Combs Spouts Off

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Posts Tagged ‘gun violence’

Feeling safer vs. being safer

Posted by Richard on April 16, 2007

VT flag at half-mastVirginia blogger Doug Mataconis appropriately noted that "Today, We’re All Hokies." But in an update to his earlier post about the shootings, he linked to a Roanoke Times article from earlier this year about the death of a campus self-defense rights bill in the Virginia legislature (emphasis added):

A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

Apparently, a similar bill was defeated last year, too. Last August, the Student Center at VT was evacuated during a manhunt for a murderer. Dymphna at Gates of Vienna has excerpts from two contrasting commentaries in the wake of that incident. One was by Bradford B. Wiles, a graduate student who was evacuated. Wiles had a carry permit, but was unarmed while on campus because of the university's anti-gun policy (emphasis added):

Of all of the emotions and thoughts that were running through my head that morning, the most overwhelming one was of helplessness.

That feeling of helplessness has been difficult to reconcile because I knew I would have been safer with a proper means to defend myself.

I would also like to point out that when I mentioned to a professor that I would feel safer with my gun, this is what she said to me, "I would feel safer if you had your gun."

Commenter Amy Kovak rejected Wiles' argument (emphasis added):

At the risk of being accused of being a member of the liberal media, I'll put it out there that I don't particularly feel safe knowing that people can carry guns around me — even if those people have licenses to do so.

I suppose everyone wants to feel safer. Many people want to feel safer so badly that they fool themselves into believing the most nonsensical things. Apparently, Larry Hincker and Amy Kovak believed that prohibiting guns on campus would automatically prevent people from carrying guns on campus, thus making them safer.

Brad Wiles and his professor friend wanted to feel safer, too. Wiles didn't just want to feel safer, though — he wanted to be safer. Would being armed have made him so on that day? Maybe, maybe not. Guns aren't any more magical and foolproof than gun bans. But there's a lot more reason, logic, and evidence backing Wiles than there is behind the wishful thinking of Hincker and Kovak.

I wonder if Wiles was on the VT campus today, and if he was still disarmed and helpless. I wonder if Hincker and Kovak were on campus. If so, I wonder when exactly they stopped feeling safe in their gun-ban cocoon.

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Cordite and Cooper

Posted by Richard on October 2, 2006

I just found out today that Col. Jeff Cooper died last week. Cooper, known as “the gunner’s guru,” was a larger than life figure whose impact on the shooting sports, combat and self-defense shooting, and related matters is inestimable. Cooper almost single-handedly created what’s thought of as the modern “conventional wisdom” regarding handgun shooting, gun safety, and combat and self-defense techniques.

Cooper was 86 and in poor health, but he continued to write prolifically and with old-fashioned elegance and charm — albeit, at times with a rather sharp tongue. I always looked forward to his monthly column in Guns & Ammo — it wasn’t really a column, but a collection of brief anecdotes, opinions, and observations on a remarkably broad range of subjects. Here are a couple of examples from the August issue:

We are annoyed by the assumption on the part of certain public figures that the citiizen should be able to prove the need for the citizen to acquire a means of protecting himself. The citizen’s personal needs are no business of the state. Liberty, when in place, grants the right of the citizen to do what he chooses, as long as he does not stamp on the rights of others. Nobody needs caviar, or a pleasure boat or opera tickets. Whether he wants these things is no business of the state. On this side of the prayer rug, the Jihadis do not see it that way. That seems to be the main reason they have declared war upon us.


Is it that the pronoun “whom” has been abandoned? Perhaps it is that the English language is too ornate for the common people.

I learned of Cooper’s death via Spank That Donkey, where Chris led off Carnival of Cordite #74 with Michael Bane’s eulogy, which you should read. Check out the many other fine posts, too — most are quite a bit less somber. They range from fun stuff to gun stuff to politics. There are a couple of serious commentaries on the Bailey, CO, school shooting — one of them mine.

Which brings me to the (apparently copycat) deadly attack on the Pennsylvania Amish school. We really didn’t need more empirical evidence that a “gun-free” designation — even with a stiff prison sentence to back it up — is about as effective at protecting our children as the casting of a magic spell over the doorway. I don’t know what more to say, except that my heart goes out to the families of those little girls.

I think I’ll close with another Cooper quote, this one posted at Michael Bane’s place by a commenter. After thinking about the terrible deeds some men are capable of, Cooper’s point seems somehow appropriate — and comforting:

The rifle is a weapon. Let there be no mistake about that. It is a tool of power, and thus dependent completely upon the moral stature of its user. It is equally useful in securing meat for the table, destroying group enemies on the battlefield, and resisting tyranny. In fact, it is the only means of resisting tyranny, since a citizenry armed with rifles simply cannot be tyrannized.

The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.

—Jeff Cooper, The Art of the Rifle

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Safer schools

Posted by Richard on September 28, 2006

Yesterday’s school shooting in Bailey, an idyllic mountain community 40 miles southwest of Denver, has people talking about school safety again. CBS4Denver did a news segment entitled "Why Aren’t Our Schools Safer?" The only concrete suggestions were: (1) put in lots of security cameras; (2) have only one entrance, with "watchful eyes" on it.

In the Bailey incident, a stranger walked in off the street, gun drawn, and fired warning shots. How would it have helped to have an extra video camera or an unarmed, defenseless person watching the gunman as he entered?

Years ago, the Israelis had a problem with Paleostinian gunmen attacking schoolchildren. They armed the teachers and staff, and the attacks on schools stopped. In fact, the Paleostinians largely gave up attacking civilians with small arms when it became standard practice for the intended victims to shoot back.

The Paleostinians developed the tactic of suicide bombing as an alternative. It’s unlikely to become popular with people other than the crazed Jihadists who "love death."

One big safety problem with our schools is their designation as "gun-free zones." This ensures any criminal or madman bent on violence that all the law-abiding people inside are unarmed and helpless. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, somehow the liberals — and even many conservatives — have managed to convince themselves that a "No Guns Allowed" sign has some sort of magical power to deter a sociopath who’s prepared to commit mayhem, rape, and murder.

If you’re a non-gun-owner, listen to me carefully: You are not safer in a "gun-free zone" — you are less safe. Always. Even if you don’t choose to arm yourself ever. The "gun-free" designation cannot and will not protect you from violent predators or reckless and irresponsible people. But it can prevent honest, responsible, concerned people from coming to your defense.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not claiming that more guns are a panacea. There are no panaceas, and utopia is not an option. I’m simply saying that it’s foolish and irresponsible to pretend you can remove all guns when you can only remove those that are least likely to do harm and most likely to do good.
 

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Making Hollywood more anti-gun

Posted by Richard on April 6, 2006

A few weeks ago, Dave Kopel’s Second Amendment Newsletter mentioned a press release entitled Firearm Statistics Report Available to Movie, TV Creators. I finally got around to checking it out recently, and here’s what it’s about:

The Entertainment Industries Council Inc. (EIC) has created an extensive compilation of information on gun violence, firearm safety, gun legislation and more as a resource to the creative community for potential storylines. Published under the title Putting a Face on Firearm Statistics: Volume II, this information is available to the entertainment industry through EIC’s First Draft resource program via its website (http://www.eiconline.org/) and through the mail. The publication was made possible through the support of the Joyce Foundation.

"We’re launching an aggressive program to encourage the use of this material to provide awareness about the inherent dangers that guns can pose," said Brian Dyak, President and CEO of EIC.

Well, the support of the Joyce Foundation suggested that I wouldn’t much like the information about guns that the EIC was presenting. A look at their web site confirmed my suspicions. The EIC’s page of "Facts & Statistics" on gun violence and firearms safety relies heavily on discredited "data" from the usual anti-gun "researchers" and sources — Kellerman, Saltzman, the Violence Policy Center, Johns Hopkins’ Center for Gun Policy, and the CDC.

This is really too bad, because the overall purpose of the EIC seems worthwhile. They’re an information and education resource for the entertainment industry regarding such complex issues as drugs, HIV/AIDS, and mental health, so that portrayals of and information about these topics are more accurate. I’ve given some of their other issues information a quick once-over, and it appears to be pretty solid and balanced, unlike the gun violence information. (Of course, I could be wrong about that, fooled by my ignorance of the Kellermans and Saltzmans in those fields.)

More information and education about guns would be a good thing for the entertainment industry. For instance, a few years ago, the EIC sponsored a firearms safety class taught by a retired police officer. This was an excellent idea. People have been killed and injured on movie sets using prop guns. And on-screen portrayals of gun use are typically pretty awful both in terms of technical accuracy and in terms of safe gun handling. This class ought to be an annual event.

Unfortunately, the EIC’s "Facts & Statistics" on guns aren’t educating the entertainment industry. They’re just feeding it more anti-gun propaganda, such as Kellerman’s 20-year-old bogus claims about defensive gun use, which were thoroughly discredited ages ago.

Do we really need an organized, well-funded effort to make Hollywood more anti-gun?

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