“Roads and schools were closed and a manhunt intensified Thursday near a New York state prison as authorities investigated a new lead into the whereabouts of two escaped killers,” usatoday.com reports. “The Saranac Central School District closed schools Thursday ‘in order to assist law enforcement personnel with their search efforts, and due to the closure of a number of roads.’ Officials said they hoped to reopen schools Friday.” Even admitting the possibility that convicted killers Richard Mat and David Sweat would somehow transform into active shooters . . .
what kind of message does closing schools send to children – who are now at home – and potential terrorists? (Boston Strong redux.) Check this out from the article Prison Breakout: ‘Surreal’ Life for Those on Lockdown Near Search for Escaped Inmates via nbcnews.com:
Josh Parker has a plan in case his family encounters the killers who busted out of maximum-security prison not far from his house.
He taught his daughters how to use a chair to smash a window, and how to tip over a dresser to block the door to the safe room. He has instructed them to run to the neighbors for help. The neighbors, avid hunters, are heavily armed.
Every night when he comes home from work, Parker has his wife and daughters wait outside while he sweeps the house first — with a gun.
“Kind of surreal,” he said.
As is the idea that Mr. Parker wouldn’t teach his children – old enough to tip over a dresser – to defend themselves by force of arms. Older folks in the area are armed though. [via foxnews.com].
Elizabeth Ahern, who lives in Plattsburgh, about 5 miles from the prison and 25 miles south of the Canadian border, isn’t taking any chances. The North Country, she says, is a place where people usually don’t bother locking their doors and have guns to hunt, not to guard themselves against criminals. But not anymore.
“It’s a scary situation,” Ahern told CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday. “We are now closing our doors and locking them, and making sure we have knives and guns ready to go, just in case.”
Good for you. Now, how about getting rid of the Gun Free School Zone Act, ditching the SAFE Act and making The Empire State “shall issue”?
What saddens me most is that having lived in Syracuse for 17 years I know that there are a majority of patriots who will defend themselves regardless of the wishes of the downstate slave masters. The woman quoted in the article is a prime example of the sheeple that NY wants as their subjects.
Why do you say that?
She’s not saying “Eww! Nasty guns!” Rather, she’s saying that there’s normally nothing to fear where she lives, but that she’s ready when scary people are about.
I say good for her.
Personally, to me, “shelter in place” means lock and load, safety off. If these guys were so bad, why are they still breathing?
Because they don’t do capital punishment in New York.
thats another mistake.
The anti capital punishment crowd never gets taken to task when the life-sentence convicts kill again inside the prison or murder during escapes like this.
That’s one of many reasons I enthusuastically support the death penalty. I’ll even serve on a firing squad. The only caveat is due process, of course.
Unfortunately, that’s a pretty big caveat, Accur81. I’m in favor of the death penalty in principle, but the more I see of our broke-ass “justice” system and general government incompetence, the less confident I am that “the system” will actually get shit right. And when you’re talking about taking someone’s life, there’s not much room for error.
“And when you’re talking about taking someone’s life, there’s not much room for error.”
Not only would I not argue with that, but I’d go further and extend it to a DGU. Is this violent attacker just going to rough me up? Just rob me? Just rape me? Or go all the way and kill me? That can be hard to tell in the frenzy of an attack.
Yet, with less time and fewer safeguards, plus an obvious conflict of interest, many of us are prepared to mete out the death penalty on the street if we believe that is necessary and lawful. Curious, that.
Not curious at all to be against capital punishment but ready to use deadly force for defense, actually. As individuals on the street we don’t have the potential to execute from hundreds to millions of people…but the govt does
New York Strong!
Now go hide in your basements and huddle in fear.
The prison is located in a very gun friendly area of NY. In fact, the only places in the state that hate guns is NYC and Tompkins County (Ithaca).
Gun friendly is relative to NY state, not other states 🙁
the only places in the state that hate guns is NYC and Tompkins County
Seriously? When did Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties (among others) secede from New York State? What about Buffalo, Albany and Rochester — are they gun friendly?
C’mon, man. New York is California without the surfers.
And the hot blonde chicks.
I live in Suffolk and have a Sportsman CCP as does my wife. This allows us to carry to and from the range and stop to and from for food or drink (non-alcoholic). There are ranges that are open 24/7 specifically to exploit the to and from range loophole. The same is true for Nassau (my friend is a Range Officer there). A lot of my friends and their wives have the same CCP that we hold. The problem is that there is no consistency with issuing full CCP because the state is not involved. I don’t think this will ever change because of NYC. A few years ago there was serious talk about Long Island seceding from the state (wishful thinking I’m afraid).
Erie county a also not so great. ..
But Orleans county certainly isn’t bad for gun rights! Home sweet home
Ralph,
This reminds me of the travesty that was “Boston Strong”. People hiding and hoping.
Sorry, I haven’t been paying attention to this story much…. Do I understand correctly that two guys broke out of prison. Now while they search for them they are closing the schools, among other places.
First question, how small are these two escapees? Or what kind of kids are in these schools that two escaped convicts could hide in their numbers?
Second question, isn’t the goal of most prison escapees to get as far away from said prison as possible? Why would you be searching so close to the prison for them?
Because “guns.”
We had an incident at my high school a few years before I attended where an escaped inmate made his way into the girls bathroom and hid before they locked down the school. When a young girl went to use the restroom he raped her. After that the school would make sure to get informed about the local happenings and escaped convict types and lock down the school preemptively if it was within a certain vicinity. So its not just about them hiding amongst the kids, but taking steps to protect children. Although I do agree they should have armed personnel, locking down the schools doesn’t hurt either. Followed by a clean sweep through each room.
This is crazy. Our prison system lets violent offenders leave everyday. Just because these guys voluntarily shortened their own sentences it makes them “super scarier.” WTF, get over it. Violent people are everywhwere, my guess is the escaped kind trying to stay under the radar are the best kind to have around.
Or, the escaped kind might be the worst to have around, once they’ve been recognized and realize they haven’t got anything to lose by taking a hostage or killing witnesses…
I’m not saying that paralyzing an entire region is the way to go, but acting like it’s nothing is probably not the best approach, either.
Who said act like it’s nothing? All I am saying is be prepared to defend yourself everyday, not just when the powers that be tell you to be scared. A Release date is an arbitrary number that guarantees f$&@all with violent people. The authorities are just embarrassed about an escape, they don’t care about whether a person is still violent once they have “done their time.”
“A Release date is an arbitrary number that guarantees f$&@all with violent people…”
Truer words were never spoken.
One TV report I saw about this stated that people in the area in question are walking around armed. No hysteria. No alarmism. Just matter of fact.
That’s the way it was when I was in Colorado and there were some violent escapees — adults armed as they went about town, older kids (fourteen and up, or younger if they were the oldest kid at home) armed in the house.
It’s called civilization/
I really, really hate the term “active shooter.” It’s the disguised evil twin of “gun violence.”
I’m an active shooter every time I go to the range. If you shoot in 3-gun competitions, you’re a *very* active shooter. In fact, since shooting is one of my favorite hobbies, and I love guns, I’m a shooter pretty much all the time (though I’m frequently an inactive sloth).
Millions of active shooters do their thing actively and peacefully every day. And yet the only time we ever hear the term is when some murderous shithead runs amok.
It’s just nice to have a term to contrast against “lethargic shooter.” Someone who likes to do more shooting while sitting and doesn’t like to get all sweaty for no real reason.
Not quite.
Active shooter denotes someone whose main feature is that they’re being unpleasant with a gun. It is to be contrasted with “armed and dangerous,” on the lam rather than engaged.
The term “active shooter” as a bad guy always irritated me as well. It should be changed to “Active Murderer”.
I always figured an “inactive shooter” is one of those OFWG bench shooters. They don’t even walk down to clean up their targets.
Maybe they’ll head south and be disposed of in proper fashion.
I always cringe when I see a politician in khakis and shirts sleeves touring a crime scene/disaster site first hand. It’s nothing more than a photo op, and everyone knows it. I don’t care if it’s Cuomo, Bush, Obama or Reagan, it’s a waste of time, money and man power.
Heard they were talking to a prison employee. She was supposed to pick them up after the breakout, but she chickened out. The search intensifies, or something along those lines.
Sorry TTAG, upstate NY is not disarmed in reality.
Upstate/Western NY is really not all THAT bad for gun rights. It’s when you live in a major population center, (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse) that you notice people’s opinions on guns, and even knives begin to change.
2 escaped killers. They got nothing to lose. Women, children or anybody else gets in their way and it’s a bad day. Hostages? Don’t want to think about their fate. What about members of the community who can’t arm themselves?
Some situations call for a police over reaction. Escaped killers is one. Too bad the police won’t use the armed citizens willing to join them in the hunt.
We live just a few miles northeast of the prison break across the lake in Vermont about 100 feet from the wottuh. Our various info/intel sources tell us that they got help in the form of power tools to drill through the cell wall, left dummies in hoodies on their cots, and snaked their way through the pipe system to an exterior manhole in the street. A female tailor shop employee left her work the same day with a supposed “panic attack” and was in the hospital; her son is an active duty Senior Airman with the VT Air National Guard fighter interceptor squadron 30 miles to our south. The LE people were seeing this middle-aged mom as a ‘person of interest,’ last we knew.
Latest info this afternoon is that they may be headed to Vermont on the basis of supposed less LE heat here; and another rumor that they might be on Burton Island, which is right across from us, kinda. Or at various campsites and out in the woods, where we have been having monsoon-level rain, clouds of bugs, and high humidity and winds. Very choppy and ocean-like lake surface, not good for small craft at all or swimming.
There are around 300 NY and VT cops swarming the region, plus cop boats and USCG craft out on the wottuh, plus helicopters and planes overhead for days. Word on the street here is also that way more peeps are carrying this week and/or holing up in their houses. We’re just going about biz per usual here and are 7×24 EDC anyway. We speculate that the woods experience this week after being locked up for years is not to their liking much longer and they may try to grab a vehicle and go somewhere.
If it had been me, I woulda got a vehicle immediately upon exiting the place, changed outta the clothes, changed my appearance as best I could, and headed for Babylon-on-the-Hudson posthaste, to disappear among the 20 million denizens there and thus bypassing Super-Asshole Cuomo entirely.
Who knows, maybe that is what they did. Or they jumped on the freeway and are in Mexico already.
Doubtful; they don’t seem all that clever. LE consensus seems to be that they’ve been stuck out in the woods for the past five days and it must have been, and still is, pretty miserable. But who knows? If the person who’d been waiting for them with a vehicle didn’t show, they coulda grabbed someone else’s easily enough and be long gone by now.
Cops have been out all over the region here with choppers, planes and dogs, including bloodhounds. We saw one chopper and one plane overhead this afternoon, clearly working patterned routes along the Lake Champlain watershed. Local postmistress in the corner P.O. a hundred yards from here is a VT Army National Guard SFC and is packing; patrons going in and out today while I was there likewise. Mrs. davidx is making sure we’re locked and loaded, etc., etc. I’ve told her we need to be thusly 7×24 and it seems to be sinking in, finally.
I heard they were already conducting house-to-house searches, gotta love that personal touch of the state.
I have it on good authority that both excapees are headed to Washington, DC, where many criminals legally hold office and are immune from prosecution, and the rest are lobbyists for the SEIU.
So would an inactive shooter be that guy with the scooter at the range to go to his targets?
You see this? THIS is why we need to be able to call out the militia. A long weekend of a few thousand experienced civilians sweeping the woods in fire teams and these clowns would be back behind bars or dead:
AS I mentioned yesterday Fox news was talking to an OFWG CC AND he pulled up his shirt to reveal his holstered gun. Which I thought was pretty goofy but I have no clue if the old guy has CC legally. But can’t people get pump shotguns there? Obviously similar to Illinois-but at least WE are getting better…
Oh believe me, the situation is MUCH worse than Illinois. The need to file major paperwork with character references to buy handguns. This was BEFORE the SAFE act. In fact, it got so bad that people were filing for concealed pistol permits rather than normal pistol permits because the process is nearly identical.
A friend of mine lives near Rochester and I was frankly shocked when he told me how much he had to go through just to get a 1911.
Orleans county is home for me, and here pretty much all pistol permits are CC permits. Here you would have to have some kind of strange circumstance to get a pistol permit that is only good for the house/range, or (and I don’t know why you would) you’d have to ask for such a permit specifically.
Anyone can get a shotgun, pistol permits are handled by local Sheriff or Police Commissioner depending on locality. The problem is that there is no consistent rule, every Sheriff or Commissioner makes up their own rules for issuing. That has to change. Where I live I can only get a Sportsman’s CCP which only allows me to carry to and from the range. A few miles further out the local Sheriff has no problem issuing full CCP.
Yo, not to worry, citizens; we gon keep our foot on the gas here in Vermont:
http://www.wcax.com/story/29299800/authorities-still-no-credible-threat-of-escapees-in-vt
Five days on the loose now…hundreds of cops…
…but as someone else pointed out, the system releases on-schedule guys just as bad as these or worse every day in this country and they’re out here among us already.
These guys are gonna be pretty desperate at some point, though. Hope no innocents get hurt during all this.
Well all but two upstate counties came on record as opposing the safe act, the majority of the state is pro gun and well armed.
My county ,Monroe issues carry permits , no class to take, never had to renew in my 30 years . Most of my family ,friends co workers and neighbors have carry permits. I work for the city of Rochester , just as easy to get permits there as well.
As for the area of this escape, they are hardly disarmed around there . Disarmed populace that’s rich.
I would hardly call upstate New York a “disarmed populace.”
Upstate New York is not only a different state from the ‘burbs, it’s a different world. From my experience, the SAFE Act ends at the Putnam County line where New Yorkers pretty much stop giving a darn about whatever gun-control crap the geniuses in NYC and environs promote.
I live close to Eugene Oregon, and last night, KVAL ran a story about a school being locked down for several hours, because a truck driver noticed a SWAT team dude, wearing camouflage and a HOLSTERED handgun.
The SWAT patch on his shoulder was unreadable to the driver.
He called the “authorities” to report a “suspicious” person”!
They never did say what was “suspicious”
If this was down state, I would say cower in place, but upstate NY state seems a little different.
Who said we are disarmed. These people have no clue who actually lives in Upstate New York, we are most certainly not disarmed. Who said that Upstate NY complied with the SAFE act or the Clinton ban, because in this area we sure didn’t. The SAFE act ends down in that filth scum hole called NYC. Up here in the ADK’s we open carry handguns have full featured AR’s and Ak’s and you know what no one really gives a crap. It a different place.
Might as well Anex us to VT
FUAC
FBHO
I am most certainly not Cowering in Fear
RE: “active shooter”, I figure “active firearm abuser” is more accurate. Sure, many may be designed to shoot people, but the idea is to stop aggression and coercion, not engage in it.
As far as the death penalty, this is an opportunity for it to be exercised the only place/time that’s legitimate: at the hands of an intended victim.
NYC is not NY, no more than Austin is Texas.
They might as well be, they run the legislature and get to opt out of any laws they don’t like.
Thank god I left westchester long ago.
Some parts of NY may hate guns and be full of liberals but no one is cowering and hiding in their basements. The police are asking to search houses and the people that say no thanks wave as the officers walk away. This isn’t Boston. And I would shut aschool down with two murderers running loose in the community as well. They are going to be found not too far from the prison.
Exactly right. What most people who don’t live in NY state don’t realize is that the state doesn’t control pistol permits or carry laws. They are unfortunately the responsibility of local government. I don’t know about NYC but other counties certainly have no issues with long guns. Most people upstate are heavily armed and even here on Long Island there are numerous hunters and lots of people with pistol permits. NY state is not NYC except for our governor. Unfortunately NYC has a major influence when it comes to running the state hence the SAFE act.
I lived in Louisiana for five years. I now am back in Wisconsin, where I was born and raised. I suspect that citizens of both states legally own more firearms than the armed forces of most nations of the world. Not too many folks are cowering in their homes here. (Well, except liberals in Madison and Milwaukee).