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There was an excellent article up on Most Wanted last week discussing the gun control debate, it’s a must read. In it the author, Larry Correia, argues that armed teachers should be allowed in our schools.
The single best way to respond to a mass shooter is with an immediate, violent response. The vast majority of the time, as soon as a mass shooter meets serious resistance, it bursts their fantasy world bubble. Then they kill themselves or surrender. This has happened over and over again.
Police are awesome. I love working with cops. However any honest cop will tell you that when seconds count they are only minutes away. After Colombine law enforcement changed their methods in dealing with active shooters. It used to be that you took up a perimeter and waited for overwhelming force before going in. Now usually as soon as you have two officers on scene you go in to confront the shooter (often one in rural areas or if help is going to take another minute, because there are a lot of very sound tactical reasons for using two, mostly because your success/survival rates jump dramatically when you put two guys through a door at once. The shooter’s brain takes a moment to decide between targets). The reason they go fast is because they know that every second counts. The longer the shooter has to operate, the more innocents die.
However, cops can’t be everywhere. There are at best only a couple hundred thousand on duty at any given time patrolling the entire country. Excellent response time is in the three-five minute range. We’ve seen what bad guys can do in three minutes, but sometimes it is far worse. They simply can’t teleport. So in some cases that means the bad guys can have ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes to do horrible things with nobody effectively fighting back.
So if we can’t have cops there, what can we do?
The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by law enforcement: 14. The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it started.
The teachers are there already. The school staff is there already. Their reaction time is measured in seconds, not minutes. They can serve as your immediate violent response. Best case scenario, they engage and stop the attacker, or it bursts his fantasy bubble and he commits suicide. Worst case scenario, the armed staff provides a distraction, and while he’s concentrating on killing them, he’s not killing more children.
But teachers aren’t as trained as police officers! True, yet totally irrelevant. The teacher doesn’t need to be a SWAT cop or Navy SEAL. They need to be speed bumps.
But this leads to the inevitable shrieking and straw man arguments about guns in the classroom, and then the pacifistic minded who simply can’t comprehend themselves being mandated to carry a gun, or those that believe teachers are all too incompetent and can’t be trusted. Let me address both at one time.
Don’t make it mandatory. In my experience, the only people who are worth a darn with a gun are the ones who wish to take responsibility and carry a gun. Make it voluntary. It is rather simple. Just make it so that your state’s concealed weapons laws trump the Federal Gun Free School Zones act. All that means is that teachers who voluntarily decide to get a concealed weapons permit are capable of carrying their guns at work. Easy. Simple. Cheap. Available now.
Take it from a cop….we can’t be everywhere. In South Central there are many of us, but by the time we get the call it still takes us minutes to get to a scene. Shootings, stabbings, murders and everything in between happen in seconds. In a low crime, rural area, it could be quite awhile for the nearest cops to arrive.
One armed teacher would delay and/or stop the threat to young children.
Contrary to the hyperventilating liberals, no one is advocating that teachers should be mandated to carry a gun. As Larry argues above, make it voluntary. One state that does has concealed carry classrooms filled to capacity with teachers:
More than 200 Utah teachers are expected to pack a convention hall on Thursday for six hours of concealed-weapons training as organizers seek to arm more educators in the aftermath of the Connecticut school shooting.
The Utah Shooting Sports Council said it normally gathers a dozen teachers every year for instruction that’s required to legally carry a concealed weapon in public places. The state’s leading gun lobby decided to offer teachers the training at no charge to encourage turnout, and it worked.
Organizers who initially capped attendance at 200 were exceeding that number by Wednesday and scrambling to accommodate an overflow crowd.
And as the scumbag Piers Morgan blabbers about changing our Constitution (and the Bible) we have newspapers printing the addresses of gun owners (while simultaneously printing the addresses of those who DONT have a gun to defend themselves…friggin idiots).
Based on what we’ve heard so far, this “conversation” amounts to little more than an attempt by one side to shame the other into silence and acquiescence. If you refuse to admit that you, the gun owner, are part of the problem; if you dare to suggest that the public at large would not be less safe but safer if more law-abiding citizens were allowed to carry concealed handguns; if you refuse to acknowledge what is so patently obvious to your enlightened betters living in colonies along both coasts — which is that firearms are inherently evil and have no place in a civilized society — then you are an abettor in the slaughter of children and deserving of public scorn if not imprisonment and even death.
Indeed, this “conversation” has been marked by ignorance and emotionalism on the part of those who would see Americans surrender their guns in advancement of the utopia envisioned in such places as the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Manifesting this ignorance and emotionalism for all to see was CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, who, while engaging in what was purported to be a “conversation on guns” with economist John Lott, seemed gobsmacked when Mr. Lott presented an argument in favor of fewer restrictions on citizens carrying concealed weapons — an argument based on his own extensive research. “I have to say,” stammered Ms. O’Brien, “your position, your position completely boggles me, honestly. I just do not understand it.”
That she did not understand Mr. Lott’s position was obvious, as she was so completely boggled that she failed to address even a single one of the points he made, instead veering off on tangents that did little more than reveal her own lack of knowledge on the subject at hand.
…All the heated rhetoric that has followed the horrors of Sandy Hook obscures the legitimate questions we so yearn to have answered: could the gunman have been stopped, and can future madmen be prevented from carrying out similar crimes? Is there a law that might have been passed, are there steps that might have been taken, could anything have been done to protect those precious children and those who cared for them?
I suspect that those who seek a legislative solution to crimes such as this one are on a fool’s errand. It would be difficult to tabulate the number of laws the gunman broke in the course of his murderous spree that morning; to think the enactment of one or a dozen more would deter such a man is to engage in childish fantasy. And talk of banning “assault weapons” is equally naive, not least for the fact that the very term has no real definition other than to describe rifles that some people find scary-looking.
Could he have been stopped? Yes. By someone armed and ready to take the shooter out or at least draw his attention away. Can future madmen be prevented from doing this again? No. There is evil in this world, always has been and always will be. Even putting away hundreds of thousands into mental institutions against their will, as we did in the past, didn’t stop it. Take away the guns?
Meat Cleaver: A man charged into a kindergarten in northwestern China with a cleaver Wednesday and hacked to death seven children and two adults.
knife: a man used a knife to kill eight children and seriously wound five others in the city of Nanping.
Hammer: Wang Yonglai used a hammer to cause head injury to preschool children.
Box Cutter: a female worker slashed eight children with a box-cutter at a daycare center for migrant workers.
Axe; two young girls and four adults taking their children to nursery school were killed with an axe.
And as we all know 2,996 people were killed by those only armed with box cutters on 9/11.
No, we can stop them by allowing teachers to be armed. Preventing them from ever happening again is fodder for liberal hippies who believe the world can be rainbows and unicorns someday if only there was enough hashish to go around.
See author page
If it is publicly known that teachers in any given school in the area MAY be armed, the likelihood that a madman or a single jihadist will attempt a massacre almost vanishes. Having unidentified armed teachers wrings all the possibility of glory out of the situation.
If you have a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Utah (over 5% of the population) you have the right to carry on any campus, including the one you work on.
So, some states are way ahead on this.
One of the common factors with all these shooters is control. When they are in a gun “free” zone, they are totally in control of the events. There is no resistance, consequently, they have control over the people they are killing.
Having armed resistance mucks up the control factor. Instead of killing, they have to worry about being killed. And almost all of them take their own lives. Again, a control factor since they, not the police, courts or juries, determine the time of their deaths.
There is also the “unknown” factor if teachers are armed. Which teacher is armed? What class rooms are they in? How good a shot is the armed teacher? Can the shooter avoid that teacher? Will an armed teacher come up behind them? Too many variables for those who are so calculating to content with.
I agree with Curt that these shooters are simply evil. They are not crazy, most would not even be considered mentally ill by most standards, just excentric, marching to their own drummer. But we have a tendency to discount evil in the world, not wanting to put a label on it. So what society is unwilling to speak of, unwilling to accepts exists, we call “mental illness.”
Mike McDaniel at Stately McDaniel Manor blog, who is a former police officer and SWAT leader, and is currently a high school English teacher, had a great take on these types of shootings. He tells you what any retired police officer, who no longer has to play the politics of the department, will tell you; the police are minutes away when seconds count.
@cafengocmy, #1:
Why would we conclude that? It isn’t at all uncommon for mass killings to end in the death of the shooter or shooters by a self-inflicted gunshot wound; terrorists are commonly on suicide missions to begin with. We’ve all probably heard of “suicide by cop” incidents. It seems obvious that self-preservation often isn’t among an unbalanced shooter’s priorities. Many such shooters seem to be seeking exactly the opposite outcome.
I see at least a couple of immediate problems with a policy of arming teachers: There’s the one just mentioned—that the prospect of finding armed civilians in a setting filled with targets might actually attract a certain type of shooter. In addition, there’s the fact that teachers themselves likely have a certain percentage of unstable people unnoticed among their own ranks, as is the case with any profession. Are we going to have mass psychological screenings? In depth background checks, to determine each teacher’s non-workplace stability, and to determine the existence of various non-workplace stress factors?
So the Sandy Hook massacre was caused by an irresponsible gun owner who didn’t secure her guns and now you want to arm the teachers? Of course I’m sure with all those teachers armed then there will never be an incident of a kid getting hold of one of those guns will there? O_o
@Greg: @GaffaUK:
Are you aware there are already thousands of schools where they have armed guards? But golly gee, the guards are, many times, in uniform and can be easily avoided.
So you two worry about teachers going postal on the kids. Nevermind that teachers already have unfettered access to the little ones. We allow them to take young children to the rest rooms, alone; we allow them to be in close quarters with our kids in all kinds of situations, but you are worried that they will go postal? Why don’t you give us an example of any school that has had a shooting instigated by an armed guard or an armed teacher and we will compare it with the number of kids that have been sexually abused by teachers. OK?
And Greggie, the big thing you don’t seem to understand about all these shooters is the control factor. They choose gun “free” zones for a reason. They off themselves because they want to be in control of when they die. I would have thought you, of all people, would have a better understanding of the criminal mind.
GaffaUK and Greg:
Curt is trying to deal with the problem as the facts we know define it. You are arguing against it with emotional “may happens”.
Most of us prefer an imperfect solution based on reason and evidence over no solution at all based on emotion and fantasy.
We already trust our teachers with their lives and futures. Might as well trust them to preserve those lives and help them reach those futures.
For myself, Curt, I wish that there was, indeed, enough Hashish to go around. Maybe then the stoners would be satisfied to sit around watching the pretty colors while the rational among us ran things for once.
My thought on this is that a CCW permit should mandatory for teachers. Notice that I said the permit should mandatory, actually carrying should be the decision of the individual.
Some reasons for my thinking are:
1 If a person cannot pass a background check for the permit, I don’t know if he can be trusted with children.
2 Teachers not inclined to carry would still benefit from a good concealed carry class by raising their situational awareness. The one Corriea describes in his article (read the whole thing) sounds like it would be excellent.
3 The shooter would have no idea how many armed opponents he would face. In the latest case, the killer was at least somewhat familiar with the school. His mother had worked there the year before. If only one or two teachers had permits, it’s possible he would know them and account for them in his plan. Much harder to do if everyone had a permit.
@Petercat:
Not just emotional may happens, Petercat.
GaffaUK and Greg speak from ignorance as well.
Israel has had to deal with terrorists who are quite willing to die if their death takes an ”infidel” or a Jew with them.
So, what has Israel done?
Put ARMED GUARDS in EVERY school!
Armed guards in every school was a part of Israel’s” overall anti-terror policy and anti-terror operations which brought street terrorism down to nearly zero over a number of years,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.
There is a major difference between preparing against terrorists and preparing against deranged homicidal maniacs, however.
Israel deals well with the former.
We need a multi-pronged approach to deal better with the latter.
Utah in 2004 and Texas in 2008 allowed CCW permitted citizens in schools, obviously this includes teachers and other staff. The anti-gun people need to be confronted with the stats from those two states; where are the massacres by legally armed school staff they so fear and have massacres occurred in those states since the laws were changed allowing firearms in schools.
Curt,
I haven’t read through all the posts and comments on FA since Sandy Hook (behind in my reading as usual, of late), so I don’t know if anyone already linked to this. It’s dated, but of course still relevant, by the author of On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman.
Essentially, we train teachers in earthquake preparedness, what to do in case of fire, how to use the fire extinguisher, administer First Aid and CPR, etc. How is it any different in preparing for the possibility of violence? The likelihood for any of these emergencies coming up is still slim; but we still want to be prepared in dealing with them, should the proverbial sh*t ever hit the fan. For any teacher up for the training, more power to any of them who wish to train in the combative use of firearms. If pilots seek training to protect their passengers, why aren’t our children any more deserving of such protection from the adults in charge?
Even if a teacher doesn’t choose to be armed, it behooves all of them to intimately familiarize themselves with firearms. If there’s something you’re afraid of, learn everything you can about it. That way there isn’t some “mystique” surrounding guns. You not only realize what they can potentially do to you, but you also come to realize their limitations. As one of my teachers would say, “If you wish to learn how to defend yourself against the knife, you first have to become a knife-fighter.”
And in light of media attention and copycats, don’t think that the jihadis wouldn’t ever dream of hitting us in “our childcare centers”:
The COlorado Universities ost an appeal to prevent concealed carry students and teachers from bringing weapons on campus. Now, they must allow 21 yo students with concealed carry permits to carry. In their ignorance, the Universities are trying to put all the concealed carry permit holders all in the same dormatories. I will never understand the liberal though process if there really is one!
On Christmas Eve, volunteer firefighters came to a burning building and sniper started picking them off. Two were killed, another two were wounded. Should they have been armed as well? You know, as they entered a blaze?
Every time something like this happens, the Conservative answer is more guns. Totally baffling.
The Auroa shooter used smoke and body armor…. what concealed carrier is going to safely take him down without risking collateral damage? Your stereotyping adjectives of those who sit on the other side of your political philosophy only indicate that you’re not listening, and that you’d rather belittle us than even entertain the thought of maybe adjusting the way you do things. But that’s no surprise.
@Cary:
Those two firefighters are dead because someone very, very stupid thought that the man who shot them had been rehabilitated in prison. He was sentenced for killing his grandmother in 1980, but was released out on parole. What rocket scientist thought that a man who had murdered his grandmother could ever be rehabilited?
Got that, Cary? He was a convicted felon and could not legally own firearms, yet he had a number of them. Now, just how do you think he got those weapons? You think some gun shop laid its license on the line to provide them to him? Or perhaps he got them from the Mexican drug dealers that Eric Holder sold so many weapons to.
So it would seem that we not only need to promote good laws that allow people to defend themselves, we also need to look at the people who release convicted murderers back on our streets. Anyone who is ever convicted of murder should NEVER be allowed to walk as a free citizen again. EVER.
@retire05:
I don’t disagree with you. In fact, a good deal of what Mayor Bloomberg of NYC, who has been a leader in calling for stricter gun control, has been pushing for is a crackdown on those who would provide these weapons to people who should not have them, including crossing state lines where gun laws are less strict.
But that doesn’t address my point of more guns always being the answer. Do you really think that these firefighters should have been armed to protect themselves as they run into a burning building? Do we really want live ammunition entering a fire that has yet to be controlled? I don’t. That’s just one example where more guns as an answer to gun violence is illogical, unfeasible, and more dangerous.
I’ve said it before here: I’m quite leery of the idea of allowing the lowest-scoring profession in the world, in an occupation with the greatest rates of child sexual abuse among all occupations, 100x that of the Catholic priesthood, to have guns. Not only that, the people training to become public school teachers are the lowest-scoring college students, of all major fields of study.
The solution is to home-school. Get your kids out of these Marxist hellholes.
https://taqiyyologist.wordpress.com/
Oh, and — I finally started a blog this evening. We’ll see how that goes.
@Cary:
The sniper who shot those four firefighters was on “supervised” parole. Perhaps you would like to tell us what the hell that means, since he seemed to have no trouble getting firearms.
Even if he had come to Texas attempting to buy “legal” firearms, the background check done by all gun dealers is with the federal government, so your lame attempt to try to say that perhaps he bought them across the NY state line is bull.
Maybe we need to lock people like the sniper up and throw away the key, never allowing them to ever walk free again. But then, people like you and the ACLU, bleating hearts all of you, will whine and moan about how cruel it would be to lock someone up for the rest of his life just because he murdered his grandmother. Basically, that guy should have been forced down in Old Sparky and had the juice put to him.
The bottom line, that you and the rest of the gun grabbers refuse to acknowledge, is that he got his guns illegally. He did not obey the existing laws, and you think more laws are going to make criminals think twice about getting a weapon? Just how damn stupid are you? Obviously as stupid as New York’s Mayor Nanny who wants to control even what you eat or drink. Get back to me when Bloomberg gives up his armed security.
@Cary:
In the chaos of that situation, who knows for sure how the presence of firearms in the hands of those who wished to have them would have fared? 12 people killed and around 58 wounded….would other shooters have made matters worse, with more innocents hit by “friendly fire”? Maybe. What we do know are the results of being a sitting duck, defenseless and disarmed of an equalizer (thanks to obeying gun laws) and a fighting chance to make a meaningful difference: 12 dead and about 58 wounded.
No two situations are alike. Do you think the absence of firearms from the hands of law-abiding citizens will automatically result in more death and carnage and make matters worse? Or will it give criminals pause and give innocent lives a fighting chance for survival?
In the case of Sandy Hook, while Lanza was breaking into the school and before he entered any classrooms, don’t you think that would have been a good time to stop him with something other than your bare hands? Do you think the principal or some other administrator in the vicinity would have fared better, had one of them been armed? It might have prevented the massacre that we do know happened next….in the absence of guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens.
Cary,
Did you read the Larry Correia link in the post? It’s quite good.
@Wordsmith, #18:
I keep imagining concealed carry becoming so prevalent that we’d have 20 or 30 armed civilians in any darkened theater, or in any seating section of any sports stadium. What happens in any large, densely packed crowd, when just one such civilian seriously misjudges a situation?
Violence comitted with firearms has been going down for 20 years–even BEFORE the “assault weapon” ban.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/26/charts-of-the-day-gun-violence-in-america-declining-over-last-20-years/
PSSSST greg, here in AZ we probaly do have 20-30 armed people in a movie theatre at a time. No misunderstandings yet, and it’s been like this for many years.
Leftists always try to play the what if game when it comes to firearms ownership to justify banning them. They always get it wrong.
In states where firearms laws were eased, there was the left bleating how they were going to turn the streets into the O.K. Corral and it would be a bloodbath. No such thing ocurred. Enough people have realised this and the benefits of firearms ownership to tune out the Constitution hating left.
@Greg:
What’s the hypothetical situation they find themselves in? One civilian misjudges and what? 20 or 30 other armed citizens just randomly start shooting in all directions in a blind panic?
Has this ever happened in places where gun laws are less restrictive and you find an armed citizenry (where 20-30 in a public venue ARE carrying)?
Funny that people like greg like to play what if’s with a Constitutional right in order to infringe upon it, but refuses to entertain any what if’s with nationalised healthcare or other leftist schemes. What a shock.
@Wordsmith:
My brother in law, a police detective (and no liberal) talked about this very thing over Christmas. To be blunt, the idea of amateurs playing Rambo scares the hell out of him personally. His issue is that if he was in an Aurora type situation, he has the training to draw and evaluate the situation, and a potential shooter, for data before discharging his weapon. His fear? That some Blockbuster manager two rows behind him sees him draw his weapon and, panicking, shoots him. I don’t know how anyone can minimize this factor. I know several teachers and they’ve told me that they’ve all had to break up fights where if they’d been carrying a gun it could easily have been grabbed from them. Are these professionals crazy because they see danger for themselves in further arming the public? People talk about guns in America like the sun in Florida, do whatever you can to protect yourself from it because we can’t control it. Except we can control the number of guns, and impact who has them.
@Tom, #25:
Nor do I, but many posts suggest that others have very little difficulty minimizing it.
@Cary: Aren’t the police who also respond to fires for crowd control armed? You do not have to take ammo into a fire. Only a liberal would do that or even think of doing that!
So snobbery and fear are reasons to ban firerams?
Little tip tom, look at how many shots the average police officer fires that find their mark in shootings.
IIRC “untrained” civilians do just as well or better.
@Wordsmith: A perrson who qualifies for a concealed cary permit in Colorado could and would have been able to get a few rounds into the Aurora shooter. Even if it hit the body armor, it is real difficult to concentrate on your primary task when someone else is shooting at you! Instead of hiding under the seats, I would have empied a magizine of my .40 cal into him. After all, he was up front shooting back into the crowd. I would not be too concerned about messing up that silver screen. Have you ever had anyone shoot at you when you were performing some important task? The issue here is interdiction, not killing the shooter.
By the way, since the success of the concealed carry lady at the Colorado Springs Church 5 years ago, our paster has encouraged those with concealed carry permits to carry in Church. You would act just like Bob Costa as he stated in his interview with Bill O’Riley. “I would have crawled under the seats.”
BTW folks, that was tom using the “appeal to authority” technique of arguing. It pretty much shows how weak his position is.
Many people carry firearms on a daily basis and we don’t have “misunderstandings” or guys playing Rambo. Sounds like the “detective” is as much an unwarranted elitest snob as tom.
There is a misconception that anyone who is a police officer knows firearms. Unfortunately I have heard far too many police officers utter the kind of ignorant statements gun banners do about firearms. This seems to be especially so in blue states.
@Hard Right:
Responsible, armed citizens getting along? Who woulda thunk….
@Tom:
I think it is a cause for concern. That said, what’s the alternative solution? To allow our citizenry to be lambs to the slaughter for fear of what might happen should violence erupt against them? That instead of going after the wolf, the sheep accidentally harm one another in their panic? Sure, there’s a risk there. But there’s also a risk at being a sitting duck and made defenseless.
Back in August, NYC cops wounded innocent bystanders in the ensuing chaos. Don’t know how well-trained they were, but things happened fast. If this were a situation where the guy opened fire on the crowd around him, should only the police be allowed to handle such a situation with return violence? And we all know the police can’t be everywhere. How many would have to die before armed help arrived from those “well-trained” with a professional duty?
Each person’s life is his own personal responsibility to defend.
Police officers also face the same risk. Anyone that chooses to carry will always face the same possibility.
Not all situations will turn out the same way; nor will all have positive outcomes. But what is the price for disarming law-abiding citizens from the personal responsibility of protecting their own lives over outsourcing it to those who usually arrive to clean up the mess after the situation has already gone down?
More unlawful deaths or less?
@Greg: Name one time when that has happened. The concealed carry man in the Oregon Mall drew and interdicted the situation with out firing a shot.
@Greg: @Greg:
I would feel comfortable sitting in a movie theatre with my brother in law armed, because he has been trained. I would feel comfortable with a veteran. Why would I feel comfortable with the average citizen considering the current training requirements to get a conceal and carry permit in many states? But if you say to the NRA, let’s discuss common sense training as a prerequisite to getting a gun, they act like only former Green Berets buy guns, not alcoholics and crack addicts.
@Tom: I have to laugh at your brother in Law considering we concealed carry individuals as amatures. Remember the police shooting in NY recently where 15 innocent bystanders were wounded when the police shot at a murder? They did manage to get a few rounds inthe murderer. I am far from being a amaturer. One thing about the concealed carry people is that theyare reluctant to shoot and are very cautious. Part of the training is about the laws partaining to shooting in public. Few of us would want to risk our lives to a liberal court. We are not going to take chances.
tom and greg
1) Many police officers killed have been killed with their own guns.
2) You wrongly assume if someone isn’t “professionaly trained” they are utterly incompetent
3) One does not have to be “professionaly trained” to be competent and knowledgeable.
4) The left’s definition of “reasonable” has been shown to be anything but
5) One of the previous schemes to harrass gun owners was to require training that was cumbersome and/or so expensive, that many would not even bother buying a firearm.
@Tom: Why do you think that only police officers are trained? Show me a profile of concealed carry people and I will show you a great number of people who can out shoot and out reason a police officer. In fact, a citizen is more likely to take more time to evaluate the situation than a police officer. If you want to have a real discussion, do not consider concealed carry people to be like you and to think like you. Only then can you understand their capabilities.
@Randy:
Love that leftist projection and undeserved elitist bent greg and tom display.
@Wordsmith:
The answer is going after the wolf and hammering any criminal with a gun, and doing what we can to keep guns from criminals. How does flooding society with guns and just accepting more mass shootings as collatoral damage make sense? Do you really think just opening the floodgates to guns in our society is the best sollution? There are hundreds of things we can do to uphold the Second Amendment, yet reduce the number of guns in our society and the NRA supports exactly zero of them. We are talking about law and order and the Right, on this one issue, preach Anarchy, the Wild West, and living in a constant state of terror. Why would we accept this? I am still waiting for a compelling answer.
This is a good essay about how liberals want conseratives to give up their guns, but they do not. http://spectator.org/archives/2012/12/27/liberals-who-cling-to-their-gu
Hey tom, there are about 300 million firearms in America. The guns have already “flooded” the streets. Many people already carry guns.
You have just shown how ignorant you are about firearms, bigoted against their owners, and hypocritical when it comes to the Constitution.
Keep posting tho. You are really helping the 2nd Amendment.
@Hard Right: This example of what an organized community can do with concealed carry in Westcliff, CO. Many small towns use this model in the rural counties. http://michellemalkin.com/2012/12/26/the-gift-of-self-empowerment/
I would like to match my abilities as old as I am against Tom’s Brother in law.
@Randy:
Do you accept mandatory training, or proving a level of training, as a prerequisite for getting a gun then? What do you have to lose supporting that?
In a country where, in many jurisdictions, almost anyone can get a gun, do you think my brother in law is worried about you? I wish you would stop using yourself as an example. You are not the person we are talking about.
@Tom: Tom, the Aurora theater was posted as a “gun free zone” It was the only one I know of in that part of Aurora. The bad guys do not randomly attack people in public places. They pick places where there is little risk of their plans being foiled. It is the threat that others may be carrying guns that deter the action, not necessarily the guns or shooting. As long as criminals know there is a group of people who cannot defend themselves or are not defended, they will select those venues for their murders.
@Tom:
1) I am against mandatory training for the reasons previously stated.
2) Actually, WE ARE the people you are talking about, tom.
@Randy:
Thanks for the link. It’s exactly what we have been saying all along.
tom has no idea what the average firearms owner is like. He can only see them from the stereotypical leftist view. There is nothing we can ever say or info we can provide that will make him change his mind.
I respond to his posts to educate others.
@Tom:
The guns are already there; it’s where you’re allowed to carry and not carry them (as a law-abiding citizen).
Are we experiencing an epidemic rise in mass shootings? I didn’t know. And if having more guns prevents more mass shootings, then yes. If the “collateral damage” results in more lives saved than is ultimately lost, then, yes.
No one’s advocating anarchy and a return to the Wild West (Yee-haw!). Nor living in paranoia and a “constant state of terror”. To me, a reasonable amount of self-defense training in relation to the probability of being in a violent situation is no different than having a fire extinguisher and First Aid kit to protect myself- to have a plan of action in the advent of an earthquake. It’s preparedness.
Btw, the image of the Wild West as a place of nothing but lawless violence and shootouts between cowboys is rather exaggerated.
Did you read the Correia link?
@Randy, #36:
The requirements that must be met to receive a concealed carry permit in my own state are minimal. A demonstration of minimal competency with any firearm or basic firearms safety training aren’t part of them. I have absolutely no reason to assume that any random Indiana resident who has a concealed carry license knows one end of a handgun from the other. When they give you your license, they’ll give you some reading material. I don’t believe it matters whether you’re actually capable of reading it or not.
Hopefully when such a person buys a firearm, it will come with user instructions. Maybe the gun will have some helpful instructions on it, like a Claymore mine: “Front. Toward Enemy.”
@Tom: It is mandatory to have training for a concealed carry permit. I really do not know anyone who has not had training that has a gun. I had my forst gun, a .22 single shot rifle, at 6 years old. I was well trained by my parents and grand-pa. My job was to kill the ground hogs and pigeons that infested our farm. Because I had to buy my own ammunition, I moved from $1.10/box of 50 birdshot to .22 shorts and long rifle at $.15-25/box. If these shooter like Sandy Hook were trained, there would have been hundreds killed in the 20 minutes before the police arrived.
You keep making the mistake that everyone is like you. All you gun controlled liberals think that way. Because you would not know how to safely handle a gun or a situation where a gun would be used, you think no one else does.
You want mandatory training? Just what would that be? Going through a $500 course or can I teach my sons what I know. One thing I learned very quickly as a child, my butt would be very warm if I used any gun loaded or unloaded in any unsafe manner. Is that training enough for you? By the way, how much training do these murderers have? Are you telling me that if they had been trained, they would not have killed anyone?
@Greg:
And you have no reason to assume they don’t. That’s the problem witn “assuming”.
@Wordsmith:
The guns didn’t grow on trees. The guns are here because of years of non-existent gun control, and now we are paying the price. So the guns that are here are now the excuse for more guns and more laws that put us in this place to begin with, as if we landed on an alien planet not of our own making?
Why is mandatory background checks on ALL sales not a reasonable idea?
Why is restricting weapons that serve no sporting or hunting purpose, but serve to massacre people time and again a bad idea?
And before people jump in with “that won’t prevent every gun crime”, no law does prevent every crime. We wouldn’t need police otherwise. But a law is a barier, and a cause of legal action.