animals.

Tim Inwood is the current Legislative Liaison and Past President of the Clinton County Farmers and Sportsmen Association, an Endowment Member of the NRA, Life Member of OGCA, and a volunteer for Buckeye Firearms Association.

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