An Argument Against Campus Carry

On June 16, 2015 By Tom LindsayIn Campus Carry1 Comment

Courtesy of Robert M at Great Satan Inc., I ran across a statement from Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University.

Mr. Crow writes:

Can you imagine a crowded college lecture hall in which one student pulls a handgun and fires a shot, then a dozen more students, untrained in the use of firearms and how to handle potentially deadly situations, all pull out their guns? Innocent people would be caught in a deadly crossfire of panicked students firing in every direction. And what does the SWAT team do when it arrives? How do they know which of a dozen or more armed and possibly firing shooters is the bad guy? Or do they take out everyone with a gun?

As Robert points out, we are asked to imagine, because no such incident has ever occurred.

Instead, I suggest to the reader, and Mr. Crow:

Can you imagine a crowded school where two disaffected students fire at students at will, and kill 12 students, because no one at the school is armed? Of course you can, that was Columbine.

Can you imagine a crowded school where a disaffected student fires at students at will, and kills 2 students? But this time, his rampage is halted by a teacher who retrieved his own legal gun from his car? Of course you can, that was Pearl.

Can you imagine a crowded school where any number of disaffected students thought better of bringing guns to school, because the teachers and staff were armed? Maybe not, because that doesn’t make the news. But carry at school is legal in Israel, and when was the last time you heard of an Israeli school massacre?

Yet Another Open Carry Idiot

On June 15, 2015 By Tom LindsayIn Open Carry, RKBA

Okay, we get it. Open carry is legal, and a protected part of our Second Amendment rights.

Yet, another idiot decides he will open carry at the busiest airport in the world, because it’s his right. And, in typical and totally expected fashion, the left call for More Laws. Because it’s obvious we have to stop this man, and of course the real terrorists who attack airports in places like Los Angeles will be stopped. Well done, Hank Johnson.

But back to the idiot shown above, what he fails to consider (or considers, and totally discounts, which may be worse) is, as I have pointed out, on more that one occasion, that this puts fear in the hearts of those who otherwise have no opinion on the issue. As with most issues, we on one side or the other see it as 50 – 50. In truth most things in America are at best 45 – 10 – 45, with a 10 percent core that doesn’t really care one way or the other, and they go with the wind.

And, it is those core 10 percent who we may have to rely on, should a vote ever come up to repeal the Second Amendment. But if we scare the living pants off them with our open carry antics, we may see the wind shift.

So please, stop being stupid on open carry.*

*DISCLAIMER – As always, I am not saying that all those who open carry are stupid. I open carry on occasions where it is warranted. But if you open carry to prove some point about open carry, that’s stupid.

My Takeaway from the Great Crusade – Be Prepared

On June 6, 2015 By Tom LindsayIn Be Prepared

I have been thinking today about this 71st anniversary of the D Day landings on the beaches of Normandy, June 6, 1944, and I’ve spent a lot of time reading social media posts about it.

One conversation with Jeff Anderson got me thinking.

Now, when the D Day scenes in Saving Private Ryan were shown to men who were there, it was so realistic to them that many of them walked out. But today I am struck by thoughts of the whole sensory experience –

The deafening sounds of incoming and outgoing gunfire

The sounds of the wounded

The sounds of the overwhelmed

The smells – of seawater, of blood, of exhaust, of burned gunpowder

More than that, though, I am struck by the fear, and thoughts of how I would react.

Like most people, I have had some experience with fear in my life. I know that feeling, that almost sickening feeling, and that urge to freeze. I have come to know, however, that if I am trained on the situation at hand, no matter how much fear I feel, I will be okay. (Well, I will be a lot better off than if I am not trained, any way.)

I have faced situations where I have, shall we say, not reacted optimally in the face of fear. I have frozen, either physically or emotionally, and I have been of little or no use to those around me. I regret those times.

But there are times when I have been in fearful situations where I have been trained in how to respond, and I have done so, rather well, in my opinion.

In truth, this should not be surprising. After all, even the Boy Scouts knew this, when they taught me to Be Prepared. And that, after all, is why we train.

So the difference for me comes down to training, to Being Prepared. The men on the beaches of Normandy were Prepared, and they responded with valor and determination. And that made all the difference.

For me, I take this remembrance of D Day, the thoughts of the fear those men faced, as an added resolve to seek more training, not just in the situations where it would seem obvious that training is needed, but in situations less obvious – carjackings, home invasions, mass shootings. Because I know, for me, that will make all the difference.

Kennesaw, Georgia as Proof of the Fallacy of Gun Control

On June 1, 2015May 30, 2015 By Tom LindsayIn Self Defense

In 1982, the city of Morton Grove, Illinois, passed an ordinance outlawing the ownership of guns within the city limits. In response, the city of Kennesaw, Georgia, passed an ordinance requiring that every head of household, with some exceptions, maintain a firearm in the home, with ammunition.

This, of course, has fueled a multitude of responses over the years from gun control advocates. One incident that draws their attention is the mass shooting at a FedEx center in 2014. They point to this as a failure of the required presence of guns to prevent this shooting. Of course, what they fail to even notice is that the FedEx shooting was, in fact, a failure of the opposite kind, since the FedEx facility was a posted Gun Free Victim Zone. FedEx-Shooting

Now comes a missive on the Kennesaw situation so bizarre that I will leave it to the reader to digest.

All this leads me here.

Last night, as I pondered this most recent attempt at gunsense, I finally gave expression to the senselessness that I feel when reading all the gun control nonsense, and the failure of their logic.

You see, gun control advocates, especially the most ignorant and vocal, almost without exception, equate the ownership of guns by any law abiding citizens to the ownership of guns by violent criminals. In their minds, there is no difference. To them, it is not the person who is the problem, it is the gun. No matter the person’s background, beliefs, circumstances, they will kill when they have a gun. Not may kill, will kill.

This is where the snake metaphor arises – it is an unknown, an inevitable danger that will attack without warning. And the implication is, of course, that this danger will attack the innocent owner as quickly and as surely as it will the intended target.

This, of course, grows from the gunsense belief that the presence of guns in the home will lead to suicides in the home. Not may lead, will lead. And it is this one point that above all else, to me, deflates the gunsense message, but, sadly, has been missed by we who defend our rights.

To best understand, I took the gunsense mantra to its extreme. If guns mean death, then mandatory guns, required guns, would have produced a 100% death rate. Or, at the very least, it would result in a marked, noticable, reported spike in gun related deaths.

And yet, this is not the case. The murder rate in Kennesaw is not 100%, or even 50%, given that only about half the households have guns. The suicide rate in Kennesaw does not seem to be any higher than anywhere else.

Further proof:

No spike in shootouts and gun deaths at the NRA convention. Ever.

No rash of shootings and gun deaths at USPSA, IDPA, or any other sport shooting events. Ever.

I could go on.

The time has come to point this out to the gunsense crowd, and politely ask them to shut the hell up.