Uniformed security guards are hired by stores to provide peace of mind and serve as a deterrent to casual criminals, such as petty shoplifters and aggressive panhandlers. They are not law enforcement officers, do not generally have good training, and the physical and mental screening for security guards isn’t that high (which is perhaps why we’ve had two security guards go on terrorist killing sprees this year alone).
Aggressive predators are not deterred by either unarmed or armed security guards, but it is relatively rare to seen a criminal so callous that he would murder a guard just to acquire an additional handgun.
A man who would murder someone for a handgun would presumably have no problem doing the same with an open carrier who typically has even less training and general awareness than armed security guards.
We’ve noticed that there are generally only four kinds of open carry stories.
a group of people open carry as a form of political protest (generally without law enforcement involvement)
an individual open carries as a form of political protest (often with law enforcement involvement, including occasional arrests)
an individual open carrier who is oblivious to his surroundings has his/her picture posted to gun forums pointing out his/her utter lack of awareness and generally poor choice of gun and holster.
an open carrier is attacked for his weapon, with the criminal generally being successful.
We would love to report that open carry deters crime, but there is simply no data suggesting that this is a true statement. Folks, criminals laugh at open carriers. They view them as targets, no different than someone with a cash-filled wallet hanging out of their back pocket as they stand in the checkout line, nose buried in a smart phone and oblivious to the world.
I’ve seen Bob hate on open carriers before, but this is ridiculous. This commentary is completely out of control (I hesitate to call it an “analysis” because nothing is being analyzed).
Bob doesn’t really know that all uniformed security is poorly trained. He doesn’t know that open carriers are even more poorly trained than uniformed security. He also doesn’t know that open carriers have poor situational awareness.
He doesn’t know that open carriers fall into only the four categories he lists. He’s just referring (anecdotally, not analytically) to news accounts he believes he has read.
He especially doesn’t know that criminals laugh at open carriers. In fact, I challenge Bob to supply me with one verifiable instance in public where a known criminal laughed at an open carrier. I’ve open carried many times, and I’ve also been around people I knew to be gang members when doing so. No one – no one – has ever laughed at me. In one particular instance when multiple gang members were heading my direction on the sidewalk (it was four or five of them), they saw me open carrying and decided to cross the road, walk past me, and cross back over when they were clear of me. They kept their heads down and studiously avoided making eye contact with me while walking on the other side of the road.
As I said, this commentary is completely out of control, and I simply have no earthly idea what Bob’s problem is with open carry. There is no law requiring him to do it, so why the negative attention? It’s legal, so what business is it of his to bash the practice? How does a crime against uniformed security turn into open carry bashing? I’m beginning to think this is a psychological issue that Bob has.
JUNEAU, Alaska – As Josh Dybdahl waited for help on the side of a mountain and tried to hold pieces of his flesh together after a bear tossed him around like a rag doll, he tried to concentrate on the bright side of things.
“At least it’s sunny out,” Dybdahl recalled telling his hunting partner while the pair were waiting for a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter to find them.
Dybdahl, 30, knew he was losing a lot of blood, he knew that there was a chance the helicopter might not find him and he also knew there were more bears in the brush circling them. But none of that mattered. He had already made up his mind that he was going to live.
Sitting up in his hospital bed Tuesday, Hoonah resident Dybdahl went over the surreal mauling he had suffered just three days prior while on a hunting trip near Port Frederick bay with his friend Anthony Lindoff, 36. The two had taken a boat out to an area just 10 miles southwest of Hoonah to look for deer. As they were getting ready to make deer calls, Lindoff said, he heard something. He hoped it was a deer, but then he turned and locked eyes with a sow brown bear running straight toward him.
“It didn’t get the memo that it was supposed to bluff charge, this was serious,” Lindoff said. “It chased me first, and as I was running, backing away, I was trying to swing at it with my trekking poll because my rifle was in my sling on my backpack. I immediately thought that was the biggest mistake I could have made. . I felt like the worst hunting partner.”
Dybdahl threw off his pack and headed farther down the hill, trying to get his rifle in position to help out his friend. Unfortunately, Dybdahl didn’t know that the same direction he was moving in was where the sow bear had left two of her cubs behind. In what Dybdahl said seemed like a single moment, the bear changed direction and Dybdahl was on the ground. His rifle no longer in his hands, he screamed for his friend to shoot the bear as it pinned him down, and had its teeth in his flesh.
Dybdahl said he had never been more “in the moment,” able to see, hear, and smell everything so intensely. Everything he knew about bears went racing through his head. He realized quickly he was angering the bear more by moving and screaming. His body went limp and he was silent. But even though he made himself appear harmless, the sow didn’t stop. For the next 10 seconds, he said, his whole body could feel the bear’s ferocity and rage.
“When she bit down on my leg, my thigh, she ripped so hard. . I could hear everything,” Dybdahl said. “It sounded like paper ripping and she pulled my thigh. I felt my whole thigh muscle move away from my leg bone.”
[ … ]
Although he flinched when Dybdahl recreated the sound of flesh tearing, Lindoff was not as unsettled on Saturday. When he saw the bear on Dybdahl, he went through six motions in approximately 10 seconds, never skipping a beat. He slung his rifle in front of him, took the gun sleeve off, took off the scope cover, chambered a round, aimed and fired.
“I’ve never de-slinged my rifle that quickly,” Lindoff said.
The bullet entered the bear’s side near her lungs. She had just locked her jaw onto Dybdahl’s skull. Lindoff shook his head at the pure luck that his rifle’s scope was already focused for the shot. One more second to adjust the scope and his friend could have been scalped, Lindoff said.
Josh was very blessed. If you’re going to be in the bush, carry your rifle in hand, regardless of whether it’s comfortable or not. Or if you don’t want to do that, carry a sidearm for self defense. I think most Alaskan’s will tell you to carry a wheel gun, .44 Magnum or .454 Casull. That’s probably good counsel for the entire Northwest. Down South here, carrying .45 ACP is just fine.
Around 3 a.m. Wednesday, 73-year-old Abraham Venson woke up to an alarm company alerting him to someone breaking into his shed, the same shed that had been broken into months ago.
Venson went outside his home with a gun in hand. As the two robbers ran from his home, Venson saw the second man reach for his waistband. That’s when Venson fired his weapon, striking the man.
Although someone was breaking into his shed, Venson was arrested for the shooting. Under Louisiana law, it is unlawful for you to fire a weapon at someone if your life is not at risk. It doesn’t matter if they’re stealing personal property or not.
[ … ]
“Jail ain’t no place for anybody,” said neighbor Alvin Campbell, who feels the arrest against Venson was unjust.
If this report is accurate, [a] I don’t see the problem, and [b] Bob’s analysis is incomplete and perhaps flat wrong. Sure, it may have been wiser for him not to have followed the robber. That’s water over the dam at this point.
The way I read the report, he didn’t shoot at the robber for his crime of larceny. He shot because he feared for his life. This is his defense, and any good lawyer would set it up that way.
But I suspect the problem here runs deeper. I suspect that he talked to the police and said something inaccurate or damning, and thus the prosecutor has charged him with a crime, whether his report to the police was accurate or not.
Folks, do not ever talk to the police. Ever. His first action should have been to call 911 and tell the dispatcher that a shooting had occurred. The second should have been to tell the police that they can talk to his lawyer and he has nothing to say.
Please … please … learn this. Please. And watch this video one more time for good measure.
HOUSTON- A good Samaritan with a gun stopped three suspects whom held Auto Zone employees at gunpoint during an attempted robbery on Friday night.
According to authorities, three males entered the Auto Zone on Jones Road around 9:00 p.m. demanding cash from the register. A customer who happened to be pulling up saw the men holding the employees at gunpoint.
The customer, a “LTC” permit carrier, pulled his gun and went inside the store. He made the suspects get down on the ground and drop their weapons.
Deputies said he held the suspects until they arrived. All three suspects were arrested.
Wait! Ridiculous and impossible. When anyone other than a trained law enforcement officer (all of whom are experts in super secret ninja warrior stress management techniques and operating tactically during tactical operations) tries to stop crime or engage in self defense or defense of others, guns take on a life of their own and rotate as if a windmill, firing uncontrollably and randomly, killing innocent women and children everywhere. How could this happen?
But there is more.
Although deputies commended the customer for his actions, they don’t recommend this because they say it could have ended in a shootout and someone getting hurt.
Of course. Could this have ended any other way than law enforcement telling others not to do this sort of thing and to leave it to the “experts?”
“I fell backward from 20 feet onto a log. I spoke to God and knew I was injured terribly. I asked for and received the strength to crawl out. I spent a week in (a Green Bay hospital’s) intensive care unit, and nearly a full month in the hospital. A surgeon fused my lower 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 vertebrae.
“They taught me how to walk again. I have seven more months of rehab ahead, and am happy with how things are going. I’m in sales and have three to five years left of full-time work. I hope people understand that what happened to me could happen to anyone. At some point when climbing trees, no matter how careful you might be, you’re vulnerable.”
Read the whole article. For my readers, this is serious business folks. Don’t climb ladders without the proper restraint and safety gear. Especially don’t do it in trees. Check your equipment before using. Replace your equipment periodically. Take the condition of your ropes as seriously as guys who climb and rappel. Most of those guys replace their ropes frequently because grains of sand get in between the fibers and cut them.
Wear fall restraints while climbing, and have redundancy in your platforms and fall restraints. If you don’t want to do all of this, then go on deer drives or stalk deer rather than climb into stands. Your life and health isn’t worth the next hunt. My daughter is involved in trauma care and trauma surgery, and she tells me it’s sad and devastating the injuries she sees during deer hunting season.
I’m also perplexed that FN submitted the Five-SeveN, as the gun’s 5.7×28 caliber has been thoroughly trashed by most defensive handgun experts as a niche round that fails to create adequate tissue damage to have significant immediate impact on targets.
The FN 5.7 won’t be the next Army handgun, but it doesn’t perplex me at all, and frankly I wouldn’t pay much attention to defensive handgun “experts” as they trash things. And this is as good a chance as any to post a related bit of analysis I ran up on a few months ago.
The FN 5.7 pistol is constantly maligned or underestimated in many gun forums and articles, often by people who have never experienced shooting the pistol. Subjective comparisons with the .22 magnum or categorization as a sub-par .223 round create confusion about the effectiveness of the FN 5.7.
Enough time has passed after the terrorist attack at Ft. Hood. The shooter, Nidal Malik Hassan, has been arrested, tried and sentenced. The media has moved on. Now we can begin to analyze the impact of the FN 5.7 and address the question of lethality.
Using SS192 and SS197SR ammunition (common commercial 5.7×28 ammo), several 20-30 round magazines and an FN 5.7 (shooter also had a .357 revolver but did not use it), Hassan killed 13 and wounded 32 people.
Many armchair ballistics expert criticized this result as proof that the FN 5.7 platform is not lethal enough because of the proportion of the fatalities to the wounded. Others have proposed that had Hassan use another type of pistol, 9mm or .45, there would have been more fatalities.
If you look at this Wikipedia link and look at the list of casualties, one can come to a very eye-opening conclusion.
Fort Hood shooting – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1. 11 people were shot center-of-mass (COM), one was shot in the stomach and one was shot in the head. All 13 died. All 11 victims who were shot COM did not survive.
2. 3 of the 13 people who died, tried to charge Hassan, but he stopped them with COM shots.
3. The 32 people who were wounded were hit in the arms, legs, hips and shoulders. None of the wounded survivors were shot COM.
The following conclusions can be drawn:
1. The FN 5.7 is a very lethal round CQB because all 11 victims who were shot COM died. No survivors for those hit COM.
2. The FN 5.7 is a real stopper, because 3 tried to charge Hassan at close range and were stopped by COM shots.
3. One of the fatalities was shot in the stomach, and died. The fragmentation of the SS197R round can create a hail of metal shards that can cause serious internal organ damage and bleeding in the stomach.
4. None of the 32 people who were hit in the extremities, hips and shoulders were able to muster a counter-attack because the FN 5.7 must have shattered or broken bones. The high rate of wounded vicitms to fatalities was the direct result of the shooting ability of Hassan (or lack thereof), and not because the 5.7×28 round is not lethal.
5. Sgt. Kimberly Munley (base civilian police), one of the first responders, was immediately disabled with 5.7×28 bullet shrapnels to her wrist and a second 5.7×28 bullet broke her femur. The light 5.7×28 commercial ammo showed that it can shatter large bones due to its velocity
6. According to medical personnel, there was so much blood in the room that it was difficult to get to the victims because the floor became very slippery. One can conclude that the commercial 5.7×28 rounds can fragment or tumble, causing immense blood loss.
7. It took five bullets (which I assume was a 9 mm) from Sgt Mark Todd to stop Hasan. And he survived his wounds (no available info on where he was hit, except that one of the bullets paralyzed Hasan).
In conclusion:
1. The FN 5.7 is definitely a very lethal round. 100% fatality for COM shots.
2. The FN 5.7 is a man-stopper. Three military men tried to charge Hasan, and all three were stopped.
2. The FN 5.7 is a very incapacitating round, if extremities are hit, because it is powerful enough to break the femur (which is the largest bone in the body)
3. The fragmentation or tumbling effect of commercial ammo can cause a lot of blood loss.
The FN 5.7 is a very effective weapon. It is as effective as, or arguably more effective, than any military or civilian pistols in the market.
It is unfortunate that the jihadist Hassan used this weapon against U.S. soldiers.
And as it pertains to its penetrating capability, you can see these tests for yourself (note that none of these rounds are the steel core rounds, and perhaps for maximum tissue damage one wouldn’t want to use steel core rounds anyway).
Jack is walking down a busy sidewalk carrying a handgun in a holster on his belt. Someone screams, “He’s got a gun!” A nearby police officer sees the firearm, draws his weapon, and orders Jack to stop, show his hands, and lie down on the ground. The officer then handcuffs Jack, takes his firearm, and detains him for questioning about why he is carrying the firearm.
With more states legalizing the open carry of firearms, this kind of scenario has and will occur with greater frequency. Let’s assume the person with the firearm is not carrying in a prohibited place, brandishing the weapon in a threatening manner, refusing to follow police orders, or otherwise acting suspiciously. Does the mere carrying of a firearm openly in public give the police sufficient reason to stop the carrier and seize the firearm?
In an open carry state, in this instance the police have violated the constitution of their respective states (or the body of case law appurtenant to this), and the fourth and fifth amendments to the constitution of the United States. So says the Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio.
In such cases, the responsible officer(s) should be charged with violation of the state laws, violation of the fourth and fifth amendments to the constitution of the United States, disturbing the peace, illegal seizure of property, and reckless endangerment due to lack of muzzle discipline when he pointed his weapon at an innocent citizen. He has absolutely no right to detain the individual, touch his property (including his firearm), or make a public spectacle of the detention. Such behavior is thuggish and illegal, regardless of whether the courts allow them to get away with it.
What someone who needs their safe space or doesn’t know the applicable law feels concerning this is completely irrelevant. “He’s got a gun” should be followed by “Ma’am, please be more specific concerning the law you believe to have been violated.” Open carry isn’t brandishing. The more we allow police officers to get away with this kind of behavior, the worse it will become. They need to be reminded of the decision of the fourth circuit in the case of Nathaniel Black.
This is simple. Teach police officers the law, expect them to obey it, and charge them when they don’t. The title of the article at The Hill is “Open carry complicates police encounters.” It only complicates matters when the police do illegal things. Otherwise, this really is all quite clear and easy to process.
There is no absolute right to self-defense; the right is qualified or limited. When the limits to this right are in view, the ground beneath gun ownership rights appears shakier.
Suppose I live in a country with useless law enforcement and know that an assassin is trying to kill me. Surely I, an innocent person, may defend myself. But if the only effective means is by blowing up a crowded building, killing not only the assassin but dozens of innocent people, I may not proceed. My act of self-defense would be disproportionately harmful to innocent others and would violate their rights. My right to self-defense is limited by the means I may take in exercising it.
Perhaps, then, people have a right to take effective means to defend themselves so long as these measures don’t wrongly harm or violate the rights of others. Yet this isn’t quite right either.
When others threaten your security or rights, certain measures may be necessary to protect you. But it doesn’t follow that you may take those measures if another party has assumed responsibility for taking them on your behalf. As Thomas Hobbes argued centuries ago, when we leave a “state of nature” and enter civil society — which features the rule of law rather than anarchy and vigilantism — we transfer some rights to a government whose job description includes protecting us from various common threats. For example, the police, an arm of the government, are permitted to pursue criminals, forcibly apprehend them and bring them to justice. As private citizens, we generally lack the authority to perform these actions.
So it is questionable whether we have not only a right to forceful protective measures but also a right to take those measures ourselves. If the right to do so has been delegated to the police and, in case of foreign invasion, to the military, then our right to self-defense is further qualified. We have, in fact, partly delegated the job of protecting our security to the police and military in the interest of a well-ordered society. So the qualified right to self-defense comes to this: a right to defend oneself when doing so (1) does not wrongly harm others or violate their rights and (2) is necessary to protect one’s security and/or rights because such protection isn’t otherwise forthcoming.
Does the qualified right of self-defense support gun ownership? Presumably, this right concerns the freedom to use effective means to defend oneself — subject to the two qualifications just stated. So, it must be asked: Are guns effective means? Are they necessary for one’s protection? And does gun ownership steer clear of harming others and violating their rights?
These questions raise complicated issues in the social sciences, political philosophy and ethics. In this short space, I can only offer a few brief notes of skepticism.
First, in our current American milieu of minimal gun control, gun ownership is associated with an increased likelihood that someone in the household will die a violent death. Assuming the spirit of “self-defense in the home” includes defending not only oneself but other household members, this evidence-based generalization suggests that gun ownership, on average, is not an effective means to personal security; rather, it tends to be self-defeating.
Second, is gun ownership necessary in the event of an attempted break-in? That is uncertain. Some evidence suggests that calling the police and hiding are more frequently sufficient for a good outcome than is brandishing or using a gun.
Third, does gun ownership avoid wrongly harming others or violating their rights? Not if, as I believe evidence suggests, gun ownership more often leads to injuring or killing innocent persons than to appropriate defensive use.
Well, this is a strange set of arguments indeed. I’ve never seen anything quite like it (at least put together like this in such a disjointed, disconnected set of passages). Let’s unpack this is a bit.
David displays a childish understanding of Western law, or any law in the world for that matter (Asian, Middle Eastern, etc.). Let me rehearse the reality where we’ve addressed this sort of argument before.
In the 1981 decision in Warren v. District of Columbia the D.C. Court of Appeals concluded that it is a “fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.” In Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005), the Supreme Court declined to expand any requirements for protection and ruled that the police cannot be sued for failure to protect individuals, even when restraining orders were in place.
Mr. Hubbard knows these decisions, and also knows that even if it was commonly accepted that the police were required to protect individuals, it would be impossible. They cannot be there all of the time, and they cannot even promise any particular timely response to your calls. The police can literally eat popcorn and watch while a woman is raped, as long as they effect an arrest after the fact. They may be fired for failure to follow a department procedure, but they will not be charged with a crime. “To protect and serve” is a sweet campaign slogan for Sheriffs who are running for office, but it’s a lie – it’s always a lie … The police are there for stability operations and security of the government. Understand that.
It may be a sweet bedtime story for all the little collectivists and their children to believe that the government is in some sort of contract to protect them and bring utopia to earth, but it just isn’t true. No court in America recognizes such a contract. David is engaged in propagating myths and fairy tales.
Next, he disconnects rights from any mooring or foundation and thus leaves the notion of rights meaningless. Not once does the author, who is supposedly a professor of philosophy, anchor his “rights” in a larger system of philosophy with the requisite epistemology, cosmology, metaphysics, ethics and so on. He does throw in a reference to Hobbes (and here I should mention that I consider Hobbes to have been an extremely weak thinker and his philosophy full of problems), but he says too much by using Hobbes as a reference because Hobbes believed in the right of revolt.
Next, he takes an even further turn into the bizarre by becoming a tactical advisor. He would counsel people under threat call the police and hide. Hide! But concealment isn’t cover, and dry wall doesn’t stop any handgun round known to man, much less rifle rounds. If anyone listens to his counsel, you are risking your life and the lives of your loved ones.
Next, he conflates the damage done by criminals with the good done by innocent victims, regardless of the weapon (and here one can substitute hammers, knives, etc.). He has divorced volitional intentionality from the use of tools (here substitute cars, truck loads full of fertilizer, and many other things that can be used to harm man but which can also be used for good). He even throws in a derogatory term for good measure, i.e., “brandishing,” which has nothing whatsoever to do with behavior in one’s own home, and everything to do with threatening or menacing behavior with a weapon in public. No respected tactical trainer to my knowledge has ever suggested that someone “brandish” or wave around guns at home invaders. You should shoot them, just like this woman did who recently used a handgun in self defense.
Finally, he is recommending the abdication of individual rights of innocent men because of the damage done by criminals, as if removal of the liberty of peaceable men will affect criminal behavior. He gives absolutely no justification for the rationality of this belief, or why it should be taken as properly foundational and basic. It isn’t rational, and it isn’t properly foundational and basic.
Regular readers know the true foundation of the Western principle of self defense, and it extends beyond mere self defense. The basis for this principle is found in the Decalogue.
I am afraid there have been too many centuries of bad teaching endured by the church, but it makes sense to keep trying. As I’ve explained before, the simplest and most compelling case for self defense lies in the decalogue. Thou shall not murder means thou shall protect life.
God’s law requires [us] to be able to defend the children and helpless. “Relying on Matthew Henry, John Calvin and the Westminster standards, we’ve observed that all Biblical law forbids the contrary of what it enjoins, and enjoins the contrary of what it forbids.” I’ve tried to put this in the most visceral terms I can find.
God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries. Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them. God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse. He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls. God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right. It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image. It is His expectation that we do the utmost to preserve and defend ourselves when in danger, for it is He who is sovereign and who gives life, and He doesn’t expect us to be dismissive or cavalier about its loss.
We do not need to prove that when a good thing is commanded, the evil thing that conflicts with it is forbidden. There is no one who doesn’t concede this. That the opposite duties are enjoined when evil things are forbidden will also be willingly admitted in common judgment. Indeed, it is commonplace that when virtues are commended, their opposing vices are condemned. But we demand something more than what these phrases commonly signify. For by the virtue of contrary to the vice, men usually mean abstinence from that vice. We say that the virtue goes beyond this to contrary duties and deeds. Therefore in this commandment, “You shall not kill,” men’s common sense will see only that we must abstain from wronging anyone or desiring to do so. Besides this, it contains, I say, the requirement that we give our neighbor’s life all the help we can … the purpose of the commandment always discloses to us whatever it there enjoins or forbids us to do” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, Book 2, Chapter viii, Part 9).
I have further observed that “If you’re willing to sacrifice the safety and health of your wife or children to the evils of abuse, kidnapping, sexual predation or death, God isn’t impressed with your fake morality. Capable of stopping it and choosing not to, you’re no better than a child molester, and I wouldn’t allow you even to be around my grandchildren.”
You’re the equivalent of the child predator if you reject your duty of self defense and defense of the little ones. I haven’t one ounce of respect for you. Mr. DeGrazia has done a pitiful job of arguing against the principle of self defense. And with his unseemly deference to the state, he has also given us no reason to conclude that he would have been willing or able (or armed) to save Christian lives in the Armenian genocide or Jews in the Holocaust (both of which were predicated on gun control). Mr. DeGrazia is in bad company.
A few things are clear: guns are a murderous problem; the NRA is racist and reactionary; and liberals are deluded if they believe that sentencing more black men to prison for gun crimes will do anything other than send more black men to prison. Government must disarm America, including NRA members, including the police. And it is government too that must end the war on guns.
Daniel Denvir, the writer of this pitiful piece, is so confused one wonders if they have any editors at this web site and how they let such a paragraph slip through. A good editor might have thought to ask the writer, “So how are we going to disarm America is we disarm ourselves, and who will do the disarming, since, if government disarms itself they won’t have the necessary arms to disarm anyone? And as for that matter, how does creating such a war end a war?”
But they apparently don’t have good editors. At least you can give this to the author. He’s honest about his confusion, to the point that he is willing to embarrass himself writing about it to the world. The folks at Bloomberg – not so much.
The NRA is not suggesting that every aspiring gunslinger become an expert. Quite the contrary. The organization talks a lot about gun safety and runs training programs. But its priorities lie elsewhere — such as its demand that virtually every American have immediate access to firearms, without training or qualification or cause or background check, and that they be authorized to carry those firearms in public no matter how unskilled or reckless they may be. That’s one reason that there are countless cases of accidental shootings, rage-induced homicides and alcohol-fueled attacks for every rare instance of a good guy with a gun stopping a killing.
It’s always dangerous to read too much into a slogan, even a catchy one. Still, it bears repeating: A guy with a gun and good intentions is not enough to stop a bad guy with a gun. As Jason Falconer showed, it also takes a guy who’s good with a gun.
The author isn’t calling for the disarming of cops, just others. That’s how you know he’s lying. He is advocating the collectivist belief in monopoly of force. He just doesn’t want you to have a gun. I did quite well the last time I was at the range, and I’ll put my ability with weapons up against most cops any day. Either way, it’s a lie to say that people who haven’t been trained in stress management can’t defend themselves. The author knows it. The author of the editorial just isn’t being as honest as the Daniel Denvir, who admitted to us that he has no idea what he’s talking about.
Here’s something else about which the author(s) should be honest. Attempting to confiscate guns or even place further controls on them risks bloody civil war. If they didn’t know that before, they do now. They’ve been told.
9 years, 6 months ago
