I just received this comment on my post about how Utah’s college students are smarter than Oklahoma’s and I believe I need to devote an entire post to this issue.
I am a student at the University of Oklahoma and if anyone was allowed
to carry a concealed weapon, I would go somewhere else. I feel very
safe here and if it went into effect that anyone could have a gun, I would
feel like I could get shot at any time. Why not instead of letting
more people carry around guns we make STRICTER gun laws that dont LET
people like Seung-Hui Cho able to BUY the gun in the first place. AND he
wasnt even supposed to be able to buy a gun!
This came in from somebody named Elizibeth.
Elizibeth, please allow me to respond to this in depth. I’m going to try and be polite, and I’m going to try to explain my reasoning to you.
I am a student at the University of Oklahoma and if anyone was allowed
to carry a concealed weapon, I would go somewhere else.
As should be your right to choose who you wish to associate with. However, people like me are not who you need to be worried about. I believe that if you knew how many of your fellow Oklahomans around you, every single day of your life, were armed, your head would pop. My average student looks nothing at all like a stereotypical redneck/hick/hillbilly/gun nut. My average student looks like your mom, your dad, your teachers, your friends, your accountant, your lawyer, your dentist, your flight-attendant, your dish-washer, your plumber, your librarian, and the guy that mows your lawn.
We’re not nuts. We’re not crazy, nor evil. What are we? Normal, everyday people who’ve made the decision that we won’t be victims, and we’re not going to depend on others to protect us, when we’re perfectly capable to taking care of ourselves. We’re average Americans who don’t feel like getting murdered for political convenience or the sheer logistical fact that the authorities can’t be everywhere, all the time, nor do we want them to be.
I feel very safe here and if it went into effect that anyone could have a gun, I would
feel like I could get shot at any time.
Then you would be sadly mistaken. Having permit holders around you doesn’t make you anymore likely to get shot. In fact, your odds of getting randomly shot go way the heck up in states that have the very strictist of all gun laws.
Let me break this down for you. My people aren’t the problem.
Normal, sane, background-check-passing regular folks don’t normally whip out their concealed firearms and start blasting for no good reason. There are literally MILLIONS of us around the US that legally carry guns every day. Yet how many news stories can you find where a legal permit holder did something really stupid. If you search, really, really, really hard you can come up with a couple, (believe me, I teach this stuff for a living, I get to hear about all of the morons) but even then the rate of permit holders getting in trouble with the law is way lower than the average population.
Well here’s your problem right here. I FEEL SAFE. The sad fact is, you can get shot at any time. If I was a bonafide psychopath, dedicated to getting my 15 minutes of fame by shooting up a college, I would do it. A real bad guy could walk right into your classroom, and shoot you, and there’s just about nothing you could do about it…
Unless maybe you, or somebody else in that room somehow had the ability to fight back. Now isn’t that one heck of a neat concept?
Why not instead of letting more people carry around guns we make STRICTER gun laws that dont LET
people like Seung-Hui Cho able to BUY the gun in the first place. AND he wasnt even supposed to be able to buy a gun!
Let me give you a hypothetical scenario. I’m a total loser, scum-bag, whackadoo. My goal in life is to make other’s miserable. I’m a Class A Violent Criminal Actor. My plan is to end my miserable life and a bunch of others by going to a place where innocent people are packed in like unnarmed herd animals, and shoot as many of them as possible, so I can be famous, and then either kill myself or get shot by the cops.
We don’t LET bad guys do anything. Do you think for even a fraction of a second that the above bad guy is daunted at all because you’ve got a sign in front of your college that says “No Guns Allowed?” He’s about to commit 60+ capital crimes, and then blow his brains out. Damn, that extra felony stuck on there posthumeously sure is going dissuade the likes of him!
Negative. Laws mean nothing to the lawless. That’s why they’re criminals. It is already illegal to murder, rape, rob, or assault. But they do. Because that is what they are. That is what they do. Wishful thinking and signs mean nothing to evil.
So, make it harder to get a gun? Good luck with that. The places in America that are the toughest to legally get guns in are flooded with illegal guns. Out here in flyover country, we’re lousy with guns, but have low crime, and people are relatively polite. I bet you I could buy an illegal gun in about fifteen minutes of touching down at La Guardia.
Well, maybe if we just banned all guns! Hey that’s an awesome idea. Just like we banned drugs, and we can’t get those anymore. Because you know, they’ve dug 5,000 foot long tunnels under the border, and bring across coke in units measured in the HUNDREDS OF TONS. Smuggling weapons into this country would surely be impossible!
(not to mention that anybody with a tiny bit of chemical and mechanical knowledge can build a working gun in about 30 minutes, if you’re a student of history check out some of the things that various under-siege nations during WWII came up with in their basements)
Plus, if we did ban all guns, that works even better for criminal scum. Man has visited violence upon man since the dawn of recorded history. I’m 6’6″, weigh just shy of 300 pounds, and am pretty handy at visiting physical harm on others. Ban guns, and criminals that look like me are going to have a friggin’ holiday. See, because the ONLY thing that makes you even with some criminal that’s been lifting weights in prison for the last eight years is a gun.
Guns are the equilizer. I know it sounds cheesy, but if somebody wants to rape you to death, that equilizer is a mighty fine thing to have on hand. Pepper spray, tasers, hand-to-hand skills, all valuable, but nothing in the world stops a threat like putting a bullet in it. And trust me on this one, when you’re fighting for your life, all of time and the universe dialates down into one tiny thought – and that is that you will do ANYTHING to make the bad guy stop. All you want in that horrible moment of truth is to live.
This is what it comes down to. Bad guys hurt people. That’s what they do. You can either prepare to face them, or you can delegate that to somebody else, i.e. the police. But cops can’t be everywhere. It’s impossible. I love cops. I train with them, work with them, and supply them with gear to protect themselves and others. Ask an actual street-cop (not a political hack bureacrat) and I’m pretty sure he would much rather respond to a crime scene where a CCW holder shot a badguy, than the badguy got to go about his business raping and murdering until he popped himself in the brain. Unless you got one of those powertripping idiot cops that think the sun rises and sets on their awesomeness, and nobody else in the room is professional enough to handle his Glock Fo’tay.
So, the question you’ve got to ask yourself is this… if a bad guy did walk into your classroom, would you A. rather have somebody like one of my people there, able to fight back, OR B. hide under your desk and pray to God that you’re not the next one to die? Option B does allow you to have wishful thoughts about how the police will be here in any second, as you hear your friends and classmates choking to death on their own blood.
If you answer A. Good for you. If you answer B. Sorry, you fail Darwinian Evolution 101. The correct answer is C. Get your own damn gun, and quit waiting around for somebody else to come save your ass.
But then you may say something about how violence never solves anything. All I can say to that is I’ll have to check with all of recorded human history and get back to you. WRONG. Violence solves everything. It might not be the best answer, or the answer you want, but if you aren’t willing to step up to the plate, then somebody else will. Then you lose, you die, he wins, and takes your stuff. Cry me a river.
You personally might not have the will to look another human being in the eyes, and take their life. You might think it is somehow morally superior to die rather than take a life. Well boo friggin’ hoo. I don’t feel that way. Nor do millions like me. I don’t care what the bad guy’s problem is. I don’t care if he’s got fetal alchohol syndrome, or his mother didn’t love him enough. All I know is that I’m more important than some murderous scumbag, and I’m going to do whatever I have to do to come home alive to my wife and kids at the end of the night. I can’t afford college pseudo-intellectual self-righteousness and philosophy classes that stink of hemp and patchooli oil, style discussions about the morality of violence. I’m a father, and I’m going to protect myself and my family.
We’ve tried your method of protecting ourselves, surrounding ourselves in a fence of laws, and then asking brave strangers to man up to defend us. Your way has failed. It has failed over and over and over again. Yet every single time we have one of these mass shootings, your side says the same thing. “If only we had this law! If only we had another law!”
Too bad. The forces of evil spit on your laws.
You cite Virginia Tech, yet VT was a prime example of why your idea is so deeply flawed. Guns were not allowed there. Hence the only man that was armed was the bad guy. Your stance requires things like this to happen, because when your fence of pathetic laws gets inevitably trampled on, there is no last line of defense.
You can either choose to protect your self with force, or with wishful thinking. Even if you’re only plan is to call the cops, you’re just delegating your force to somebody else. You’re begging somebody else, braver, and stronger, and more prepared that you to come protect you, because you don’t have the will to do it yourself.
I call that hypocritical.
Here, let me dismiss your other arguments in advance. See, I’ve heard them all before. “But a permit holder with a gun will just make it worse!”
You cite VT. What in the HELL could a permit holder do to make it worse? The situation looks pretty f’d up to me already. You can make up all sorts of far-fetched scenarios where permit holders will screw it up, but guess what? They don’t exist. You can make up any sort of horrid no-win situation you want. That’s what your idiot boy-loving school president was doing before your state legislature of quislings and cowards.
No. We tried your way. Your way sucks.
It’s time to do it my way.
I’m still training every Utah college student for free. Every school employee, for free. Come and see me. I’m going to keep putting guns in school until every decent human being with the spine to defend themselves is ready.
We don’t want to be heros. We don’t want to use our guns. Killing people sucks. If I go the rest of my life and never have to pull my gun in fear ever again, I’ll be a happy man. But in the meantime, I’m going to carry a gun to defend myself, and I’m going to help others to do so as well, because the stakes are too high, and our lives are more important than people like Cho or the other blighted souls like him.
Sorry, Elizibeth, your way is done.
Excellent, just excellent.
Elizibeth:
Thanks for bringing up the topic, which demonstrates your willingness to discuss it. And please don’t be offended by Mr. Correia’s passionate response.
Pretty much anyone reading this particular blog will give you a response similar in content, if not delivery, to Mr. Correia’s. However, I think you should re-examine your own comment. You state that you feel safe at the University of Oklahoma because no guns are allowed on the campus. This also was true for Virginia Tech – no guns were allowed on that campus. You also indicate that the killer at Virginia Tech was not allowed to purchase guns. Yet he did. Accordingly, it necessarily follows that (1) laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of unstable people are ineffective in that purpose; and (2) policies designed to create gun-free zones are ineffective in that purpose. Moreover, since the killer was the only person willing to violate VT’s policy, VT’s policy actually enabled the killer to be more deadly. He was the proverbial fox in the henhouse.
The students at Virginia Tech had just as much right to feel safe as you have to feel safe at the University of Oklahoma. However, they were not safe that morning. There’s a fundamental difference between feeling safe and being safe. In light of the facts of Virginia Tech, you need to ask yourself the question of whether you are actually safe, or whether you merely feel safe. To be fair, the odds of dying due to a gun wielding attacker in any american school, college, or university are incredibly low. The odds of a college student dying from alcohol poisoning are higher.
I found it significant that the only hero of the Virginia Tech massacre was Dr. Liviu Librescu, a survivor of the Holocaust. He died barricading the door to his classroom while several students escaped through a window. Dr. Librescu knew from experience that when confronted with evil, you must oppose it.
Enjoy your expierence at University, it’s a great time to learn and make friends.
Don’t forget the murderer that went into a church..he got stopped by a former security-guard that was conceal carrying.
The church was full…dozens of people could have died. He already killed a few at his previous stop. But he was stopped.
Which is why I can’t wait for the P250 to arrive, so I can get a conceal carry license..and start carrying in church as well.
Well said. Might I just point out, though, that “capitol” does not equal “capital” and “you’re” does not equal “your”, except in the way these words are pronounced?
You have to take into account Larry’s background when criticizing his grammar. As he once explained to me, you can learn everything you need to know about English in a Portugese household by the following sentence:
“Throw the cow over the fence some hay.”
Since Larry grew up in a tiny cowtown, the offspring of immigrants, any and all such criticisms of his abysmal spelling, grammar, and punctuation are nothing short of racism. I learned that from listening to the Press talk about Barack Obama. Isn’t politics fun?
Alex, fair enough. But I wrote that while on WordPress (with no spell checker) while eating a double cheese burger and fries in about fifteen minutes.
A suggestion:
You may want to link to something explaining certain references and lingo you used in the above post. For instance, the “Glock Fo’tay” sentence. That’s something a gunny who has spent time on gun forums might get, but your average anti (or even your average gunny who DOESN’T spend time on gun forums) wouldn’t get.
Trying to explain something using lingo and inside references to a person who is a non-initiate tends to leave that person confused and uncertain what you’re trying to say.
Just a thought. 🙂
Rego, come on man, everybody in the world with internet access has seen Rasta-Narc and his Fo-tay.
I use him as a joke during one part of CCW class. When I’m showing the class that the rounds I’m using for demo purposes are inert, I say that it is so I don’t end up as Youtube video. “‘Cause I’m the only one in this room trained enough to use this Glock Fo’tay.”
Like 10% of the class, maybe, doesn’t get it.
-Larry
Yeah, but they’re gunnies.
It may be Elizabeth has seen the video, but the reference might not click because she doesn’t think about it in the same way we do. Could be she sees an accident and another reason why guns shouldn’t be legal, while we see the hypocrisy of insisting you’re the only one trained enough just before shooting yourself in the leg., while understanding that the agent’s training is not that much more rigorous than our own.
I’m just thinking back to all the times I accidentally used an
reference to something on the net while talking to someone thinking they had already seen or knew about what I was talking about (including people who surf the internet far more than I do) and having it go completely over their heads.
Like I said, just a suggestion. Sometimes I overestimate what references people will “get,” and sometimes I underestimate. This could be one of those times. However. a simple link in the text of it would help to dispel any possible confusion.
Also, I intend this as constructive criticism, and to try and help get the message across as efficiently possible. I may be being overly pedantic about it. You are a far better writer than I am, so who knows.
Nice column, Larry.
To Elizabeth: I understand where you’re coming from; I used to be there myself. I was raised in a very liberal household. My dad had a .22 that we never shot, and my brother and I had BB guns, but that was about as far as it ever went. I remember giving a pretty great speech in the eighth grade on why handguns should be banned. The next year, that changed. We had to write a short paper for one of my first high school classes, and I was going to do it on guns. But we had to research the topic and cite sources. So I went out and found a bunch of sources on guns, thinking that it would be ever so easy to prove myself right.
It wasn’t. I found a couple statistics (mostly raw numbers) that backed up what I was saying, and I finished the paper as planned. But I was confused that so much of what I was reading indicated that I had been wrong. After all, it seemed only common sense to think that more guns equals more people getting killed. Turned out that wasn’t the case. I did more research, and ended up flipping about 180 degrees. I’m still very liberal, but I’m a pretty heavily armed liberal now.
Don’t take my word, or Larry’s word, or anyone else’s. Find out for yourself what happens when citizens have guns, and what happens when they are taken away.
Thank you Elizabeth-
I am pleased that you have opened the door for dialogue. Larry has done a fine job with covering the topic of “I feel safe”, taking into consideration that your university has similar laws and rules that VT had. Wait a minute, so do the bad guys consider that information too? Interesting. I am curious to know if the bad guys, who buy the weapons illegally, recognize that these “new laws” that are suppose to stop them, actually end up preventing law abiding citizens (the good guys who wish to not become victims or statistics) from deterring them from their evil intentions. Okay, maybe I am not as curious as I am certain. I am also certain that the liberal university and college forward thinking will drum up the “No Guns” and “All guns and armed citizens are evil” law proposals; working in the opposite direction of safe and secure. In doing so, those who would prefer to be victims would love to rid themselves of the second amendment, and yet they would surely implode if they were about to lose freedom of speech or press. This forward thinking has already chased religion down the road. Many of these so-called “openminded” people won’t be content or satisfied until they can impose on others rights and push for a Totalitarian state. Take a look around the nation and the world; stricter laws provide a haven for the crime world, the good guys aren’t allowed to defend themselves properly so the bad guys freely use terror to rape and plunder. Look at Great Brittain and then look at Switzerland; look at L.A. then look at Boise. Larry explained that violence has been around since beyond the beginning of civilization; and crime has too. Societies and cultures have always been faced with criminals and enemies. Criminals understand violence and intimidation; they’re the tools of their trade. They also understand that an armed citizen is an intimidation and a deterrent, but an unarmed citizen is a target. Gun Free Universities are Targets. CCW is a deterrent and when it comes down to the criminal’s life or mine; I have already made that decision. What decision will you make Elizibeth? Will you continue to be a victim, a target, or an accessible opportunity for the bad guys; or will you take an active role in society and stand up for you and your right to defend yourself?
BTW, Larry, I get the Fo’tay, the fifty-cent.
Well put, Larry.
I’m curious about one thing, though. I often read and hear anti-gun folks equated with being philosophy majors. (e.g. “I can’t afford college pseudo-intellectual self-righteousness and philosophy classes that stink of hemp and patchooli oil, style discussions about the morality of violence.”) As a philosophy grad student (and WA State CPL holder), I’m somewhat confused about this. In the history of philosophy, I would say that the minority of the significant thinkers are or would be anti-gun. Many of them were pro-self-defense. Those that weren’t explicitly often took as given that when threatened a person as the right (and even the duty) to defend themselves; they never mention it because it’s so obvious and axiomatic for them that they don’t NEED to mention it.
The groundwork of all of Western Ethics assumes that self-defense is not only permissible, but necessary. (e.g. A Platonist could argue that a man’s failure to defend himself when able would be a moral failing since he would, literally, be allowing an unjust act to occur. That he’s letting it happen to himself doesn’t change the fact that injustice occurs because of his choice.)
There’s a great deal of philosophical precedent in favor of armed self-defense. Stretching from Socrates (a distinguished soldier) all the way up through the Enlightenment and even beyond. True anti-self-defense pacifism is a fairly new development in the Western tradition and anyone who espouses it has a hell of a case to make. I’ve yet to hear it made credibly.
That’s all a long-winded way of saying that I don’t quite understand the “anti-gun-college-kid-implies-philosophy-major” thing. After all, one would think that a person who has the critical thinking skills needed for any decent philosophy program would know better than to give in to hoplophobia.
Kukulkan said “ask yourself the question of whether you are actually safe, or whether you merely feel safe”. This might be an epiphany for young Elizabeth. (Elizabeth, are you there, and reading these comments…? Please respond.) “I feel” seems to have crowded out “I think”; like some invasive species, kudzu, or Asian Grass Carp. I have seen it on signs in public restrooms in grocery stores, “If you feel you have been discriminated against…” A very common sensed therapist I once knew said that “feel” goes with words like angry, said, frightened, happy,…He might respond to Elizabeth by saying, “Safe is not a feeling”. What do you think, Eliz.?
Excellent fisking! Regardless of grammar, you’re a master at fisking the anti’s emotional diatribes.
Laws do not PREVENT crime. Laws lay out punishment for crime.
FEELING safe is a whole world away from actually BEING safe.
tragically, her thinking is well accepted at the university, and this kind of “thought” will get her good grades and easy graduation.
Oh well. You can try using common sense if you like.
I wonder why Elizibeth’s typos and grade-school level grammar weren’t addressed by the local Grammar Nazi?
I’m quite confident that if she read Larry’s post she understood it.
Elizabeth:
I come from Venezuela. Some years back, the illustrious goverment of Hugo Chavez decided that crime was too bad and they passed La Ley del Desarme (Disarmament Law) which basically gave everybody a 30 day period to register their guns or face draconian penalties including going to jail even if the gun was used in legitimat self defense. Of course the great majority of Venezuelans were not able to register their firearms and this became criminals-in-waiting. The worse part was that the real criminals did not bother with the registration and went on to commit more crimes. In 2007 Venezuela, which is the size both in population and area, ended up with ovet 17,000 murders for the year not including murder suicides between couples Don’t ask me why, it is a Chavista thing) or the numbers would be much higher. That comes to 26 murders a day or roughly a murder an hour. Just imagine that as you sit down to watch your favorite TV prime time show, one person is murdered and by the time the final credits of that show scroll on your screen, another person is murderd and so on and so on. A bill of goods was sold, the name of it was No Guns = Peace. What they did not say was that it was Eternal Peace for 17,000 every year. The cost is enormous.
I meant to say “which is the size both in population and area of TEXAS.
Sorry for the mistake
Aaron, fair enough. I will admit to being personally biased.
I was a business major in school (accounting). I had to take gen-ed classes to “broaden” my mind. One of them was a philosophy class that was the biggest waste of time in the history of higher education.
My professor was a complete tool, and everything in there was about how the white male oppresses the underprivledged, guns are bad, violence never solves anything, and all your other stereotypical bunches of BS.
That was the only Phil. class (actually if I think about it, it was a Phil. prof, but it was an LAS class) that I ever took, and I suppose that I let that color my perceptions.
My apologies.
Larry, your problem is that you are using logic to argue against emotion.
Elizabeth most likely rules her life by emotion – as long as she FEELS good, then facts and reason don’t matter.
Larry, no apologies necessary. Your comments were largely spot-on and I completely understand that your comments are in jest. (The image of a pitchuli-stench trust fund slacker who’s “like, all into philosophy and shit” is an evocative one, and I’m certainly not offended.)
I’m mainly confused the people who are the root of the “Philosophy = Pacifist”. They all seem so strident about the fact that if only you read passages from Ghandi, you’d TOTALLY understand that violence was wrong.
But it’s far from clear, and I think that crediblen., defensible (pun somewhat intended) hardline Pacifist philosophies.
Your fisking of Elizibeth’s comment, however, is pretty spot on. Effective self-defense is, unfortunately, a human necessity. Even if it weren’t, it’s still a human right. Even if there were no threats left in the world, humans would still have the right to take precautions as if there were. To say otherwise is to advocate the violation of human rights.
I’m taking my New York State Pistol Permit course. It’s a nightmare of illogical laws and red tape that’s taking three weeks for just the basic safety course to have a chance at getting the application paperwork.
Then, to really have any chance at getting approved, the fifty-three hour Personal Protection course is strongly advised.
Then I have to find myself four character witnesses with spotless criminal records to vouch for me, one of whom has known me for a decade, and then see the judge to get approved. If he decides to approve me, he can potentially stipulate I can only have a handgun at home or the range, or maybe for hunting, if he wants to.
Then I get fingerprinted and photographed and every handgun I buy has to be registered by the police before I can take possession of it.
I’ve spent about $250 so far, and when you factor in gas and paperwork handling fees yet to be paid, it’s going to tip upwards of $500 before I even know if I can
A cop got shot at by a scumbag in a bad part of town that’s not five miles from the range just last night. I don’t think the guy that did the shooting was registered or background checked.
Once all the rhetoric has been removed, I believe it comes down to a simple premise. We as individuals are the ones responsible for our own safety. I’m sure that the various Law Enforcement agencies will do what they can, but short of having a cop on every corner in every City and Town, there is no way that the Gov’t can protect everyone. Even if they could, I’m quite sure they should not be charged with that duty. I carry a licensed firearm most places I go. I am trained in it’s use, I understand the laws governing it’s use, and I willingly accept the responsibility that goes along with being armed.
Just a note, this is a great blog site, it’s nice to see an exchange of ideas with a minimum of finger pointing, name calling, and all the other emotional crap that normally accompanies discussions of these issues.
Larry,
I won’t make any more comments than have already been made. Everyone else already summed it up.
You knocked it out of the park. Well done.
tweaker
That was a purely outstanding post, and a philosophy that is so obviously true. However, pragmatism seems dead in todays world due to the lefts insistence that things must have a reason. It’s not half full, or half empty, it’s half. Some stuff just IS, and must be dealt with. And THAT is what these idiots cannot seem to understand. To prevent cancer is good, but if you have it you must remove it. Once you’ve carved out the tumor, you start treatment to prevent recurrence. How simple is that idea?
Ok, theory is over. Time for practice.
The last two school shooting in Israel were stopped in case #1, an armed teacher, and case #2, an armed student.
These were attacks by terrorists who were intent on killing as many people as possible.
Of note is the fact that in case #2, only the very first AP report mentioned the student shooting the attacker, (in detail, name, tactics, everything)-in the subsequent reports, all mention was deleted.
I grew up in Vermont and have lived in Utah for the past 8 + years. I have my CCW in Utah (none was required in VT), and have carried a gun most of my adult life.
I believe carrying a gun makes me pay more attention to all laws around me, as I don’t want to do anything that can take away my right of legally owning and carrying a firearm.
I tend to be a lot more polite when I am carrying, as I know what I am capable of if need be, and will do anyting to prevent every having to use my weapon. I smile and say ‘Hi’ to people more. I don’t flip off the guy who cuts me off on the freeway, or the one who steals my parking space. I will do anything in my power to diffuse a situation, and will never be the one to escalate to the point a gun needs to be drawn.
I happily fill out all the paperwork and submit to the background check every time I buy a gun (most recently the rifle I bought from Larry at the gun show), as I have nothing to hide and am proud to prove that my record is clean.
Everyone I know who owns or carries a gun has the same feelings that I do. People who own and carry guns are not the problem. My brother is a police officer in Connecticut, and would be much happier if it were easier for citizens to own guns and get concealed carry permits.
my $.02…
Sorry – should have said people who LEGALLY own and carry guns are not the problem…
I’m a former LEO and my training came from our training officer, a prominent Saint Louis lawyer.
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According to the Supreme Court of the United States, law enforcement officers and police departments have two responsibilities. The first is to apprehend and arrest law breakers. The second is to secure evidence for the prosecution of law breakers. Now the good part.
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Law enforcement officers & police departments cannot be sued or prosecuted for failing to perform either duty or for poor performance. Likewise they cannot be sued or prosecuted for failing to prevent a crime or for failing to stop a crime in progress. I believe this is called sovereign immunity.
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Police departments are not protection services. They are not there to keep bad guys out of your neighborhood or to stop someone from raping/murdering you. Finally, they’re not there to pull your drunken backside out of your burning vehicle. Quite frankly, it’s not their job.
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Corey Doctorow had a marvelous article on security recently where he stated that the majority would rather feel safe and remain ignorant of potential dangers rather than know the danger in order to prepare to meet the hazard in one way or another.
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I guess my cynical response would be to tell Elizabeth not to worry about it; She’s safe. Of course, she’s not but it’s her choice to remain ignorant and she can bear the consequences of her willful ignorance. Hopefully, she won’t be disappointed for too long when she finds out her feelings of safety were wrong.
Hello! Good site, simply super!
It’s always interesting to me to talk with the antis. The anti-gun folks say, “Yeah, let the cops take care of it”. Now consider this – is it worse to defend yourself or to let others (the police) defend you ? In my way of thinking, Elizabeth, you are making someone else pay the price of your protection. You are making them (the police) the fall-guys because you are too much of a coward to make it your responsibility. You are making someone else pay for your miserable beliefs. Get a life. Take responsibility for yourself. It’s entirely wrong to foist onto another the job that you should be assuming. Grow up.