Joe Olson, who retired in June as president of the Umpqua Community College told the Associated Press the school had three training exercises with local law agencies in the past two years, “but you can never be prepared for something like this.”

I won’t comment on the “training exercise” rate. This sort of preemptive giving up, though, ranks right up there with gun free zones as a major contributor to mass killings. Of course it’s possible to prepare for “something like this.” It just takes a willingness to conceive the possibilities from not waiting for the police who are only minutes away. Interminable minutes, during which the killing proceeds apace. Unless the true first responders—those who are already on scene—are allowed to defend themselves and allowed to exercise initiative.

We need, too, a society that knows better than to wait for government to do for them rather than the meek, professional victim, Big Daddy Government society Progressives are pushing.

As President Barack Obama said in all his crocodile tear fulsomeness the day of Umpqua’s mass killing, we do need sensible gun laws. The gun control foolishness needs to get out of the way so we can have them.