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.

What the 2014 Elections Mean to Gun Rights

On November 7, 2014 By Tom LindsayIn Self Defense

This week, as everyone knows, the Republican party gained control of the senate, and increased its margin of control in the House of Representatives.

Sadly, despite elation in the social media similar to the above, the elections, in a nutshell, mean absolutely nothing to the cause of gun rights.

Yes, there are some good things we, as law abiding gun owners, can take away from the elections:

A lot of the senators who voted for the flurry of knee jerk gun control laws following the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2013 were defeated, as we expected they would be.
The GOP now controls both houses of Congress, making further gun control legislation even less likely.
More importantly the GOP controls the senate. In view of the advancing age of some of the more staunchly pro-rights Supreme Court Justices, namely Scalia and Thomas, it makes it a lot harder for a liberal president to sway the court toward gun control.

But here is the truth, none of which is affected by these elections:

Hoplophobic liberals will continue their quest to ban and confiscate guns in the United States. They are unaffected by the elections, the makeup of Congress, real public opinion, or anything besides their own desire to take away our guns. A cursory glance at their responses in the media this week make that clear.

Rich anti-gunners like George Soros and Michael Bloomberg will continue to spend to achieve their goals. Do not be fooled.

The key to handling the anti-gun factions is the same as any other threat in life: awareness. Do not let bozos like Ken Braun lull you into a false sense of security. Keep your awareness all the time. Never go into Condition White.

Know this: the times ahead are slightly less bleak for the cause of gun rights, but our worries are not over. Not by a long shot.

Why You Need to Have Rules of Engagement

On October 6, 2014 By Tom LindsayIn Planning, Self Defense, Training

In June of this year, two nutjobs walked into a pizza restaurant in Las Vegas, and shot the place up, and killed two police officers, Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo. (I will not use the names or likenesses of the killers, as you know.)

They then proceeded to Wal-Mart, and opened fire there as well. There, Joseph Wilcox, a licensed concealed firearms carrier, decided to intervene, and was killed.

Caleb Giddings posted an editorial on GunNuts shortly afterward about lessons we can learn from this shooting. In it, he points out that, while Wilcox is to be commended for making the tough decision to get involved, he had no moral duty to do so.

Later, Miguel at Gun Free Zone offered his view on incident:

The question remains: what would you do if you see an active shooting situation and you are not in immediate danger? Do you run to safety or do you engage? You decide, I can’t tell you what to do. I can only tell you what I will do: I will engage if I can.

Miguel likens an active shooter incident to a First Responder incident, where we should offer medical attention to anyone who is injured.

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Then, last week, armed robbers tried to hold up a bar in Texas at closing time, and 2 of them were shot dead by what everyone is calling a hero.

I can’t use this man’s name, as no one knows for sure who this hero was, because he left the scene. Why? Because, unlike in Georgia, carrying a gun in a bar in Texas, licensed or not, is a felony. And he, understandably, did not want to go to jail.

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These incidents highlight something we all need to give serious thought to: everyone who owns a gun, whether they carry or not, needs to have Rules of Engagement – a set of guidelines of what you would do when confronted by various situations. The scenarios need to range from home invasion to active shooters to civil unrest.

To me it isn’t enough to just vaguely think about these things. We ought to actually list them out, and write out what our response would be. Knowing and following these rules then becomes part of your training, so that you know what you are going to do, just like whether you will perform a tactical reload or not, or whether you will reholster or not.

I did this, several years ago, and I have shared this with my family. That way, if they happen to be with me when such an incident occurs, they will know how I am going to act, and they will know how to act themselves, in a way that doesn’t get them hurt.

For instance, everyone in my family knows that when we go out to dinner, I get a seat facing the door. If we are in a booth, I get to sit on the end. These should be obvious, but we discussed them nevertheless. Yes, they can become a humorous item at times, but they still get followed.

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This leads me to the real topic of this post, which is that my Rules of Engagement differ from Caleb’s and Miguel’s, because unless I or my family or those I am tasked to protect are threatened, I won’t engage. I am not here to be a hero, and if you are not my family or in my care, I am not here for you.

On the other hand, I am willing to do whatever it takes to protect my family. When it was illegal to carry in restaurants or bars in Georgia, that meant I was willing to go to jail to save them, if I had to.

I still am, because their lives are worth more to me that freedom. And, if by my actions I can show how silly some law is, and it gets changed, all the better. I hope lawmakers in Texas will see that the laws prohibiting carry in bars did nothing to dissuade the robbers, so they need to be changed.

I can list a myriad of reasons for my rules, but the best one, sadly, is the reason Joseph Wilcox died in Wal-Mart – Uncertainty. He engaged a target, not knowing there was another, and that target killed him.

I am going to limit my uncertainty. I am willing to allow it in order to defend myself or my family, but beyond that, no.

That, of course, is something you will need to decide for yourself.

“Guns Everywhere” Plus 3 Months – Where Is All The Blood?

On October 1, 2014December 29, 2015 By Tom LindsayIn CCW, Concealed Carry, Gun Free Zones, Gun Rights, RKBA, Self Defense1 Comment

On July 1, 2014, Georgia law HB60 went into effect. This law, termed the “Guns Everywhere” law, eased or removed the restrictions for a lawful holder of a Georgia Weapons Carry License, or a recognized reciprocal license from another state, to carry a concealed or open weapon into bars, nightclubs, and, most importantly, government buildings that lacked security devices to keep them out, such as metal detectors.

Above is a recent photo of H. Harper Station, recently rated among the best bars in Atlanta.

Above is a recent photo of the Kennesaw, Georgia City Hall.

Please note that neither photo has been retouched or edited in any way.

Also please note the distinct lack of blood flowing in the streets around either location.

To those who always claim that the easing of restrictions on lawful carry by law abiding citizens will lead to chaos, I present, instead, the facts. No increase in violence has been observed.

In fact, North Carolina today passes one year of allowing carry in bars, and they have seen the same distinct lack of the chaos predicted by the anti-gun factions.

I predict the same continued normalcy here in Georgia.

Now, will the anti-gunners use this as a learning moment? The next time we seek to improve the safety of every law abiding citizen by decreasing the number of Gun Free Victim Zones around us, will they consider rightly that history shows them to have been wrong, not only now, but many times in the past? After all, it has been over 4 years since we allowed lawful carry into restaurants, and the promised return to the Wild West never materialized then, either.

Time will tell.