Here is a safe and effective way to stop school mass murders that goes widely unreported due to the personal anti-self-defense bias of news reporters, editors and directors. That this proven alternative is too often censored is a disservice to the community and to the discussion of stopping and preventing murder. How many more people will lose their lives because they are denied access to the means of self-defense? If you are truly interested in saving lives, I urge you to cover all the possible solutions including proven, safe and effective self-defense. Jeff Chan __ [excerpted under fair use] [http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/schoolshoot/SCHthefacts.html] Who, What, Where, When Facts and Memories The Courier-Journal Sunday, December 6, 1998 [...] The Mississippi Shooting The Facts WHEN: Wednesday, Oct. 1, 1997, about 8 a.m. as school was opening. WHERE: Pearl High School in Pearl, Miss. The shootings occurred in the commons area, a huge lobby that becomes the school's cafeteria during lunch. WHAT HAPPENED: Luke Woodham, 16, killed his mother about 5 that morning, then just before 8, he drove her car to school. He walked through the school's front doors, concealing a .30-30 hunting rifle under a long trench coat. After entering the lobby, he walked over to his former girlfriend, Christina Menefee, and her friend Lydia Dew and shot them dead. He then shot into a crowd of other students before running to the parking lot and getting into his car. He tried to drive away, but was blocked by fleeing students. Joel Myrick, the assistant principal, who had run to his own car and retrieved his .45-caliber handgun, pointed the pistol at Woodham and made him get out. Myrick held the gun to Woodham's neck until officers arrived. Police also arrested six other students who were in a group with Woodham that reportedly planned to kill even more students, then go live in Cuba. Two of those students, Justin Sledge and Grant Boyette, have been charged with assessory. Their trials are pending. Prosecutors dropped charges against the other four boys because they withdrew from the group before the shootings. __ [http://www.aasa.org/SA/oct9805.htm] October 1998, Number 9 Vol. 55 The Eye of the Storm: One Year Later By William H. Dodson Superintendent, Pearl Public Schools, Pearl, Miss. No one ever told me 30 years ago that teaching and school administration would be easy, and I never expected it to be. I knew it would offer challenges and its share of problems but figured the opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of teen-agers was compelling enough to pursue such a career. As superintendent in a small Mississippi town, I have seen so much more of both elements than I ever imagined. The rewards have far exceeded my expectations, but so have the challenges. In my first administrative role as an assistant principal in an inner-city high school in the Mississippi Delta, my duties involved breaking up racial fights, mediating student conflicts, resolving problems from student walkouts and meeting with angry parents. Plenty of time was spent on court appearances and civil rights battles. But nothing could prepare me for the events of Oct. 1, 1997--the day Luke Woodham, a 16-year-old sophomore, walked into Pearl High School with a 30-30 hunting rifle concealed under his coat and began shooting. Woodham deliberately shot point blank the two students he had chosen to kill. As he continued to fire indiscriminately in the commons area, where students gather at the start of each morning, seven additional students were wounded while attempting to flee the gunfire. While the shooting was in progress, Woodham was apprehended in a heroic act by Joel Myrick, an assistant principal. Myrick had slipped out of the commons area, ran to his car, grabbed his military weapon and apprehended the shooter outside the school building as he tried to leave the campus. [...] __ [http://www.courttv.com/trials/woodham/061098.html] Mississippi v. Luke Woodham School Shooting Trial Opens HATTIESBURG, MISS., June 10 -- Testimony was emotional in the first day of Luke Woodham's school shooting trial as eyewitnesses to the incident relived the rampage. Jurors heard chilling testimony from 19 witnesses, mostly students, who described how Woodham entered the commons area of Pearl High School on Oct. 1, 1997 and opened fire on the students in the area. One of the most dramatic moments of the day came from assistant principal Joel Myrick, who subdued Woodham at gunpoint after the incident. Myrick described how he had heard gunshots that day and saw students running as bodies lay everywhere. He said he went to his car, retrieved his handgun, and loaded it. When Myrick returned, he waited until Woodham exited the school and went to his car. Woodham then ran the car into a tree. According to witnesses, [Myrick] then approached Woodham, pointed his gun at him, told him to drop his weapon and exit the car. Myrick then searched Woodham for other weapons[...] __ [http://www.nealknox.com/fc/1997/fc11-23-97.txt] Principal's Gun Saves Lives By NEAL KNOX WASHINGTON, D.C. (Oct. 29) -- The nation was horrified when 16-year-old Luke Woodham walked into his Pearl, Mississippi, High School with a .30-30 hunting rifle, shot to death his ex- girlfriend and her close friend, then shot and wounded seven other students. Then the nation learned Woodham had stabbed his mother to death earlier that morning. Then the nation learned that the local prosecutor had charged six more students with having conspired in the killings as part of a Satanic plot. What most of the nation never learned was that Assistant Principal Joel Myrick, using his own gun, stopped the killer as he tried to flee the school. The news media virtually ignored the fact that an armed citizen had possibly prevented more bloodshed -- using a gun possessed in violation of the Federal Gun-Free School Act, which prohibits firearms within 1,000 feet of a school. To find out what happened I talked to the school's principal, Roy Balantine. Mr. Balantine said when he heard the shots he ran into the hall and "saw a kid with a gun," then immediately called 911. Mr. Myrick, he said, was in his office on the opposite side of a "commons" that the school surrounds. Myrick also had run into the hall and seen a student with a rifle; he shoved several students into his office and locked the door, then ran toward the shooting. He saw Woodham shoot and wound one of the students -- and Woodham saw him, so Myrick jumped back out of the line of sight. That's when, Mr. [Balantine] told me, "Mr. Myrick remembered that he had been out to visit his parents over the weekend, and that he remembered that he had forgotten to take his gun out of his pickup. "So Mr. Myrick ran across the commons and out the back door and got the gun, and loaded it, then came around the side of the building." At that point, Mr. Balantine said, he saw the student pull out of the school parking lot and pull up behind a car that was stopped at a stop sign. As Myrick ran toward the car, Woodham pulled around the stopped car, but spun out and off the road. Before he could get the car going again, Myrick was there with the .45 pointed in Woodham's face, demanding "Why did you do that?" That's when Woodham "instantly became a coward," Myrick had told one local reporter. Woodham must have feared that Myrick would shoot him for he stammered, so Mr. Balantine told me, "Oh, Mr. Myrick; I'm the one who gave you the discount on the pizza last week." Myrick got Woodham out of the car, made him lie on the ground, pulled his coat over his head and kept one foot on his back until police arrived. Woodham's rifle was in the car, and he still had 30 rounds. "With all that ammunition, we don't know what he might have done," Mr. Balantine told me. "We don't know if he would've gone to the junior high or the pizza parlor where he worked, or what. There's reason to believe he might not've been through killing." "I'm just thankful that Mr. Myrick had the presence of mind to remember his gun and bring it all to a stop." Amen, Mr. Balantine. Police and local reporters are convinced that Woodham was a member of a satanic cult that had been ritually sacrificing animals and planning killings before fleeing to Mexico. But predictably, there's a bit of a flap in Mississippi about the "terrible fact" that this vice principal had a gun at school, and that he was violating the gun-free school law (which the Supreme Court struck down but Congress reinstated last year). Under Mississippi law he could legally have a gun in his car. I'm thankful he had it, and asked Mr. Balantine to thank him for me and those of us who admire his courage -- and for setting a clear example of a gun being used to save lives. Further, I told him, if the U.S. Attorney or anyone else wants to give Mr. Myrick any legal troubles, to give me a call and I'd be delighted to start a defense fund. __ [http://www.old-yankee.com/rkba/armc598.html] The American Rifleman, May 1998, The Armed Citizen (citing the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, MS) Alarmed at the sound of gunfire in the halls of his Pearl, Mississippi, high school, Assistant Principal Joel Myrick ran to his car to retrieve a pistol. The shooter was an armed student who marched through the school firing on his fellow classmates and teachers. The assailant's efforts to escape the scene ground to a halt when another student used his own vehicle to force the suspect's white car into the grass, where it spun to a stop. Myrick used the delay to catch up to the armed student and hold him for police. Pearl schools Superintendent Bill Dodson said of Myrick, "We think he's a hero for keeping more lives from being lost. The young man with the gun still had rounds in the rifle and could have injured other people." (The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, MS, 10/2/97) __ [http://www.gunowners.org/nws9805.htm] Access to guns saves lives Furthermore, John R. Lott Jr., law professor at the University of Chicago, points out that there is a societal down side to more and more laws limiting access to firearms and laws restricting where people can carry firearms. "Consider a fact hardly mentioned during the massive new coverage of the October 1997 shooting spree at a high school in Pearl, Miss.," Professor Lott wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal piece. "An assistant principal [Joel Myrick] retrieved a gun from his car and physically immobilized the gunman for a full four and a half minutes while waiting for the police to arrive. The gunman had already fatally shot two students (after earlier stabbing his mother to death). Who knows how many lives the assistant principal saved by his prompt response?"