Our best chance to keep Kenya mall-type attack from happening here
Sep 23, 2013, 10:30 AM | Updated: Oct 14, 2024, 12:27 pm
A line of soldiers from the Kenya Defense Forces run in front of the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013. Multiple barrages of gunfire erupted Sunday morning from the upscale Kenyan mall where there is a hostage standoff with Islamic extremists nearly 24 hours after they attacked using grenades and assault rifles. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
(AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
Taken from Monday’s edition of The David Boze Show.
It’s been a terrifying weekend around the world.
Most of the time let’s face it Americans pay about as much attention to foreign problems that do not involved the United States directly as we do to the Emmy’s – a bit of a joke that nobody cares about the Emmy’s.
We’re not like other places where we really keep a whole lot of track of what’s going on in other parts of the world. In part, because we ourselves are plenty big and it’s tough enough to keep track of what is going on in the United States.
I’ve been pleased to see the level of coverage that the attack on the mall in Kenya has been getting. If only because I think it should be a bit of a wake-up call.
You’ve got 175 people hurt at the mall in Kenya. You’ve allegedly got Americans involved in the terrorist attack, and all I could think of when I was reading about these Americans that had been recruited for this terrorist attack on the mall was – and this is a horrible thing to say, but I’m going to say it anyway because I bet it was going on in your head as well – thank God they didn’t do it here.
It is a horrible thing because I don’t want Kenyans hurt. I don’t want anyone attacked in the mall. But I thought, I don’t know what led these jihadists to go elsewhere to commit their jihad, but I was glad that they didn’t do it here. That doesn’t mean that I’m glad that they did it anywhere, but I was glad that they didn’t do it here.
I felt a little guilty and sick just for thinking that way, but I’m betting you can relate.
I watched the video of the initial attack and the sound of it is jarring. You can hear the gunfire just echoing throughout the mall. The pictures, the video, you see people hiding behind these very meager grocery displays. It is almost like they don’t know what to do. They’re just looking around trying to figure out what do I do other than crouch down and hide.
Right now, people are saying, could what happened in Kenya happen here. You bet it could. I’ve been amazed it hasn’t happened up to this point, and it scares me.
The lesson here for us is what did they go for, they went for a soft target where they didn’t think people would be secure, where they didn’t think people would be armed.
Does this have lessons for us? You bet it does. Will we take those lessons? That is unknown and probably unlikely.
What we need to do is take a look at what happened in Kenya and start asking ourselves – since we know we can’t put layer after layer of security around every public building, and we know we have tens of millions of guns in this country, the only choice you have is to make sure that good people are able to carry their firearms.
That at least might delay bad people with guns from being able to do the evil that they want to do.
Taken from Monday’s edition of The David Boze Show.
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Kenya forces claim to control most of mall
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