Guns

Do children need guns?

/ hsoi

Howard Nemerov examines the question of children having access to guns.

He recounts a recent story where a 10-year old boy had access to his mother’s gun and used it to save the lives of himself and his 8-year old sister. This isn’t the first story I’ve heard where a minor had access to a gun and used it to protect themselves and their family members.

Nevertheless, out of the woodwork come those that decry that a loaded gun was accessible to the children. That children should even know how to use a firearm. That “what if the gun had been taken away and used against them”. And all the usual foul cries.

In his usual style, Howard sets aside the emotion and looks at the hard facts:

After compiling data from the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide master files for 2000 through 2002, it turns out that children shooting children is a rare occurrence.

[…]

This means that of the truly unfortunate circumstances where a child finds a gun and kills another kid, there are an average of 10 per year for entire country. Obviously, that is 10 too many. But considering that 633 babies under age 2 (211 per year) were beaten to death during this same time period, some perspective needs to be maintained. There are already laws against beating babies to death, just as there are laws against killing children with firearms.

Texas is one such state with “child access” laws. My wife and I have had discussions on this very matter. The law says I cannot leave a “readily dischargeable firearm” in a way such that a child could have access to it. That means that my children — who know how to safely and responsibly operate firearms — cannot use a firearm to defend themselves. Given that firearms are an equalizer, why shouldn’t my children be allowed means and mechanisms to level the field against larger and stronger invaders/attackers? I grant the intentions of the law, but I also see the perils the same law creates.

So Howard provides much-needed perspective:

Of these 31 incidents, 15 of them occurred in the 18 states (about 1 per state) that had child access laws on the books at the time. That means the remaining 16 incidents occurred in the 32 states without these laws (0.5 incidents per state), not the best testimony for child access laws!

Ten of these incidents involved shooters age 10 or less, about 3 per year. Four of these occurred in states with child access laws, still near that 50/50, coin-flip percentage that indicates failure for child access laws.

So based strictly upon percentages, this 10-year-old is a hero.

How can you label that 10-year old boy any other way?

What to do?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Here’s an interesting story.

Basically, petty crime occurring (someone grabs someone else’s duffel bag and runs off, victim shouts for help). A citizen with a concealed carry permit pulls over to help out, draws his gun on the criminal and says “Stop, Police.” and works to detail the thief. However, a second armed citizen sees what’s happening and thinks that is a crime going down so he too stops to intervene. Eventually the police show up and things get sorted out.

The intentions of both citizens are good. Frankly, having more people that are willing to be helpful and not stand for criminal behavior? That’s a good thing. But the first guy to identify himself as police? That’s not good. My hope there is the guy either gets let off or only lightly punished because he did not have criminal intent in what he was doing; it’s certainly not worthy of a felony charge.

It does demonstrate a real issue however: that things may not always be what they seem. There’s stories of a bad guy coming out of the store he just robbed and complaining to the by-standers in a manner to make those by-standers think he was the victim and thus they help the bad guy get away. Things aren’t always what they seem, and we have to be careful. I do have thoughts about what would happen if I was in a self-defense situation with many others around, and there were other “sheepdogs” in the mix as well. What could happen? Could signals get crossed? Could the chaos of the situation lead to unintended things happening? It’s a situation that I don’t have an answer to, but have wondered if there is something that could be done and thus taught in schools as a part of “training and tactics” to aid in such situations. I don’t know.

But me personally? I don’t think I would have gotten involved in such a situation. To me the question to answer is “is this worth dying for?”. Petty theft? I don’t think it’s worth dying for. Actually I should check that. I may have gotten involved (all depends upon the specifics of the situation), but to pull one’s gun… that has to answer affirmatively the “worth dying for” question.

My Story

I think about what happened to me just this past Saturday evening. The family and I had gone out to dinner, then over to the bookstore. We left the bookstore, heading across the parking lot to our car. I noticed a man and a woman walking through the parking lot on a path that would eventually intersect with us. They appeared to be having some sort of a fight, a little physical, a little heated verbal exchange, and they kept walking in our direction. They appeared intoxicated, and by their appearance possibly homeless. Wife saw them too and became concerned, I just looked at her and said to get herself and the kids to the car. I was certainly in code orange, but didn’t think this would be a problem… they appeared to just be a drunk couple having their own spat, but with that level of irrationality going on who knows. Better safe than sorry. I kept my eye on things while Wife got the kids and herself into the car. As I was going to get into the car, the woman crossed behind our car and shouted to me “Want to buy some DVD’s? Brand new!” I just gave a firm “no thank you”. She kept walking; in fact, she never stopped. My guess is the fight was over the DVD’s, or at least her saying that to us was no true offer of sale… just something to piss off her male companion. As we pulled out, we saw the man had sat himself down on the curb and looked sad and upset whereas the woman had kept on walking.

I don’t know what the story was, and frankly I don’t care. My concern was for the safety and well-being of my family. There was a brief moment where both Wife and I were concerned of a physical altercation as it looked like the man might have opted to hit or otherwise rough up the woman. If that had happened, I may have intervened but initially from a distance (e.g. verbal commands, getting Wife to dial 911). I couldn’t stand by to let someone get hurt like that, but on the same token I had to ensure I didn’t put myself or my wife and children in danger either. Exactly what I would have done, again, impossible to say… all depends upon the exact situation and how things would unfold. But my guiding principle is keeping my wife and children safe; all else is secondary. In the end the question remains: is it worth dying for?

Going off about going off

/ hsoi

The story is short and simple.

Passenger in car takes out his gun to show off to the driver and winds up shooting himself in the leg. How did it happen? The gun “went off”.

Folks, guns do not just “go off”. That’d be like matches suddenly igniting and starting a fire. Or a car suddenly starting and driving itself somewhere. Or a lawn mower spontaneously starting up and cutting the grass. Or a book reading itself. For any of these actions to happen, it requires someone to make them happen. Someone must strike the match, someone must start the car or the mower, someone must read the book. And as such, someone must fire the gun.

When things like this happen, it’s usually due to negligence. They put their finger on the trigger and fired it. Sure it was unintentional, but it was also negligent.

Follow the rules.

If you follow the rules, things like this shouldn’t happen. I won’t say they won’t happen because we’re human and we make mistakes. But that’s one of the things about the rules (whichever ruleset you follow). They are layered. If one rule is violated, ugly things can be averted. It takes a violation of more than 1 rule for bad things to happen. If you do your best to always follow all the rules, you should be in good shape. Unfortunately in this case, the first 3 of Cooper’s rules were violated, and at least the first 2 of the NRA rules were violated.

Sotomayor and the NRA

/ hsoi

It took a while, but the NRA has officially come out against Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination for SCOTUS.

Certainly the NRA brings up Sotomayor’s anti-2A record:

Judge Sotomayor’s judicial record and testimony clearly demonstrate a hostile view of the Second Amendment and the fundamental right of self-defense guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

But I think a bigger judicial issue is involved, and one that should concern all US citizens, including those that may be pro gun-control:

The one part of the Bill of Rights that Congress clearly intended to apply to all Americans in passing the Fourteenth Amendment was the Second Amendment.  History and congressional debate are clear on this point.

Yet Judge Sotomayor seems to believe that the Second Amendment is limited only to the residents of federal enclaves such as Washington, D.C. and does not protect all Americans living in every corner of this nation.

This is a larger issue (14A), and one generally hostile towards protecting and preserving the freedoms this country was founded upon.

In last year’s historic Heller decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees the individual’s right to own firearms and recognizes the inherent right of self-defense.  In addition, the Court required lower courts to apply the Twentieth Century cases it has used to incorporate a majority of the Bill of Rights to the States.  Yet in her Maloney opinion, Judge Sotomayor dismissed that requirement, mistakenly relying instead on Nineteenth Century jurisprudence to hold that the Second Amendment does not apply to the States.

If she’s going to make such mistakes and disregard the ruling of the highest court — the one she’s now attempting to gain a seat upon — what sort of respect does she have for that court? And what sort of behavior is it to be so disregarding? Can the American Citizens trust such behavior?

What will make this rather interesting is apparently the NRA will count the Sotomayor vote towards NRA grade/score. We’ll see what happens.

An accounting, a learning experience.

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Linoge has a lengthy transcript of the recent “wild west shootout” from a few days ago (labeled that because the good guy took care of the bad guy with a single-action .45 Colt revolver).

Give the transcript a read.

It contains a great many details about the event and the lessons one can learn from it.

Some things I picked up:

  • Fight. You’re not dead until you say you’re dead, and the fight isn’t over until you give up. Fight. Fight. Fight like hell.
  • Get yourself good hardware, solid, reliable. Once you have yourself a good solid gun, get lots of training, and practice.
    • The training shouldn’t be just marksmanship style training, tho certainly that is necessary. A lot of the training should be things that help you with situational awareness and other tactics, things to help you avoid the fight if possible or if the fight must happen, to give you every advantage you can get.
  • I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. All pistol rounds suck. Bad guy was shot multiple times, apparently a few were critical hits, but bad guy kept on fighting. First thing I said remains true: fight, because you’re not dead until you say you’re dead. Works for both the good guys and the bad guys. Make sure you work it to your advantage.
  • Scumbags are scumbags. They don’t care about you or anything other than themselves. If they’re going to go to jail anyways, what’s killing a few more people along the way? Hell, to them they probably view it as a good thing towards increasing their “street cred” to be able to rattle off a big number of how many people they’ve killed. Don’t think you can beg your way out or expect any sort of mercy from them.

Go give it a read. Learn what you can from it.

Guns and parenting – a response

/ hsoi

Via SayUncle I come to a blog article from Katie Allison Granju. She thinks about how the world was just 25 years ago, and then how it is today. She asks:

So here is the question: what is different between my childhood, only 25 years ago, and the ones my kids have today that makes us so much more afraid of guns in particular? I don’t know the answer to this question, but something HAS changed.

I posted the following comment to her blog, since she asked for her reader’s thoughts:

Continue reading →

July 2009 KR Training Newsletter

/ hsoi

The July 2009 KR Training Newsletter is posted for your enjoyment.

Highlights include a list of forthcoming training opportunities, the KR Training YouTube Channel, some upcoming youth programs, and a lot of other neat stuff. Certainly of interest to anyone in the Central Texas area, but even if you’re not there’s a lot of good information in this month’s newsletter.

Note that Blackhawk SERPA holsters are now prohibited at KR Training. Read the newsletter for details.

All that happened was hysterics

/ hsoi

Via Tam I read about a spectacular case of PSH.

PSH – Pants Shittin’ Hysterics

So a man with a gun comes into a city council meeting in Chico, California, addresses the council in support of a library, then leaves. Wow, nothing happened. The gun didn’t just jump and start shooting people. No blood was shed. No one died. Wow. Unbelievable.

Thing is, the man is a former California Highway Patrol officer and had permit to legally carry. So thus, no laws were broken.

But lots of hysterics:

Although the man didn’t violate any laws, it made Mike Maloney uncomfortable as the interim chief of police, he said.

“From my perspective, I can’t see any reason for someone who’s not a peace officer to carry a weapon to the City Council,” Maloney said.

He was uncomfortable. He got his feeling hurt. Time to call the waaambulance.

“The million-dollar question is, why would you bring a weapon to the City Council meeting when we’re talking about library funding and the budget?” Vice Mayor Tom Nickell asked.

Those police officers in the chambers and around the building, why do they have guns at a City Council meeting when you’re talking about libary funding and the budget? Perhaps because the potential for bad guys to do bad things doesn’t get scheduled on your meeting agenda? Back to that whole “Be Prepared” thing. Again, the guy’s an ex-cop and probably has enough personal direct experience to know that it’s wise to be prepared to defend yourself because shit happens.

“My opinion is that members of the public should allow trained professionals to carry and use firearms,” Maloney said.

Hrm. The guy in question? He’s an ex-cop. So I guess as soon as he took off the badge, all of his training was immediately removed from his brain, body, and soul. Now he’s suddenly one of those dangerous citizens that we just cannot trust. Sure 5 minutes ago he was a cop and we trusted him fully with a gun, but now he cannot be trusted!

Wow.

Having seen the effects of gun use, Maloney thinks citizens should instead be good witnesses if they spot a crime, he said.

OK ladies. While you’re being raped, just be sure to be a good witness. That’s what Chico, California Interim Police Chief Mike Maloney wants you to do.

And gosh, if that’s how the Police Chief wants things to be, how much can you expect the police will do anything to protect you? Especially how later in the article it mentions how Chico is down on police officer positions. They just don’t have enough cops to go around to even come and protect the legislators in their meetings, so how are you mere citizens going to be protected on a daily basis? But just remember, be a good witness so you can help the Chico police clean up afterwards.

[Mayor Ann] Schwab was concerned when she heard about the gun, especially considering children were in the audience and the council had a heated discussion on budget issues, she said.

Ah good! Someone was thinking about the children. You know, those children that weren’t harmed at all by a law-abiding citizen doing lawful things; in fact, a law-abiding citizen participating in the legislative process… arguably being a more productive citizen than most! Gosh now, we can’t have any more of that. Children are watching!

Thank God we have hysterical Mayors, Vice Mayors, City Councilmen, and Police Chiefs to keep us safe…. safe from what, I don’t know, but thank God we have them. I would add “Thank God they’re thinking of us” but that implies thinking, and it appears not a lot of that is going on.

Of 1911’s…

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

I admit, getting a 1911 style handgun is on my want list. Why? Just because. I don’t have a need for one, this is pure want because of the platform that it is.

Up until now I have been looking at models from companies like Kimber, Springfield Armory, STI (tho they’re too expensive for a first 1911), and I was probably going to lean towards a Springfield because you can get a decent model at a reasonable price. Good for a first 1911, especially given how they’re customizable to the Nth degree.

Well, my buddy foo.c just picked up a Rock Island Armory 1911. You can see some pics here. IMHO, there’s no rail so it’s not tacti-cool enough to be called “tactical”. 😉  Stupid marketing….

I’ve heard a lot of good things about RIA 1911’s. People say they are solid for the money, good quality, shoot straight, and so on. It’s all praise. Sure there’s some things about the RIA that aren’t up there with say a Wilson Combat, but that tends to be some spit and polish and other things. Yes they can make a difference, but it all depends what you want. I’m certainly looking forward to a little range time with foo.c and trying the RIA out. For the price, it may be the entry point for me into the world of 1911’s.

Gun control works

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

… just a question of who does it work for.

Over at Howard Nemerov’s website, a little back and forth in one article’s comments lead to Howard writing a full follow-up article asking if civilian gun ownership causes bloodshed.

His conclusion? Gun control works:

Don’t like Jews or Catholics? Hitler disarmed them and then murdered millions in concentration camps, along with Gypsies, homosexuals, etc.

Hate Christians? After Uganda banned guns, 300,000 were rounded up and murdered.

Don’t like “smart” people? After banning guns, Cambodia rounded up and murdered over one million of them.

Hate people who disagree with you? After the Soviet Union established gun control, over 20 million dissidents were rounded up and killed.

Of course, if it works or not all depends whose side you’re wanting it to work for.

Howard continues:

By comparison, the Second Amendment has actually saved millions of lives. It also protects your right to religious freedom, your pursuit of happiness, and your opportunity for upward mobility. It raises the cost for thugs who want you rounded up and murdered.

It also shows that anybody who is against the civil right of self-defense is a person who hates your life, liberty, and happiness.

Why would you want to be disarmed before such a person?

Indeed, why would you?

For all those that love the protections 1A gives to the God-given rights enumerated therein, remember that it’s 2A that helps to preserve those rights. The facts of history bears this out.