Yesterday, a certain contrarian commenter accused me of framing the Virginia Tech shooting as a straw man argument, noting as I did that the budding humanities professors who haunt the DU underground—at least until they can save enough of that Quizno’s counterboy cash to buy themselves a Playstation 3—were already turning the shooting into a referendum on the 2nd Amendment. Noted said contrarian:
If you search the whole world, you can always find someone to supply just the right comment to prove your non-point
—the implication being, I suppose, that the DU scholars are unrepresentative of the mainstream left—an assertion I wouldn’t dispute, but one I needn’t dispute, either, having never made it in the first place.
That honor goes, by implication, to the contrarian himself, whose attempt to call me out on a straw man argument forced him to make one of his own.
Leaving that aside, however, it was certainly on my mind that the MSM, which tends to prefer and promote gun control legislation over the more muscular Second Amendment measures preferred by many conservatives and libertarians, might take the tack those at the Democratic Underground were early to adopt. And my suspicions were validated some time later, when ABC’s Blotter scrambled to turn a massacre by a single lawbreaker into a gun control marketing campaign.
That to do so required carefully crafted misinformation—and was less “news” than propaganda—didn’t seem to bother our vaunted defenders of truthiness.
And in fact, the narrative seems to be growing:
By the desensitising standards of routine American gun violence, yesterday’s shootings at Virginia Tech university were shocking only in their scale. Over more than 20 years, Americans have got grimly used to a ritual that plays out on the cable news every few months. The initial news is sketchy, reports of shots fired at a campus or in a schoolyard. Then, the first confused images of students running terrified from classrooms, black-clothed Swat teams gingerly pressing into doorways; the press conference in which some dazed school principal or university president mutters the first incomplete details, with casualty estimates and emergency phone numbers for worried relatives to call.
[…]
Perhaps of all the elements of American exceptionalism – those factors, positive or negative, that make the US such a different country, politically, socially, culturally, from the rest of the civilised world – it is the gun culture that foreigners find so hard to understand.
The country’s religiosity, so at odds with the rest of the developed world these days; its economic system which seems to tolerate vast disparities of income; even all those strange sports Americans enjoy – all of these can at least be understood by the rest of us, even if not shared.
But why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?
I’m not going to comment on how European gun laws have placed all of Europe at the mercy of violent lawbreakers — the actions of their governments in the face of the growing threat from Islamic extremism underscores just how feckless they’ve become at defending themselves—but I will point out that Europe itself has seen a few shooting sprees of its own (recall the Scotland kindergarten shooting, for instance) suggesting that, as always, where there’s a will there’s a way. Similarly, the suggestion that US school shootings have reached some sort of epidemic is grossly overstated.
Which is why we can turn these questions around and ask why it is that Europeans and American progressives seem to believe that taking away from law-abiding citizens a tool for self-defense somehow mitigates the means and motivations of non-law abiding citizens to act out, or to acquire the means to do so.
Particularly strange is that this impulse is voiced by the very people who never tire of reminding us how the current Administration is shredding the Constitution; and yet, it is to the government that they wish to surrender all the guns.
Nannystatism—in its efforts to protect—succeeds only in infantilizing the culture. Yet the very same political philosophy that decries in things like the PATRIOT Act the surrendering of “freedoms” for what it deems illusory security doesn’t hesitate, when it suits their agenda, to demand that same sacrifice be made when the enemy is not some shadowy terrorist group who has openly expressed an interest in our complete destruction, but rather law-abiding citizens with a Constitutional right to bear arms.
Honestly. All that’s missing from such pretzel logic is a bit of rock salt and a squirt of yellow mustard.
(h/t Tom)
*****
update: Glenn Reynolds has more.
There was an interesting quote in the German press that I read today referencing a couple of school shootings in Germany in recent years (remember them?) The difference is that of course gun control laws are very strict in Germany.
And let us not forget the kindergarten shootings in Scotland.
What I get from this is that gun control cannot be the solution, in the sense that a crackpot who wants to kill a lot of people can and will do so, regardless of the amount of gun control.
On the other hand, it does seem clear to me that killings of this type seem to be a recent phenomenon (last few decades). They certainly were not common in earlier times. Perhaps this has to do with small arms technology, in part.
I don’t have any simple solutions, but gun control is not the solution.
Well, that’s a mouthful of shit and compliment, ain’t it?
Mr. Baker needs to take himself a good look around jolly old London and recalibrate.
I can’t remember where I read it, but there is a saying that most people are sheep, a few are sheepdogs and some are wolves. Now the wolf and the sheepdog have some things in common; they both exist outside the flock and they both work on instinct, but there is at least one critical distinction between them-how they behave towards the sheep.
Now, in this case the wolf has gotten into the flock and many of the sheep are dead. The reaction from the libs and our European masters seems to be to try and muzzle the sheepdog.
They don’t want to muzzle the sheepdog, they just want him properly licensed, inspected, and of course, regularly sent to Wolf-Sensitivity Training: How to Recognize and Embrace the Otherdog.
Then they muzzle him.
Boy, it sure is a good thing that the media won’t overreact and sensationalize this story so that we don’t lose perspective on the fact that as horrible as this was, statistically these things really don’t happen that often at all.
Right?
Yeah, good thing. I was almost worried about it there for a second.
I betchya Oprahs moved on to more Imus bashing already, I do.
An AP piece (now off my Comcast news server) quoted much European tut-tutting, including a gem from an Italian paper which was bewildered about how “self-defense is wired into American DNA.”
American DNA? Hey, Luigi, self-defense is wired in the DNA of all sentient beings. It’s how species survive.
It’s looking increasingly like the Euro press/elites are the first species to officially declare open season on themselves.
Liberal college campuses indoctrinate students hate and rage all day long then blame a piece of metal for all the world ills.
Further, if I’m being raped or assaulted by a hatemonger I really don’t expect Nanny Bloomberg or my feminist sisterhood to come to my rescue.
Unfortunately for my own survival, Nanny Bloomberg and the patsy girls have made it almost impossible for me to be able to defend myself.
Frankly, if this shooting had happened a week earlier, Imus would still have his job.
It’s just the way news cycles work.
Now we’ll get gun control, “What’s wrong with our kids?”, “why do people kill people”, and noxious columns from the likes of Anna Quindlen about how she drops her kids off to school with her heart in her throat, etc. for two weeks UNLESS something bigger happens in the meantime.
The Colt 1911, a very popular semi-auto pistol still manufactured new today, has been around since the early 1900s. While the design has improved by some, and different actions have been developed, the basic idea of a self-loading pistol with the ability to change magazines quickly hasn’t changed.
People, however, apparently have changed. Gun ownership is less common every decade, it seems, but irresponsible, selfish, and insane behavior involving guns has increased over time.
Bill Whittle said that in one of his essays, though I don’t know if he’s the first to put it that way. It’s the first place I saw it, though.
We were talking last night about how we wished that this wasn’t the reason why the Imus story finally got killed.
Now we get gun and video game bashing for the next few months. Fabulous.
I think Luger Parabellums are even older.
I am not thinking of magazine fed gas operated semi automatic pistols. But there is a difference between a .45, which is heavy, and only takes six bullets in the magazine, and a Glock, which is comparatively light and takes 14. I’ve never fired a Glock, but I used to fire .45’s, the recoil on those pretty much goes against any concept of “rapid fire” with any kind of accuracy. Plus of course you have to re-load more often.
That fellow Unruh, BTW, in Camden in 1946 (?), he used a .45. I don’t recall how many people he killed but I think it was around a dozen.
Yes, Steve:
This, despite the fact that the shooter was from this whole other country.
We’ll also get recriminations against the VT officials for not knowing the future (as Horatio Caine would have) and “locking down” the campus.
And of course, calls for more gun control. As if there weren’t enough unarmed people at Virginia Tech that day.
Correction: Howard Unruh used a Luger, killed 13, 1949. He still lives in a NJ psych ward.
No genocide (or attempted genocide) has ever taken place in a country whose populace was armed.
End of lesson. It’s not a pretty lesson, and the math of “some die, most live” is damned unpopular. But it’s correct, in my opinion.
My condolences to the families of the slain.
In earlier times (before gun control), a much larger percentage of responsible citizens on the street carried guns with them or had them in their offices, stores etc. Which may not have stopped the VT tragedy from happening, but might have mitigated it’s effects. I think the phenomenon and gun cotrol go hand in hand. Certainly gun control hasn’t helped as far as scope.
The Texas tower shootings are a good example of that. An armed citizenry most certainly reduced the probable scope. Were a similar damn good shot with a similar damn good rifle to take position in a tower overlooking an open quad today, they’ll be no similar students or professors helping to keep his head down and save a similar number of lives.
Interesting point on the gun vs. gun deterrent issue, it does appear that many of the people in Unruh’s neighborhood had weapons, and had them in hand during his spree, but apparently it didn’t make a whole lot of difference. I might be corrected on this.
Cranky-d, thanks.
tw-them78, as in “take those awful firearms away from them”.
Look at the weapon control progression in England: the populace has been disarmed of all handguns and most rifles, leaving only the odd shotgun here and there; now there are knife control laws, and confiscations of same, with more types of knives added to the banned list on a regular basis. Having disarmed its subjects, what does the Crown propose to do next?
Answer here:
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/16/1699.asp
Don’t kid yourself, Soc, the progs and the media will have numerous expert opinions as to how he was corrupted by our insane gun culture. If he was overweight, add trans fats.
Collective guilt, the other white meat.
If he had been Chinese, I’m sure we would have heard a lot of about James G. Blaine, anti-Chinese legislation, Yellow Peril, Fu Manchu, Flower Drum Song, and other leftover anti-Asian hysteria as being responsible for this backlash. On the other hand, as a South Korean, the only thing they’ll be able to latch onto is that silly couple on “Lost” and Margaret “This is what I feel like on my period” Cho.
In fact, the more I think about it the more I think we will get a lot of Asians being interviewed on the difficulties of living in America.
The more I think about it the more I think we’ll soon get a bunch of interviews with high-profile Asians lamenting the “outsider” feeling that Asian Americans have. Just a feeling.
Please note that May has been designated “Asian Pacific Heritage Month” in the United States.
I think Mr. Baker has confused being a sitting duck with having his propa-ducks in a row. Or maybe he just wants us all to be sitting ducks because he knows he is one and has been Islamically desensitized to even think he likes it. Maybe he really does like it.
Civilised behavior demands surrender, eh wot? Can’t we all just be dhimmis? Ya-know, being free was never worth it to begin with. Nor being born.
So, my fellow deathworshippers, we certainly don’t need no damn self-defense around here. Only my death, or better yet that of someone else, justifies my values. After all, so sayeth Osama himself, not to mention Gandhi.
I think Mr. Baker has also confused his being transparent with being invisible.
Robert, that article you linked was scary.
Steve, I think I understand your point about modern guns being easier to use for this sort of thing, but I’m not sure that magazine capacity is all that much of a factor when there is no one around to return fire. I’m not even sure being able to shoot very rapidly is a factor in the same situation. Also, I think that a light-weight gun is at a disadvantage when it comes to recoil. The only reason IMO to have a light-weight gun is to make it more comfortable to carry when not shooting it.
Then again, I find it difficult to imagine myself going on a rampage like this, so take it for what it’s worth. I still think it’s a people problem, and that gun design has little to nothing to do with the increase in shootings.
They’re not confused.
If they see a quasi-eternal institution, or set of them, unaltered by electoral surface static, which they believe to be on their side, or to be their side, and which can be strengthened by feigning its endangerment, the contradiction dissolves.
And they’re right.
Don’t forget Team America, World Police
“So Roneryâ€Â
I hate yellow mustard.
Cranky: All I’m really doing is venting about the shooting. BTW, the kid was an English Major. Snap up “Richardmcbeef.com” while you can.
I was thinking about the shooting too in terms of re-load, however. Now, take a .45. if I fire 6 shots, the locking mechanism will lock to the back, and I will have to grab another magazine, insert it, and then release the mech for the next round to catch. Because I have six shots, I will have to do that every 10-15 seconds. Maybe someone could jump me in that reload period? I don’t know.
I guess we can agree that back in the days of Aaron Burr and Hamilton, i.e., muzzle loading pistols, this wouldn’t have been an issue.
Well, I’ve been waiting for the leftosphere to insert its collective birkensock clad foot into its collective mouth in the rush to blame. And it seems it has done so less than 24 hours after the massacre:
Mr Daly at the NY Daily News contends that Virginia deserves its fate because of its liberal gun laws:
read all about it
BTW, the sheepdog essay is here. As it turns out, the idea was advance by an unnamed officer in the U.S. armed forces.
Steve: I can dig the whole venting thing.
I think we could also agree this would’ve been even less of a problem if all we had for weapons were rocks. Technological advancement in weaponry has inevitably lead to making mass slaughter a lot easier.
I just looked at the ABC Blotter article and comments – the latter now numbering over 700. I stopped reading at about 100, I think, but the ABC propaganda piece was taking a virtually unanimous beating, possibly even developing somewhat of a consensus, of all things. But the traffic itself will probably only encourage ABC to seek newer lows of absurdity.
But if you ban rocks only criminals will have rocks.
Cranky,
Thanks for the link; I hadn’t read that essay in a while. As for the author of the sheepdog metaphor, he’s not unnamed, he’s Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman, and Whittle links to his DVD series here.
Actually, you were right. ‘Tis LtCol Grossman who quotes another old soldier.
i gud at reding
I figure the MSM will search high and low for some Asians that feel “corrupted” by the evil of America and will denouce it as such. Wonder if they’ll interview Michelle Malkin for her point of view on the subject?
Mmmm…maybe not.
Steve, there are a number of .45s with a magazine capacity of greater than 7 rounds. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, but Springfield currently offers an XD model with a 13 round mag. Para Ordnance makes some as well. I can even buy 15 round mags for my standard M1911; to be sure, they stick out the bottom, but that’s only important if I’m worried about carrying it around.
At short ranges, let’s say out to 60 feet or so, it’s not at all difficult to hit with multiple, rapid shots with my M1911.
I’ve seen word that Cho may have been on medication for depression. If so, the Scientologists will join the gun-control nuts in trying to use this tragedy to advance their cause.
Remember after 9/11 and stuff, how there were/are loud protestations that “Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither”?
What are those people proposing now?
Back when all we had was rocks (and I’m nearly, but not quite old enough to remember that), the big bad guys with rocks usually had their way with the weak little good guys with rocks. Technological advancement changed the equation so that the cliche “God didn’t make all men equal; Colonel Colt did” was actually true. Unfortunately, sociological “advancement” has shifted the equation yet again. The bad guys willing to use weapons for slaughter once again have their way with good guys who are unwilling to use (or are prohibited from using)weapons for defense.
Today in southern Italy two criminals abducted a mentally ill man and beat him within an inch of his life with a rock to take the €500 of his social security check.
This evening, one of the lefty ministers of government was raving about how bad is that Americans (nevermind state government) can buy one gun per week. At least he recognized that the incident described above doesn’t really help the image of Italy as a crime-free (because all those evil guns are tightly controlled) country.
Jim KC: I haven’t used a .45 in DECADES, but what I do remember is that the kick was significant enough for me that my instinct was not to fight it but allow my wrists to work back to position. I used both hands to fire it, too, I can’t really imagine firing one in each hand with a steady aim without significant practice time. (Again, what this is all about to me is envisioning the shooter with something other than a Glock.)
I have plenty of guns–owned ‘em for years. Two deer rifles, a shotgun, a Smith & Wesson 357 mag and most recently, a Baretta 9mm. What changed yesterday: I am now registered to get my concealed handgun permit. Once obtained (should take about one week), I will officially join the sheepdog society.
Let me put this in total perspective.
Anyone reasonably competent with a pistol can perform a reload in less time than it would take to acquire a new target in the sights.
Meaning that whether your firearm holds 6, 9, 14, or twenty rounds is effectively immaterial. Accuracy of fire is what matters and this SOB had that down.
Steve, I own a 1911 .45 cal, and another 1911 derivative pistol, plus a .40 cal Glock. I can tell you the Glock (to my perception) kicks much more than the .45’s. My feeling is that it’s because the Glock weighs so much less, more of the recoil gets transfered through to the hand.
Nannystatismâ€â€in its efforts to protectâ€â€succeeds only in infantilizing the culture.
An Important Pronouncement , Made With Absolutely No Evidence
I had had this impression that you wanted to be a writer, but then I read:
“Leaving that aside, however…” However what?
Do you have a clue what mitigation means?
The assertions which you make abut Europe are absurd and dishonest… when we have riots, people die, in French riots – cars are burned. There is a difference.
Sorry to be pedantic, but I got a chuckle out of this, because the Colt 1911 has been around since, well, 1911. It’s pretty easy to be more precise in this case!
Ah, yes—the non-lethal European riot. Much more civilized, n’est ce pas?
And their beer sucks, too.
bbbustard,
I don’t remember news of mass killings during riots in the USA, but I recall quite a few cases of people dying (or being killed intentionally) during riots in Italy, France, England, Germany…
And the pollution and carbon dioxide released by those burning cars is going to kill many underprivileged people, I tell you.
The assertions which you make abut Europe are absurd and dishonest… when we have riots, people die, in French riots – cars are burned. There is a difference.
Huh?
Where, when?
These people kill each other over soccer:
</blockquote>The assertions which you make abut Europe are absurd and dishonest… when we have riots, people die, in French riots – cars are burned. There is a difference. <blockquote>
I’ll bet the woman burned in the bus would beg to differ. Or the Cops who were beaten up.
Steve,
One of the things you practice if you’re training to (hopefully) win a gunfight is shooting one-handed, including using the weak hand, but that’s not the most accurate way to shoot any pistol whether .45 or 9mm.
Yup: This is what a civilised European riot looks like. Why the only thing missing was a warm baguette and a glass of Mouton-Cadet.
You have to forgive bb. He/she thinks that Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd are “brilliant.”
Crow Creek Massacre Site. Google it.
Also, I wonder how common this was back when private citizens could own Thompsons. If it wasn’t as common, then it wasn’t access to firepower that causes it.
Cincinnati had a riot and no one died. The closest to a gunshot victim was a policeman who had a round bounce off his belt buckle.
“Leaving that aside, however…†However what?
This is kind of a fallingtree/forest/sound question.
Is it possible to be a writer if dumbshits like bb-whatever can’t comprehend simple sentence structure?
Pretty lame snark, pally.
Kudos to Pam Spaulding posting at Pandacrap for almost getting it right and almost keeping politics out of her post about the VT shootings.
She did ok here:
Then completly broke down into a BDS episode. She couldn’t resist trying to insert a little Bushate spin. Ya know……for the kids.
Hmmm. I wonder why, then, Switzerland has so much barbed wire seperating the swiss from every other european neighbor. And whats with all the guns?
The 1911 was adopted in 1911 by the armed forces. The design predates that by a number of years.
Just to be pedantic.
In an interview with Shepherd Smith this morning, a student recounted how the shooter entered his classroom and began killing people and the victim hid behind a desk. The shooter emptied his clip, reloaded, and resumed firing, and the victim stayed behind the desk. He was eventually shot in the arm, apparently not seriously, but was not killed and the shooter left the room. I don’t know if the interview was legitimate, the student interviewed immediately before him informed Shep they she was on the floor above the shooting and could feel the heat from the gunfire with her feet, but who the hell would just sit there and watch someone trying to kill them reload his fucking gun?
This event worries me on a lot of levels, the attack on the Second Amendment being just one of them.
I guess he’s just not an ultimate badass who rips people’s heads off with his bare hands like you are, B Moe.
Those students did everything they were supposed to do. Evidently, the authorities reacted quickly, at least to the second shooting. To me, that pretty much says it all about relying on others to defend your life. They can do everything right, but you can still be dead.
If that’s not lesson enough, recall the WTC workers who were told to get back to work on 9/11. The authorities don’t always do everything right.
That unarmed populace thing has been tried before in Europe. It didn’t work out so well for the Jews.
Or maybe not some milquetoast who just figures that a fighting chance is better than no chance. It’s easy to wonder just how many did die because they were too afraid to face dying.
Me? I don’t know what I would do in that situation.
But I do suspect how I’d feel having survived by watching while all my classmates were slaughtered, patiently waiting my turn.
Passive is no way to go through life or death.
Steve:
Nah. This isn’t about weapons, it’s about how people have increasingly been excused for increasingly bad behavior.
Don’t forget that the Trolley Square (SLC) shooter was held at bay by an armed, off-duty cop until the uniforms could get there.
You don’t have to be a pro or even a good aim to back a shooter into a corner and prevent him from walking down the hall at will. You just have to let him know that someone’s also armed and is willing to fire back.
Steve & Another Bob,
It was just as common the only difference is that there are more people, more guns & it is widely reported because it is now the exception to the rule. Gun deaths were a lot more common in the past, read any newspaper’s obituaries in the 1800’s & you’ll see tons of gun deaths, while the number of deaths at a single time by an individual may not be as high, I’d imagine that that is mostly due to the fact that a majority of people back then had easy access to guns, whereas today that is not the case.
Just ignore bbbustard. He’s not the sharpest crayon in the box.
Lack of modern firearms didn’t stop the Campbells from massacring the MacDonalds in Glencoe.
How about a scared shitless motherfucker that don’t want to die and figures if I can just keep that sonovabitch from reloading his gun and hold him down until help gets there it might be worth trying?
I don’t see anything badass or heroic about self-preservation, it seems a better alternative than just watching him reload and waiting to get shot, but that is just me.
Neither do I. I know what I’d like to THINK I might do, but honestly? I can’t say since it’s never happened. However, there was at least one without a doubt hero in all this, and he was a 76 year old Holocaust survivor. But he was much more than just that:
Israeli Professor killed in US attack:
From the NY Daily News
If my kids ever ask me if there are still heros in the world, I plan to tell them that yes there are, but sometimes they don’t wear capes, but rather come in the guise of meek looking college professors.
This man deserves all the possible accolades we can give him.
I’ve added some links for those who need their hands held.
Incidentally, the phrase “Leaving that aside, however, etc…” typically refers back to the earlier points under discussion, signaling a completion of one set of rhetorical moves, and the transition into related but not identical subject matter.
In the future, though, I’ll use arrows should this technique continue to wreck havoc on tiny little minds trying desperately to shoehorn “mitigation” into a sentence.
I realize I’m late to the party and Steve may have moved on to other threads, but if his .45 only held 6 rounds, he got screwed. My HK USP in .45 holds 10 and I can get a 15 round magazine if I want.
Also, the parable of the sheepdogs has little to do with guns or any other types of weapons. It is about mentality. The sheepdogs are the ones who are willing to do violence to protect the sheep. Every one of us likes to think that, push come to shove, we would be willing to put a round in someone’s head if they were threatening our family. But, the reality is that almost none of us would. To get the true perspective, you should read Lt. Col. Grossman’s book “On Killing.”
We all talk tough, but until you are staring down your sites and your finger is on the trigger, not a single one of us knows if we’ll pull or not. There is a tremendous psychic wound that comes with taking another person’s life, regardless of the circumstances. Statistics show that the vast majority of us, even amongst people in the military, do not want that wound.
That is why the sheepdogs are so valuable and so rare.
ThomasD and B Moe do. They’d be kickin’ ass.
What kind of idiot writes this:
the day after a “violent lawbreaker” has just wasted 30-odd young people in America?
Yeah. When what they should have been doing is trying to puzzle out Why He Hates Us?
The congressional hearings come later.
Sorry, that last comment was directed at Moops.
To Dr Zen I’ll just note that I wrote that in response to the kinds of articles cited in my post—one written by a Brit—blaming the “wasting” of “30-odd young people in America” on the failure of certain anti-gun legislation to pass.
A less emotional person might not be so quick to try to seize the moral highground and follow the links, which might also enable him to note that VT actually patted itself on the back for its own anti-gun rulings recently.
Tell me, Dr Zen. When is a good time to discuss what might have been done to save these people from being slaughtered?
Or is it bad form to ask? I suppose we should all at least be seen wringing our hands first. Appearances. That’s what matters.
Prick.
Moops,
Maybe they would. But if everyone was the sheepdog they like to think they are, this guy would haven’t broken double digits because he’d have been rushed by several people who were willing to get shot in order to save other people.
Most humans are simply not wired that way. Grossman’s research showed that during the Vietnam War, even in intense firefights, most soldiers shot over the heads of their enemies because they simply did not want to kill.
Interestingly enough, as you go farther back in time, the percentage of shots fired above targets increases. Which, to Grossman, suggests that militaries are doing a more thorough indoctrination job and that people are becoming less adverse to killing.
Well, that’s what I had in mind. Clearly, for one person to kill 30 people, you need:
1. a weapon, or weapons, that can fire 30+ rounds,
2. a large congregated population,
3. no one else around with a weapon
I see 1 and 2 as valid conditions, 3, less so, and I say that because, in reading about Howard Unruh I found that several people in his neighborhood went for guns and/or had guns but were unable to shut him down in a timely manner.
I think we have to recognize that there’s a certain unreality to having someone run around with a gun in a civilian setting. I would probably be a little slow on the uptake. Anyone who wasn’t slow on the uptake would be someone who was planning for this kind of contingency pretty constantly. IOW, a neurotic.
I would have expected—based on my own university and/or college experience that a uniformed guard would have been around, have noticed him chaining doors, etc. But whatever.
The simple fact remains that basically anyone can go out and equip themselves with the firearms capable of firing say 60 rounds a minute. We have to take that into account for security purposes. I mean, I think that’s kind of obvious. The solution does not lie in the direction of banning hand guns or banning the sale of ammo. But something has to be done. Right?
BTW, yes, it’s been over 30 years but I used to carry a 1911A1 as a sidearm. It carried 6 in the magazine and 1 in the chamber, but I was not allowed to carry one in the chamber.
My father, who was in WW2 and Korea, and several combat vets I knew in service, always described a situation where your targets were at least a couple hundred yards away, and you fired in that direction, and tried not to think about whether or not you were actually killing anyone. Just for the record.
PMain:
I hear you, but don’t think that accounts for the last 40-50 years.
The VT killer like the Columbine killers were already known as potential problems in the making, but the authorities (in these cases the schools) didn’t act on that knowledge.
I’m thinking this is because they were unwilling to make a moral judgment about these individuals. And that 40-50 years ago, both situations would have been nipped in the bud in some way.
This little mind can actually use mitigate in a sentence, unlike some other writers who do not understand how unnecessary it is to leave things aside, however. Once is enough, unless one thinks the longer the sentence the better the thought.
After the Rodney King Verdict, rioting caused the death of 53.
Goldstein’s witty remarks concerning the sharpness of crayons could only be improved by a few “albeits.”
More seriously, why does a guy with some talent try to obscure rather than clarify? Why does he respond only to issues of style, and not to the accusation of unfounded and unproven assertions?
Typical of Jeff, he distorts Dr Zen’s comment and tries to make it a question of taste, rather than one of idiocy. Dr Zen was quite clear in stating that only an idiot could write about the harm done by European gun laws in response to the tragedy in Virginia. At least Jeff answered his question.
I think the discussion of whether or not a person could shoot to kill is missing the point. There are many, many cases of armed citizens stopping or mitigating a shooting merely by showing a weapon. Not to mention that discharging a weapon, not necessarily at the perpetrator can be enough to stop the carnage.
Remember, most of these people are immense cowards.
Tom –
I won’t trouble you to give me details of the “many, many cases of armed citizens stopping or mitigating a shooting.”
Instead of “many, many,” how about giving me four or five links?
Please don’t take too long, Jeff is still sharpening his crayons.
Jon:
That’s exactly right, thank Mr. Newton. Perceived recoil with my Glock 19 is much greater than with my Beretta 92FS with identical rounds. Equivalent energy applied to less mass = more acceleration.
bbustard (or is it an Alphie sockpuppet?);
Links for those situations are hard coming by. As nobody gets shot nor killed, the press tends not to take notice.
You know who can really throw a kick-ass riot? Korean students.
Steve,
Your father’s description sounds a lot like what Grossman found in his studies. Whether it was “spray and pray” or an intentional act of shooting over the heads of the enemy, the end result was the same: people did not want to stare down the sites or scope and pull the trigger on another human being. IIRC, and I may be misremembering, his thesis was given weight by the fact that snipers tended to have a higher reported percentage of and more intense symptoms of PTSD. An interesting side note on that is that those who did not suffer from PTSD almost to a man showed sociopathic tendencies on their pre-enlistment screenings.
TomB,
I don’t discount your point and my intention is not to speak against firearms. I am a gun owner and a fierce supporter of the 2nd Amendment. I only brought up the human reluctance to kill in response to the mention of the sheepdog parable upthread. Pulling a gun, shooting a warning shot or even just racking the slide can, indeed, be deterrents. But, while most of us fancy ourselves sheepdogs, the fact is that very few of us are.
Another Bob,
I have no problem judging or condemning the people who commit these atrocious crimes, my point was that gun violence has been an inevitable reality since guns were first invented, much like spear violence, bow & arrow violence, etc through the ages. The difference is we now have a 24 hour news cycle that feeds these stories & helps sensationalizes them to the point that they seem epidemic. Considering how many colleges or schools we have & the amount of students cycled through each year (especially over the 40 to 50 year cycle you mentioned) the number of attacks whether over the last 40 years or so aren’t really that dramatic compared to office or domestic shootings. The fact that we can witness them real-time is new & may add to copy-cat like actions.
I agree that schools are in a tough pickle when it comes to wrongfully accusing students in this sue-happy environment, but would you prefer that anyone who seems out of the norm be set aside for nothing more than not being like everyone else? Besides who makes that determination?
In both the Columbine & VT cases, I’m not sure what more, beforehand, the schools could have done… it’s not like either campus or community had a history of this type of thing. At best, we can only learn & hopefully prevent the next one from happening or prepare ourselves to respond more effectively & as shitty as that is, that is all we can do. Banning guns outright seems to create only more areas of large numbers of citizens unprotected. It is in the comparison to the other attacks Austin, etc that armed citizens only aided in lessening the numbers of those attacked. Frankly, I’m not sure what we can do to prevent it, lord knows nothing we have tried has prevented people from killing each other over the past couple of millennia.
I don’t think “unwilling” is necessarily the word that belongs in the first sentence here. I don’t think people are able to make that sort of judgment, and not because of some touchy-feely nonjudgmentalism towards right and wrong. I believe it is due to a legally-enforced nonjudgmentalism towards mental illness, which while overall a good thing in many respects has caused a number of societal problems. As long as he’s not directly threatening anyone, there’s not much that can be done about violent writings because he’s an adult.
And overall I think this is change in American society is a good thing. We’re already beginning to see the negative results of the inevitable backlash in American high schools; anything that seems vaguely threatening or related to violence in any way is treated as if its a direct plan for Columbine 2. I’d rather not have the liberal PC crowd deciding what level of ‘violent tendencies’ are suitable grounds for mandatory psychiatric treatment. If you’re a modern liberal, I bet you’d rather not have us conservatives deciding what anti-social tendencies are grounds for re-education either.
Here, go read this, then get back to us when you’re done.
Feel free to take your time, several years if you want.
Another Bob – Where do you live? Here, in N.Y., the press loves the story of the civilian who saves the day.
I appreciate the fact that you know that it happens “many, many” times, but that you never hear about it in the press. I understand why you are such a Jeff loyalist.
Back in college, my roommate and I indulged in a long, (local-only) Usenet discussion about how we would take over the university’s largest dorm, by force.
I suspect that doing that today would cause all sorts of official unpleasantness.
There are approximately two million defensive gun uses (DGU’s) per year by law abiding citizens.
— source
Hey Scape – Goat -Thanks, but I was sort of hoping for something more current – the link to which you referred talked mostly of incidents that happened decades, and decades, ago.
I guess you sort of proved my point… Thanks
So here’s a wacky idea: Why the hell don’t we train kids in martial arts? Imagine if, instead of a bunch of passive unarmed students, Cho was facing a bunch of 20 year old black belts?
— source
Here ya go sparky, knock yourself out:
That’s only a few from the past few months.
I wonder what it is like when you are so sure of your worldview that you are more than happy to make a complete and utter fool of yourself not knowing the least bit of what you’re talking about?
Here‘s a blog (one of many) with “notable defensive gun uses”.
I think bbbbbbubba is regretting his question.
But how insulated must you be to not realize that personal firearms are used often to prevent crime?
What seems to get missed in the gun debate is that the Amendments 4-8, and perhaps even the 1st, result in some number of deaths every year. It’s probably a great many, too, as the rights we afford to suspected criminals naturally makes crime easier to committ. Nevertheless, we see value in these rights because we fear what the government would do to us if we had none. Some hold our rights in such high esteem that they’d rather a thousand people die than tolerate a suspected terrorist getting his head dunked in water or his phone tapped–and many of those people are fanatical gun control advocates. Part of the problem is that violence brought about by guns is directly quantifiable, while violence facilitated by other rights can only be a matter of speculation.
All of our rights are costly, but all of them are worth it. And I don’t oppose reasonable gun control measures any more than I oppose reasonable infringements on the Fourth Amendment when I board a plane. But our rights must always remain in effect to its fullest extent practicable in a free society, and only be limited when not doing so would ultimately endanger the society we seek to defend. For handguns that means background checks–including, perhaps, psychological evaluations–and laws against their posession by convicted felons, or their negligent use or handling.
And, of course, if you think guns kill a lot of people now, wait ‘till you try to take them away.
Once again, heroically saving other people is a nice thought, but that is not what I am talking about. When his gun is out of bullets, and he is reloading, he is UNARMED! For a couple of seconds you have a chance to SAVE YOUR OWN ASS! Wouldn’t you at least give it a shot?
i think that gun control should always be imposed at all times to reduce violence..,*
i always thought that gun control should be mandatory in all places-.,
gun control should always be imposed strictly to avoid another Columbine scenario”..