A second shooting was stopped on the same day as Newtown tragedy

While a horrific tragedy occurred in Newtown, CT, a similar event was stopped in Oklahoma.  Sammie Eaglebear Chavez, who is only 18, plotted an attack on his high school in Bartlesville, according to Fox News.

An arrest affidavit says Chavez tried to convince other students to help him lure students into the auditorium, chain the doors shut and start shooting. The Tulsa World reports that authorities say Chavez threatened to kill students who didn’t help.

The Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise reports Chavez planned to detonate bombs at the doors as police arrived. The school district says students were never in danger. Chavez is being held on $1 million bond.

While Adam Lanza was tragically able to cary out his depraved act of evil, folks in this Oklahoma community saw the signs and acted.  This is not to pit blame on the Newtown community, but it shows how our society has flaws when it comes to reporting activities of people who are mentally unbalanced.  I use that phrase in the sense that there is nothing rational about shooting your schoolmates.  As Jazz Shaw of Hot Air noted:

This is a reminder of something else which I believe is important to keep in mind. Something unimaginably awful happened yesterday [Dec. 14] in Connecticut. But something every bit as awful didn’t happen in Oklahoma at the same time. And it didn’t happen because people spoke up and police did their jobs. That one statement contains two different elements, both of which are worth remembering as the media rushes to push for more gun control laws.

First of all, for any given incident where some madman runs amok with a gun, there is an entire nation of well over 300 million people – each with their own share of potential madmen – where nothing goes wrong. I could expand on that point for hundreds of words, but it seems obvious enough for any rational thinker to grasp.

Second, and perhaps more to the point, there are differences between the two states in question. Connecticut, as I pointed out earlier today, has some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation. Oklahoma has traditionally been fairly protective of 2nd amendment rights and just last month passed a new open carry law. Both of them were clearly under the threat of horrific assault by a madman. So it’s difficult to pose the argument that the deranged are more or less likely to be found in one state or another based solely on their gun laws.

It’s an issue of detection and subsequent treatment of the mentally unstable – who could commit violent acts against the general population.