Tag: self-defense

“A New Constitutional Right”

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A lot has been made recently over Slate legal columnist Dahlia Lithwick’s characterization of the Supreme Court’s Heller arguments as “fall(ing) in love with a new constitutional right.” Eugene Volokh and Glenn Reynolds, among others, took exception to her choice of words.

Thomas Girsch, guest-posting at SayUncle (and crossposting at LeanLeft) finds this amusing, apparently, and links to a post at Obsidian Wings on the topic. I read the piece. Written by “Publius,” I for one have to take extreme exception. He (or she, you never can really tell on the internet) states:

(T)he meaning of constitutional text isn’t self-evident. To be blunt, the Constitution means what the Court ultimately says it means. We can say “First Amendment” all we want, but it’s ultimately the Court that defines the scope and meaning of the “freedom of speech” text as applied to various types of circumstances (e.g., Bong Hitz 4 Jesus, crowded theater, libel, etc.). Now maybe you like this, and maybe you don’t. But that’s the way things have been for some time.

In this sense, the “individual rights” interpretation of the Second Amendment is absolutely a “new” constitutional right. Courts have traditionally adopted a “collective/militia” interpretation. Maybe that’s good, maybe it ain’t. But that’s been the traditional judicial interpretation.

That depends on just how far back you want to go in your research into “judicial interpretation.” It would appear that depth of inquiry only goes back as far as you can find (or interpret, or invent) the finding you want. If you go too far, well then, the decisions must have been flawed or otherwise discountable.

I’ve been through this before with the “honorable opposition.”

The earliest case in which the Supreme Court discusses what are our individual rights as citizens is Dred Scott v. Sanford in 1856 – a case in which seven of the nine Justices decided that blacks could not be citizens – slave or free – because citizenship:

“would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

In that I count: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and the rights to keep and bear arms outside of any mention of militia service.

This was followed by U.S. v. Cruikshank in 1875, which declared that the right the Second Amendment protected was “that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ “ Not only that, but that right “is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.” No, in that case the Supreme Court declared that (and Alan Gura made use of) the Second Amendment prevented only the Federal government from passing laws infringing on it.

D.C. is under Federal law, not State.

But Cruikshank made it OK for states to violate this pre-existing right to “bear arms for a lawful purpose.” Again, no mention of militia service was made. Apparently the 1875 Supreme Court hadn’t yet had a chance to study up on the (1868) 14th Amendment’s first paragraph, the second sentence of which is:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;

You know, the “privileges or immunities” listed by the Court in Dred Scott, one of which was “to keep and carry arms” wherever we go?

Third, in Presser v. Illinois of 1886, the Supreme Court found it was acceptable to forbid private militias, using Cruikshank as precedent, but – most fascinating – that court stated not once but twice that:

(I)n view of the fact that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force of the national government as well as in view of its general powers, the States cannot prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security.

and:

It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as of the States, and in view of this prerogative of the general government, as well as of its general powers, the States cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government.

Yet, we are to believe, the right to arms is a new right, heretofore undeclared and unrecognized by the Supreme Court?

I was called on this by a commenter, once. He said:

In the Supreme Court cases from which you quote, all individuals who sought protection under the Second Amendment LOST.

Indeed, they did.

I replied:

BINGO! You win the kewpie doll! Let me rephrase your statement a bit more accurately: In the Supreme Court cases from which I quote, the Supreme Court was complicit in violating the right(s) it was tasked to defend.

And the excuse used each and every time? Let me quote Mayor Adrian Fenty:

I want to again emphasize that this case is a public safety case.

“Public Safety.” That was the argument the Dred Scott court used to deny citizenship to a whole class of people. Here’s the quote again, with one extra line:

(Citizenship) “would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State.”

Boy, good thing the Court didn’t find in favor of Mr. Scott and his entire race. There might have been a Civil War or something!

As I have said before, the history of the Second Amendment is what has made me an advocate for it. Its legislative and legal history illustrates precisely what happens when judges and legislators “constitutionalize their personal preferences” instead of upholding their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The Supreme Court has the opportunity to correct 151 years of bad precedent and protect the rights of individual citizens whose rights they’ve folded, spindled, and mutilated in the name of “public safety.”

Long ago, Thomas Jefferson found a quote by Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria in his 1764 treatise On Crime and Punishment so profound that he copied it into his own “Commonplace Book”:

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes … Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

Here we are, over two hundred and forty years after Beccaria’s astute observation, and still we are arguing over whether disarming the law-abiding should be legal, and Fenty is arguing that disarming the law abiding has made them safer.

It’s insane, and it needs to stop.

Another Debate Invitation Refused

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I swear, you’d think I intimidate them or something. Reader Bob gave me a link to a web page that asked the question What Ever Happened to Gun Control? Like its disappearance as a political topic was a bad thing.

I questioned the author, an economist who writes on heath-care topics, on some of her “statistics,” and I invited her not once, not twice, but three times to discuss the topic of gun control either publicly or privately.

She declined. Oh well.

But the subject of this post comes from another comment posted at that site. One “robertdfeineman” wrote:

A couple of years ago I posted a diary about gun control where I suggested treating it as a public health issue. As I recall I defined several classes of gun control issues:

1. Accidental injury
1a. by children
1b. by adults
2. Injury in the course of a crime
3. Injury in the course of a domestic disturbance
4. Injury caused by a mentally unbalanced individual
5. Suicide

I asked those who opposed gun control to select any category of their choosing and suggest what steps should be taken to lessen the rate of injury.

As you have discovered vitriol was quickly forthcoming, however useful suggestions – none.

Even the example of Canada isn’t able to bring any sanity to the discussion. Canada has a fairly high level of gun ownership (mostly sports and hunting), but has a much lower level of misuse. There seems to be no discussion of why this is so.

Without getting too deep into the American psyche there just seems to be a vocal core of gun supporters who are motivated by something deeper than rational arguments. As with most such inexplicable attitudes it is likely that it has its basis in a deep seated fear, of what isn’t clear.

As simple observation will show other advanced countries, that don’t permit the same freedom of gun ownership and use, are not overrun by people in black helicopters, nor by crazed gangs or druggies, nor by criminals threatening home and family. Whence the insecurity?

Given that the US is in a fortress mentality mode (personal Hummers, gated communities, domestic surveillance, etc.) expecting rationality about guns seems unlikely for the immediate future.

Coming from a guy who apparently believes that the world is suffering from overpopulation and resource shortages (I guess he’s never heard of Paul Erlich and The Population Bomb), he seems to believe that capitalism is outmoded and needs to be replaced by a “steady-state” economy (AKA “zero-sum” – the model every socialist system has based its economic system on).

Quelle suprise.

But I thought I’d take a shot at providing some useful suggestions without vitriol.

Here we go:

1. Accidental injury
1a. by children
1b. by adults

The answer to this is obvious, ongoing, and highly successful.

Education, education, education.

And it’s obviously been working for quite some time, too. Accidental death and injury by firearm in this country is at an all-time low, and has been declining ever since we started collecting statistics. This despite the fact that 3-4 million new firearms are added to the total in private hands in this country each and every year. It doesn’t require new (and dubious) safety features on guns, it doesn’t require free trigger locks to be given away by government agencies, it simply requires education – and the firearms industry and the NRA are doing apparently a damned good job.

Which is more than can be said for the Brady Campaign or the Violence Policy Center.

Doubt me? Do you doubt the Centers for Disease Control?

Total accidental gunshot deaths by year:

1981 – 1,871 (Crude rate, 0.82/100,000)
1982 – 1,756
1983 – 1,695
1984 – 1,668
1985 – 1,649
…
1990 – 1,416
1991 – 1,441
1992 – 1,409
1993 – 1,521
1994 – 1,356
1995 – 1,225
…
2000 – 776
2001 – 802
2002 – 762
2003 – 730
2004 – 649
2005 – 789 (Crude rate 0.27/100,000)

The actual incidence of death by accidental gunshot wound has dropped 58%. The rate has dropped by 67% (the overall population has gone up over the same period.)

Over the period between 1981 and 2005 (25 years) the number of firearms in the U.S. has increased by approximately 100,000,000. Yes, that’s right, one hundred million, of which about 40 million were handguns. Over that same period the number of states with “shall-issue” concealed-carry laws has increased from eight (8) to 35 (now 37). The number of “no issue” states has declined from 15 to two.

I don’t know about you, but I call that “improvement.”

Topic: 2. Injury in the course of a crime

Well, for one thing, since 1990 the number of deaths and injuries from criminal assault have been declining rapidly to levels not seen since the 1960s. Homicide, highly variable over the nation’s history, has dropped dramatically, according to this Bureau of Justice Statistics chart:

Non-fatal attacks are down significantly, too:

What caused this? Well it wasn’t “gun control” by any indication. The only “gun control” law passed during this period was the 1994 “Assault Weapon Ban” (that wasn’t), but in 2005 even the New York Times admitted:

Gun crime has plummeted since the early 1990’s. But a study for the National Institute of Justice said that it could not “clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.”

Research for the study in several cities did show a significant decline in the criminal use of assault weapons during the ban. According to the study, however, that decline was offset by the “steady or rising use” of other guns equipped with high-capacity magazines – ammunition-feeding devices that hold more than 10 rounds.

So, should one conclude from this that “high-capacity magazines” lead to a decrease in overall violent crime?

The first thing that leads to a decrease in injury in the course of crime is to reduce crime. How? Well, it would appear that a good economy helps. Of course, incarcerating more than 1% of the population might be contributing factor, too. I’ll leave that up to you to decide whether that’s a good thing or not. But how about defense with a firearm of your own?

Only about 29% of criminal assaults involve a perpetrator with a firearm, and even if they are so armed, defending yourself with your own firearm has proven to be the most likely way to escape without injury. That is, if you believe Gary Kleck’s analysis of Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization survey data. Kleck’s study indicates that defending yourself with a firearm reduces your chances of injury below any other method, including not resisting at all.

Topic 3. Injury in the course of a domestic disturbance

That’s a tough one. Congress passed a law that is supposed to disarm anyone who has received so much as a ticket for misdemeanor domestic violence. Of course, like the Brady background check, the law has been equally effective at actually disarming dangerous people – that is “not at all.” Generally, in this situation on party or the other may get a restraining order, but these have proven to be nothing more than tissue paper. Reciprocal restraining orders only guarantee that the one who is willing to kill is ensured of a defenseless victim, and then a knife will do as well as a gun. Here I’m going to have to admit defeat, and state plainly that I see no way to legally, constitutionally, affect this problem.

Strike one!

Topic 4. Injury caused by a mentally unbalanced individual

Again, a law has been passed that supposedly disarms people who have been adjudged mentally imbalanced or a danger to themselves or others. Again, as the Virginia Tech massacre proved, the effectiveness of this law is less than stellar. Too, there is the doctor-patient relationship which is supposed to be legally sacrosanct, the fear being, of course, that if doctors can be compelled to report about their patients to the legal authorities, some (perhaps many) would refuse to seek help at all.

Personally, I’m convinced that the recent (last decade or two) upswing in rampage killing / suicides is due to the use of anti-depressants that have a bad effect on a tiny percentage of the people who use them. That percentage is so small as to be statistical noise, but it has resulted in the deaths of a significant number of people. What to do about it? I don’t know. It’s a Catch-22 situation, and again, the best I can hope for is that someone law-abiding and armed can end any such situation before the perpetrator decides he’s finished.

Topic 5. Suicide.

I have already considered this one in great detail. Basically, my conclusion is that while Americans do use firearms in large proportion to commit suicide, firearms are not the cause of their decision to end their own lives. America is on the low end of the scale for nations with relatively high GNPs, ranking below Norway, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Switzerland, France, Austria, Denmark and Finland for suicide rates. The leading method of suicide varies with each nation, but it appears that if you really want to kill yourself (as opposed to a “cry for help”) you find a way. This is especially true among young people, as evidenced by Australia’s youth suicide problem. For no apparent reason, in Australia the leading method of suicide of young men changed from firearms to asphyxiation by hanging. There were no gun laws passed during the period during which this occurred to account for the shift.

A study of the Brady 3-day waiting period found that it reduced the number of suicides by firearm among people 55 and older, but that it didn’t affect any overall suicide rate. In other words, people that might have used a firearm found another, equally effective method.

My conclusion here is that the appearance of firearms being a cause of suicide is an illusion. If all firearms disappeared tomorrow, the rate of suicide would be essentially unchanged.

So in answer to your questions:

1: We’ve tremendously reduced accidental death and injury through education, even with a massive increase in the number of firearms in curculation. Perhaps if we want to affect this particular problem even more, we should be teaching firearm safety education in schools alongside sex education.

2: We’ve greatly reduced death and injury due to criminal acts over the recent decade, without any notably effective new firearms legislation. The “Assault Weapons Ban” didn’t seem to have any effect, and the worst thing you can say about the massive increase the number of states that have passed “shall-issue” concealed carry laws is that those laws might not have been responsible for any of the reduction in crime.

3: Injury in domestic disturbances has also decreased, but nowhere near as much as with other types of violent crime, and here I admit defeat. In a nation founded on the concept of individual sovereignty and individual rights, I really don’t see where we can affect this particular problem except by allowing the threatened parties to be armed in their own defense, and the law just isn’t written that way.

4: Mentally unbalanced people deciding to commit suicide and taking strangers, coworkers, or loved ones along with them present the same problem. The only thing I can think of here is for those coworkers or loved ones to pay attention to the situation and try to get obviously disturbed people into mental health care. Unfortunately, given the same rights as everyone else, this does not seem to be effective.

5: The suicide problem appears to be one of false perception. Yes, a lot of Americans who choose to end their own lives choose to do it by means of a firearm, but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t find another way if access to a firearm was denied to them. If “gun access” caused suicide, America’s suicide rate would far exceed any other nation in the world.

But perhaps instead of considering the beam in America’s eye, our neighbors to the North should consider the one in their own. Even our Roger Ebert has recognized that, while Canadians don’t murder each other as often as Americans do, their violent crime rate far exceeds our own.

Maybe Canada needs more guns.

UPDATE: See More “Reasoned Discourse”

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Nate Sends an Open Letter to College Students.

And it’s a good one. Quote of the Day:

So, how can you, the college student, as an individual and as a group, change the circumstances of the violence you face on campus and in a bigger sense, citizens face everyday in their daily lives whether it be at the shopping mall or at lunch at Wendy’s? You can accept that your protection is your responsibility and then you can choose to be prepared to face potential violence and prepared to stop the violence when it presents itself.

I’ve been saying that for quite some time.

Go read the whole thing.

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Would the Sixteen Regular Readers of This Blog…

…please go vote in the poll at azcentral.com? It won’t last much longer. The question is:

Do you think allowing guns on college campuses is a good idea?

As of this posting there have been 3646 votes, and “Yes” is losing 33% to 67%.

NOTE: Scroll down. It’s near the bottom of the page, and you may have to refresh the page to get the “vote” button to show up. I did.

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Another Gun Free Zone Does its Job.

Gunman Opens Fire at Northern Illinois University

A heavily armed man burst into a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University this afternoon and opened fire, wounding as many as 18 people, four of them critically, before taking his own life, authorities said.

According to radio reports, “heavily armed” was a shotgun and a pistol.

The shooter, a thin white male dressed in black and wearing a stocking cap, went into Cole Hall on the university’s campus in DeKalb, entered a science class through an emergency door and began shooting at students and a teacher, witnesses told a local radio station and a student newspaper.

Well, at least we’re back to the “angry white male” demographic.

There was conflicting information on fatalities. A hospital reported that there were none besides the gunman, but the Chicago Tribune quoted the campus police chief as saying four of the shooter’s victims had died.

Last I’d heard there were 17 victims, three critical, and the only dead was the shooter (not included in the 17.) However, those three were head wounds. I expect more fatalities.

NIU campus police chief Donald Grady told reporters that the gunman apparently had a shotgun and two handguns, including a Glock, but that only one of the handguns was immediately recovered. He said the shooter, who appeared to have been acting alone, had not expended all of his ammunition.

Which matches the radio report with the exception of the extra handgun.

School officials said they knew of no motive for the shooting. The gunman does not appear to have been a student at the university but may have been a student somewhere else, they said. He emerged from behind a curtain near the stage and began firing, they said. The man has been identified, but his identity has not yet been released.

“This is a tragedy, but from all indications we did everything we could when we found out,” Peters said. “Our security people were there right away.”

Yes, when seconds count, the authorities are only minutes away.

Grady said police officers were at the scene within two minutes of the shooting and that a campus-wide alert was issued within 15 minutes.

As I said…

And once again a rampage shooting ends when the shooter decides he’s done.

According to this story, there have been four fatalities in addition to the shooter, but this is the part that sticks with me:

Katie Wagner, a student who was inside the classroom, tells CBS 2 that there were 70 students inside room 101 at Cole Hall when the shooting happened. She said the gunman entered from a side door near the front of the lecture hall and started to fire shots.

She described the gunman as white, tall, skinny and wearing a black tee shirt – and maybe something red.

She said she went to the ground immediately and just started staring at the floor.

Waiting to die.

I am reminded once again of Tam’s declaration:

I ain’t goin’ out like that. Whether it’s some Columbine wannabe who’s heard the backward-masked messages on his Marilyn Manson discs, distressed daytrader off his Prozac, homegrown Hadji sympathetic with his oppressed brothers in Baghdad, or a bugnuts whackjob picking up Robert Frost quotes transmitted from Langley on the fillings in his molars, I am going to do my level best to smoke that goblin before my carcass goes on the pile. I am not going to go out curled into a fetal ball and praying for help that won’t arrive in time.

—

Even if the police are right there, it might not do me any good. Heck, I might not do me any good. But, dammit, I am going to try.

There doesn’t seem to be much of that attitude in today’s youth.

Expect there to be immediate blaming of the guns for this.

I, for one, wonder if the shooter was on anti-depressants.

UPDATE: From ABC News:

Stephen Kazmierczak, the 27-year-old who opened fire on a crowded Northern Illinois University lecture hall, killing five and then himself Thursday, was described as “fairly normal” and an “unstressed person” by NIU campus Police Chief Donald Grady.

But in the last few weeks his behavior had become erratic, according to Grady, and it is believed the Kazmierczak had stopped taking his medication. The type of medication he was on is unknown.

UPDATE II: According to the same report, the shooter purchased two of his four firearms last Saturday, from a licensed dealer in Champaign. According to this report, it was nine days ago.

Illinois has a 24 hour waiting period for long gun purchases, and a 72 hour waiting period for handguns. I’d assume he started the purchase nine days ago and picked them up on Saturday after the 72 hour waiting period for the handgun.

Boy, that waiting period really helped.

KevinLeave a comment

Better Connected to Reality.

Zendo Deb links to a truly surprising Cincinnati Enquirer piece on concealed carry, Concealed-carry course graduates are armed but not dangerous. Apparently the editors of the CI didn’t get the Editor & Publisher 1993 memo that urged other editors to “step up the war against guns.”

I’m going to reproduce the whole thing here for archival purposes:

On a cold and early Saturday morning, the class at Scarlet Oaks in Sharonville begins the usual way. Students take their seats and the instructor introduces himself.

Then he makes an announcement: “No guns today.”

“Did anyone bring their gun in?” he asks. Nobody raises a hand. Good. The shooting starts Sunday morning.

A few plan to bring .22 revolvers. A man with a neatly trimmed gray beard says he and his daughter will use .38s. Others mention Colts, Smith & Wessons, a .32 Beretta. A big man across the room says he’s bringing a 1911 Colt .45, and he’s not talking about malt liquor.

“That’s a man’s gun,” says the instructor, retired FBI agent Dennis R. Lengle.

I don’t have a man’s gun. I don’t even have a woman’s gun or a “mouse gun,” which is what serious shooters call .22s. I don’t have any gun at all. But the Great Oaks Police Academy Concealed Carry Course has a great deal. For $25, I can rent a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver and get 200 rounds – cheaper than cartridges alone.

There’s a 20-something couple in the back, but most of my classmates are 40s and 50s, I’d guess. A man in bib overalls wants to legally carry the gun he uses on his farm. A husband and wife own a business. One man tells me his kids are grown and he’s interested in shooting. Another guy says during a break that he worries about being mugged when he goes for walks. He says he has no doubt he’d use a gun if he has to.

But a few hours later, after we’ve been through the legal minefield and gritty details of what “controlled expansion” hollow-points do to a body, someone half jokes, “I’m not so sure I want to do this anymore.”

I understand.

The course is excellent. We start by naming the parts of a cartridge, a revolver and a semi-automatic pistol, then move on to 25 true-false questions on dozens of topics. “Being armed is a tremendous responsibility,” it says. True.

And while police cadets open fire at the indoor range across the hall, making muffled bangs like someone pounding a file cabinet with a ball bat, Lengle targets safety, safety and more safety.

He tells true stories of stupid gun tricks by trained lawmen who shot the carpet in their office, or put a 9mm round into their neighbor’s car – through their own house and the garage next door. Lengle has our attention. During the state-mandated 12 hours of instruction, all 17 students are riveted.

This surprised me – using stupid cop tricks to illustrate that even supposedly well-trained people can be idiots, and a badge is no guarantee of infallibility.

In cover and tactics, Lengle warns that a doorway is a “vertical coffin,” a “fatal funnel” for anyone silhouetted in its frame. If an intruder ignores warnings and keeps coming, “immediate incapacitation is your only goal.”

And that requires accuracy.

So Sunday morning we go to the range. I start out jumpy, but get the hang of it and pass all the tests, hitting paper outlines of bad guys from five, 10, 15 and 20 feet.

Safety is drilled in as loud and clear as that booming 1911 Colt, which barks with deep authority, even through ear protection.

Everyone passes. Nobody gets hurt. From what I can tell, legal concealed carry is nothing like the anti-gun crowd made it sound when Kentucky and Ohio passed laws in 1999 and 2004. There are no cowboys. No wild shootouts. No blood in the gutters, as gun-banners predicted. Just law-abiding adults who want to exercise their Second Amendment right to self-defense.

(Emphasis mine.) That floors me, coming from a big-city newspaper.

As we’re leaving, classmate Jim Hansel, who lives “out in the country,” tells me about the night he woke up to a break-in. He called 911, told his son to take cover and waited on his couch with a shotgun. He warned he would shoot, but the guy kept coming until the cops arrived, 40 minutes later. “He had seven outstanding warrants for automatic weapons use,” Hansel says, shaking his head.

Now Hansel has a certificate to get a concealed carry permit from his county sheriff. “It gives me knowledge and confidence,” he said. “Most people are afraid of guns because of what they don’t know.”

Ditto.

If every gun owner took a class like this, we’d all be safer. But meth-heads, crack junkies and street muggers don’t take classes. They don’t get permits or certificates like the one Lengle gave me Sunday. They just grab a “nine” and use it against defenseless victims.

Each month another concealed-carry class graduates from Scarlet Oaks. And the bad guys are a little less sure their next victim is defenseless.

Perhaps there is some hope of sanity after all.

The author is Peter Bronson, [email protected] if you’d like to drop him a thank-you note.

Still the Man Hears What He Wants to Hear and Disregards the Rest…

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(with apologies to Simon & Garfunkel)

Markadelphia dropped this in a comment on the post about the school shooting in Portsmith Ohio:

So, there were guns there and nothing could be done to stop it. Having people armed in schools will prevent nothing. While I think that if many people here were armed in a school would be responsible, most Americans, unlike Israelis, are fucking morons who jump at their own shadow and would probably shoot someone by accident. Simply put, I don’t trust most American and I don’t think you do either, Kevin, as evidenced by your writings.

Let us parse:

So, there were guns there and nothing could be done to stop it.

Really? You again exhibit your God-like powers of prescience and prognostication. Wherever do you find those? Is there a pill?

Having people armed in schools will prevent nothing.

Is that so? Well it is difficult to “prove a negative.” The probability that such an incident doesn’t happen because a gunman was dissuaded due to the fact that one of his victims might shoot back (or first) is, admittedly, impossible to calculate. Oregon school teacher Shirley Katz seems to believe with a weapon she could prevent her ex-husband from doing something unpleasant to her (since restraining orders are essentially tissue paper and she knows it), but the law requires her to be a disarmed target while she’s at work.

Just like Christi Layne.

However, it’s never really been that much about prevention, Markadelphia, it’s been about attenuation. Only two things will stop a rampage shooter – either he (or she) decides they’re done, or someone with a gun stops them.

As Tam put it so eloquently after the Montreal college shooting in 2006:

I ain’t goin’ out like that. Whether it’s some Columbine wannabe who’s heard the backward-masked messages on his Marilyn Manson discs, distressed daytrader off his Prozac, homegrown Hadji sympathetic with his oppressed brothers in Baghdad, or a bugnuts whackjob picking up Robert Frost quotes transmitted from Langley on the fillings in his molars, I am going to do my level best to smoke that goblin before my carcass goes on the pile. I am not going to go out curled into a fetal ball and praying for help that won’t arrive in time.

—

Even if the police are right there, it might not do me any good. Heck, I might not do me any good. But, dammit, I am going to try. If a 51 year-old nurse can overcome a hammer-wielding psycho with her bare hands, the least I can do is go out on my feet. I’m not going to wait for the coup de grace under a desk; I’m not going get in the abductor’s car; I’m not going to comply with their demands; I’m not going gently.

Help in this case didn’t arrive in time to stop the shooter before he decided he was finished, nor did it in the Baton Rouge shooting yesterday, but it did in the City Hall shooting in Missouri. There’s no way to know how many people Charles Lee ‘Cookie’ Thornton intended to kill before he decided he was finished, is there?

But now we get to the heart of the matter:

While I think that if many people here were armed in a school would be responsible, most Americans, unlike Israelis, are fucking morons who jump at their own shadow and would probably shoot someone by accident. Simply put, I don’t trust most American and I don’t think you do either, Kevin, as evidenced by your writings.

Then you’ve not been reading what I’ve been writing. (There’s a surprise.)

Prior to Florida starting the current trend in 1987, there were eight “shall-issue” states, where citizens who applied for a CCW permit and who passed a background check and a minor licensing requirement had to be issued a permit. It was not at the discretion of local law enforcement to deny. Vermont has always been a “no permit required” state. Seventeen states were “no issue” – you couldn’t get a CCW at all. Since then the number of “shall issue” states has increased to 37, Alaska has joined Vermont in not requiring a permit, and only two states remain “no issue.”

In each of the states where “shall issue” is the law, approximately 1-3% of the eligible population jumps through the relatively minor hoops in order to get a permit. The number of people who actually carry is unknown. What we do know is that those people are remarkably law-abiding. They are much less likely to be arrested for anything than the general population.

In point of fact, they do not “jump at their own shadow” or “shoot someone by accident” – at least if they do shoot someone by accident, it’s at rates far below those of police officers. It is a fact that the worst thing you can say about “shall issue” concealed-carry legislation is that it might not have contributed to the decline in violent crime during the same period. In state after state, opponents to the laws have had to admit that none of the “blood in the streets” and “shootouts over fender-bender” fearmongering came true.

You’re right, Markadelphia, I don’t trust “most Americans,” and with reason. Apparently “most Americans” are like you. But I do trust those who get CCW permits far above and beyond “most Americans” because – for the overwhelming majority – they’ve given thought to their own protection, and understand that the police can’t be everywhere, all the time. They are connected to reality in a way “most Americans” really aren’t.

And if you’re interested in the efficacy of concealed carry, I suggest you peruse the archives of Clayton Cramer’s Civilian Gun Self-Defense blog. Admittedly, the number of CCW defensive gun uses are low, but they do happen.

Contrast Tam’s words above with these of Barry of Inn of the Last Home from a while back:

I just…I just blink my eyes in amazement everytime this crops up – actually watching people feel the need to carry a concealed weapon in public…

If I were to take a live, armed weapon and carry it on my person, in public, it would eat away at my sanity just as if it were emitting lethal radiation. To know that I carried an instrument of sure and certain death on my person, available and ready to be pulled out and used at a moment’s notice to possibly kill…a child. A homeless person. An innocent.

Obviously that is not your intent. You want to protect yourself – maybe that is how you feel in California. But being brought up in Eastern Tennessee I’ve never once felt the need to protect myself from imminent bodily harm in public. And if I were aware of a location that might be unduly hazardous – a dark alley, a badly lighted parking area – I would avoid it. I’ve never been mugged, nor can I readily pull up a name of any person I’ve ever met that’s been mugged or even bodily threatened in my whole life.

What scares me most is the arbitrary nature of self-defense. What line must be crossed to signal to you that there is imminent danger or threat? Is it a criminal pulling a gun on you? In which case, unless you’re a gunslinger, you’re not going to outdraw him. Is it someone pulling a knife? Threatening words? Bad language or rude gestures? Where is that one point where you decide, “Yes, my life or the life of my loved ones is in danger and I must now take it upon myself to take the life of another person.” What if the guy is reaching into his jacket, and you are sure, absolutely certain that it is a weapon. You pull your gun and shoot–and see he’s reaching for his wallet. Or worse, you miss and hit a child running in the street. Where is that line?

The radiation would rot my brain and I would never be able to live with myself.

Maybe it’s different in California. Maybe it’s different in Tennessee. Maybe I don’t love my family enough…maybe I love them too much. But I know myself, and know that if I surrendered to the paranoia – and I mean that in the most basic sense – there would be no turning back.

You can bet your ass I don’t trust him to make decisions for me.

UPDATE:  Original JSKit/Echo comment thread is available here. Thank you, John Hardin.

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A Defensive Gun Use Failure.

(via Instapundit)

Armed customer thwarts grocery robbery

A 51-year-old man stopped a masked man from robbing a Southside grocery store and held him at gunpoint until police arrived.

Charlie Merrell was in checkout line at Bucks IGA Supermarket, 3015 S. Meridian St., when a masked man jumped a nearby counter and held a gun on a store employee at 5:17 p.m. Monday, according to a police report made public today.

While the suspect was demanding cash from the workers, the police report states that Merrell pulled his own handgun, pointed it at the robber and ordered him to put down his weapon.

When the suspect hesitated, Merrell racked the slide on his gun to load a round in the chamber, Officer Jason Bockting wrote in the report.

The suspect placed his gun and a bag of cash on the counter, dropping some of the money, police said. The suspect removed his mask and lay on the floor. Merrell held the suspect at gunpoint until officers arrived and took him away in handcuffs.
Merrell had a valid permit to carry the handgun, police said. Police recovered an unloaded .380-caliber handgun from the suspect and $779 in cash, according to the report.

Dwain Smith, 19, was arrested on initial charges of robbery, criminal confinement, pointing a firearm, battery and carrying a handgun without a license. Smith remained held this morning in the Marion County Jail with bond set at $30,000, records show.

Why was this defensive gun use a failure?

Well, if you use the criteria of the anti-gun forces, specifically that of Dr. Arthur Kellermann, a successful defensive gun use must result in a death.

Nobody died.

Hell, no shots were fired.

(“When the suspect hesitated, Merrell racked the slide on his gun to load a round in the chamber.” – More intimidating than merely cocking the gun, no matter how Hollywood sound effects try to influence us, but pulling (and pointing) a pistol with nothing in the chamber? That’s a good way to get shot. Thankfully Smith’s gun was apparently completely unloaded, though Merrell couldn’t know that. As Glenn says, “I suspect that Merrell will carry in Condition One from now on.”)