Thread: The "New" Gun Control ...

THIS IS THE BEST WORDED PRO-GUN ARGUMENT I HAVE EVER READ

Interesting take and one you don't hear much. . . . . . Read this eloquent and profound letter and pay close attention to the last paragraph of the letter....


"The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)


Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force.

If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force.

Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion.

Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force.

You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations.

These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a armed mugger to do his job.

That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury.

This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.

People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst.

The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter.

It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force.

It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

By Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret.)

So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.

BRPD gets training with ex-military rifles
Jan 30, 2013 3:58 PM by Chris Nakamoto

BATON ROUGE- The Baton Rouge Police Department received 100 military surplus rifles as part of a federal program to combat criminals who "outgun" law enforcement.

Currently around 150 officers have the high-powered rifles. The officers who will receive some of the 100 new rifles got the opportunity today to shoot them and learn about the weapons. It's an effort to keep citizens and the men and women who protect and serve safe.

"It became very apparent of how important it was in 1997 with the North Hollywood shootout where officers were outgunned in the country," said Sgt. Joel Pattison, the commander of the firing range.

The guns were converted from automatic to semi-automatic, and only cost the city $50 each. Officers will receive them based on their proficiency with their current weapons.

"Our officers are selected by their supervisors," Pattison said. "They have to want it to begin with. It's a voluntary basis and they have to show interest, be proficient with the firearm they carry everyday."

People we spoke to on the streets of Baton Rouge approved of the program.

"They ought to get bigger guns," Willie Cockran said. "All these youngsteres running around here with bigger guns... AK-47's and all that. Police not riding with them."

Cockran has lived in Baton Rouge for most of his life. He believes the program will help keep his family safe.

"They sure need them," Cockran said. "That's for sure."

http://www.wbrz.com/news/brpd-gets-t...litary-rifles/

Feds’ Advice for Confronting Mass Murderers: Scissors
Posted on January 31, 2013

Is your workplace getting shot up by a crazed gunman?

No problem — just grab a pair of scissors and fight back!

That’s some of the helpful advice in a new instructional video from the Department of Homeland Security that was posted on the agency’s Web site just a month after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. “If you are caught out in the open and cannot conceal yourself or take cover, you might consider trying to overpower the shooter with whatever means are available,” says the narrator in the video, which shows an office worker pulling scissors out of a desk drawer.

Seriously ?? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=oI5EoWBRYmo

The video, titled “Options for Consideration,” also advises that people who get caught in an “active shooter” situation should run away, hide under a desk or take cover out of the line of fire.

The nearly four-minute-long video opens with chilling scenes from the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, and the 2011 attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords.

But the video quickly shifts to hokey footage of office workers scampering under desks, crouching in corners and racing into closets to hide from a rampaging gunman on the loose.


DUCK AND CUTTER: A Homeland Security video shows these scenes as helpful advice to workers on what to do if a mass killer strikes their office — grab any weapon at hand, and hide under a desk.

“To protect your hiding place, lock the door if you can. Block the door with heavy furniture,” recommends the male narrator, speaking in measured, authoritative tones.

Other survival strategies promoted in the video include hiding “behind large items such as cabinets or desks. Remain quiet. Silence your cellphone or pager. Even the vibration setting can give away a hiding position.”

Richard Feldman, president of the Independent Firearm Owners Association, said he has a better option for consideration than a pair of scissors when confronting an armed mass murderer — a legal firearm.

“That’s why I prefer a gun, and I usually do carry a gun when it is lawful to do so,” said Feldman. “Clearly, you use whatever you can” to fight for your life, he said.

So if scissors are all you’ve got, grab them by all means.

The video is part of the Obama administration’s ongoing campaign to reduce firearm violence in the wake of the horrific mass murder last month of 20 children and six teachers in Newtown, Conn., said a Homeland Security official.

Homeland Security has operated an active-shooter preparedness-training program for years, and the “Options for Consideration” video was in production prior to the Dec. 14 shooting in Newtown.

The video was released to coincide with President Obama’s sweeping proposals to curb gun violence in America, said the official.

Obama’s most controversial proposals include a ban on military-style assault rifles and high-capacity ammo clips, as well as expanded background checks for firearm purchases.

Security consultant Andrew Scott called the information in the video “adequate.”

He conceded that Homeland Security was correct in recommending that people use scissors to attack a gunman but only in a “last, worst-case scenario.”

“Just the suggestion [to fight back] is a positive move,” said Scott, a former SWAT commander in North Miami Beach. “You don’t want to be sheep for the slaughter.”

But if you do arm yourself with shears, the narrator warns you to drop them when cops arrive. “Put down any items. Immediately raise your hands,” is the closing advice.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/nationa...puVezePd6trYoM

comments

.... but weren't we taught not to run with scissors? This goes against everything I was taught and mama was not wrong!

---

Everyone knows rock beats scissors.

---

that's right! And always carry the scissors with the point facing you!!

...

OB will foster a bill to confiscate all illegal scissors

...

I heard in their first video their advice was to "RUN". HAHA

...

Kinda like taking a knife to a gunfight???????

...

You'll have to sign a waiver to ensure you don't run with your new scissors

....

Oh My... This is the most absurd response from our government I have ever heard. I think actually a better way to defend yourself is to grab spaghetti. Yeah, lets just dose the intruder in spaghetti noodles. I think that would stop them!!

...

So if there is scissor abuse, will they ban scissors????

...

Why not grab the fire extinguisher if there is one? Maybe we need personal CO2 fire extinguishers?

...

or maybe I can knit him a sweater with my needles?!

...

Maybe you can buy a pair of ASSAULT scissors from Dick's Sporting Goods
.. Oh wait, I think those were banned also.

---

scissors against a gun. guess who wins


..

NEVER bring scissors to a gun fight!

....

Is this "The Onion"?

Sheriff Joe Arpaio Vows Not to Enforce New Federal Gun Control Laws
By John Hill on January 31, 2013

Washington D.C. politicians and their allies in the mainstream media have frantically been pushing tough new restrictions on guns and ammo magazines, trying to manipulate public opinion in the wake of the Newtown, CT school massacre.

But the Sheriff of the 4th largest county in the United States has a message for them: not in my county.

Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio told a local radio host the federal government is “going to have problem” if they expect him to confiscate guns from private citizens.

Arpaio told Mike Broomhead of KFYI Radio in Phoenix, Ariz. that he will uphold the 2nd Amendment rights of his citizens:

“I took [multiple] oaths of office, and they all say I will defend the Constitution of the United States,” “Now if they’re going to tell the sheriff that he’s going to go around picking up guns from everybody, they’re going to have a problem. I may not enforce that federal law.”

Broomhead then asked “America’s toughest sheriff” if the feds passed a law banning ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, would his deputies confiscate such magazines?

Arpaio answered with one word: “No.”

Arpaio also said he would be upgrading the firepower of his deputies, including those he has deployed to guard local schools against would-be madmen like the one responsible for the Sandy Hook rampage. “My deputies, I said before, I’m going to arm all my deputies – a month ago I said before this – with automatic weapons and semi-automatic weapons. We’re going to be able to fight back. … I don’t care what they say from Washington.”

In opposing Federal gun laws, Arpaio becomes the Sheriff with (by far) the most constituents in the U.S. to do so.

Sheriff Joe also shows his camaraderie with many other sheriffs around the country who have similarly warned they will not enforce what they believe to be infringements on the citizens’ 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.

Similar sentiments have been expressed by sheriffs in Missouri, California, Kansas, Montana, Utah and in dozens of counties in several states across the country.

The Arizona legislature is also considering bills to ban the enforcement of any new Federal gun laws in the state.

http://standwitharizona.com/blog/201...-control-laws/

Biden: Have I mentioned yet that these new gun-control measures won’t fundamentally alter the chances of a mass shooting?
posted at 8:31 pm on January 31, 2013 by Allahpundit

Time for the White House to start lowering public expectations about the big gun-control push, http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2...-end-shootings in case something substantial passes Congress and Obama’s inevitably forced to explain in a few months why mass shootings are still happening. They’ve spent six weeks insisting that something must be done to prevent future Newtowns. New talking point: You can’t prevent future Newtowns.

“Nothing we’re going to do is going to fundamentally alter or eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting or guarantee that we will bring gun deaths down to 1,000 a year from what it is now,” Biden told reporters Thursday afternoon after he spent over an hour lunching with Democratic senators at the Capitol.

“But there are things that we can do, demonstrably can do, that have virtually zero impact on your Second Amendment right to own a weapon for both self defense and recreation that can save some lives,” he said…

“I’m not saying there’s an absolute consensus on all these things,” Biden said, “but there is a sea change, a sea change in the attitudes of the American people. I believe the American people will not understand — and I know that everyone in that caucus understands — they won’t understand if we don’t act.

If there really was a sea change, I’m thinking Mark Pryor http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/3...lt-weapons-ban would feel as safe voting yes on Feinstein’s new assault-weapons ban as he did when he voted yes on the old one nine years ago. As it is, Democrats face a real possibility of getting fewer votes for the new ban than they did in 2004. But give Biden credit for acknowledging reality, even if it’s in service to covering his ass. He likely knows what the weapon of choice is for most mass shooters, and no one’s going to be banning that one: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013...ings-patterns/

The basic pattern found by the New Jersey DHS fusion center, and obtained by Public Intelligence (.PDF), is one of a killer who lashes out at his co-workers. Thirteen out of the 29 observed cases “occurred at the workplace and were conducted by either a former employee or relative of an employee,” the November report finds. His “weapon of choice” is a semiautomatic handgun, rather than the rifles that garnered so much attention after Newtown. The infamous Columbine school slaying of 1999 is the only case in which killers worked in teams: they’re almost always solo acts — and one-off affairs. In every single one of them, the killer was male, between the age of 17 and 49.

Calling for a ban on semiautomatics is too risky given how popular that type of weapon is, so “assault weapons” become the default target if you’re inclined to Do Something — even though, by the vice president’s own admission, you’re not doing much. As I noted once before, neither of the semiautomatic pistols that Adam Lanza had on him while he was firing on defenseless children with a rifle are forbidden under Feinstein’s new AWB. If he hadn’t had the rifle, there’s every reason to believe he would have used the handguns to carry out his plan.

In case you missed it elsewhere, here’s new video from DHS with pointers on what to do if ever you find yourself confronted by an armed lunatic on a rampage. Spoiler alert: Hiding and staying quiet are good ideas. Calling the police is good too. And if you’re up for playing the hero, you might try to take the gunman out by reaching for your … scissors. Good luck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=oI5EoWBRYmo

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/3...mass-shooting/

February 01, 2013
"Gun Violence" And Still More Violence To The Truth At The Times

The NY Times is now fretting that focusing on the link between mental health and gun violence may not be "fair". http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/us...pagewanted=all What is striking is that when the Times opines on "gun violence" and the need for policies including an assault weapons ban and a limit on magazine capacity, they cite 30,000 gun deaths a year; http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/op...olence.html?hp that figure is based on roughly 19,000 firearm suicides and 11,000 firearm homicides. http://justoneminute.typepad.com/mai...-dialogue.html

Yet now, where the topic is mental illness and access to guns, the emphasis is exclusively on homicides; in fact, the word "suicide" does not appear in their article.

Yes, it is a puzzling use of statistics - the link between magazine capacity and suicide is tenuous at best, but one might imagine that the links between mental illness, suicide and access to guns are much stronger.

But its TimesWorld, so there may be a subtle agenda at play, and maybe "gun violence" is not their real concern.

Here we go:

Focus on Mental Health Laws to Curb Violence Is Unfair, Some Say
By ERICA GOODE and JACK HEALY

In their fervor to take action against gun violence after the shooting in Newtown, Conn., http://topics.nytimes.com/top/refere...nyt-classifier a growing number of state and national politicians are promoting a focus on mental illness as a way to help prevent further killings.

Legislation to revise existing mental health laws http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/h...nyt-classifier is under consideration in at least a half-dozen states, including Colorado, Oregon and Ohio. A New York bill requiring mental health practitioners to warn the authorities about potentially dangerous patients was signed into law on Jan. 15. In Washington, President Obama has ordered “a national dialogue” on mental health, and a variety of bills addressing mental health issues are percolating on Capitol Hill.

But critics say that this focus unfairly singles out people with serious mental illness, who studies indicate are involved in only about 4 percent of violent crimes and are 11 or more times as likely than the general population to be the victims of violent crime.

Well, the link between violence and mental illness is not all in your head, as we learn much later in the story:

Most mental health experts agree that the link between mental illness and violence is not imaginary. Studies suggest that people with an untreated severe mental illness are more likely to be violent, especially when drug or alcohol abuse is involved. http://health.nytimes.com/health/gui...nyt-classifier And many rampage killers have some type of serious mental disorder: James E. Holmes, accused of opening fire in a movie theater in Colorado in July, was seeing a psychiatrist who became alarmed about his behavior; Jared L. Loughner, who killed 6 people and injured 13 others in Arizona, including former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was severely mentally ill.

But such killings account for only a tiny fraction of gun homicides in the United States, mental health experts point out. Besides the research indicating that little violent crime can be linked to perpetrators who are mentally ill, studies show that those crimes are far more likely to involve battery — punching another person, for example — than weapons, which account for only 2 percent of violent crimes committed by the mentally ill.

Hmm - "such killings account for only a tiny fraction of gun homicides in the United States". That could be a comment about killings by rifle versus killings by handgun (6,220 by handgun, 323 by rifle, and another 1,587 by "type not stated" in 2011 per the FBI UCR http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...e-data-table-8 ), so why the urgency on banning assault rifles?

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/mai...the-times.html

New York State Resistance - "... prime for something like that." 1/29/13 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTdhVxva5KU

See story and videos here: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/0...elf-86801.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB0lJzNloyA

February 03, 2013
Making Stuff Up At The Times (Gun Control Safety, Ongoing...)

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/mai...y-ongoing.html