The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!
Thursday, October 1, 2015
The Oregon college shooting and your security
First of all, forget all the bloviating about "We need stronger gun laws!" The shooter broke how many laws today? And do you think he'd have hesitated even for one instant to break a few more, if necessary? The gun genie is out of the bag. There are literally hundreds of millions of firearms in circulation in the USA, and no government edict is going to get them out of circulation. Law-abiding and criminal alike will unite in civil disobedience to any edict attempting to disarm them. That dog won't hunt. Period.
Second, if you trust your safety and security to the existence of so-called 'gun free zones', you're insane. Criminals don't obey laws. That's what makes them criminals. The shooter today took firearms into a 'gun free zone' without anything to stop him. If you're forced to go into or through, study or work in, or are affected by, such 'gun free zones', I can only recommend in the strongest possible terms that you take immediate steps to improve your security. I can't publicly recommend that you break the law and carry a gun . . . but if I had to live, or work, or study in such a zone, I know what I'd do.
Best of all? Get the heck out of such zones and never go back. A university won't allow legal concealed carry of defensive weapons? Look into online study, with as short a period as possible spent on a physical campus - and ask about security measures to protect students while they're there. If security is inadequate, complain about it - LOUDLY - and continue to complain until something is done about it. A store or shopping mall doesn't allow firearms? Don't shop there. An employer forbids the carrying of personal weapons in your car on company property? Start looking for another job with a more understanding employer. Are you in a job (e.g. pizza delivery driver, etc.) where the risk to your safety from criminals is high, but your employer forbids you to be armed? Decide for yourself whether you're going to obey your employer, and if possible find a less restrictive job.
This will happen again. It'll continue to happen as long as bad people continue to exist. The only sure cure for a deranged gunman trying to kill innocent people is that same gunman, dead on the floor, killed by his intended victims before he could harm them.
That's the way it is.
Peter
I don't go to "gun free zones". Period. I haven't been to a mall or a theater in years. When my child went to college, where guns weren't allowed on campus, but weren't banned by state or local law, she was provided a firearm and the training to use it. I can't say if she carried, but she knew the rules AND the risks.= and I trusted her to make the right decision.
ReplyDeleteI agree.
ReplyDeleteIf, and that's a big IF, the guns laws become stronger, I truly believe it will make no difference. Dad used to say Door locks were for the honest people, criminals always find a way.
If not a gun, than an automobile, or explosives or any number of ways to take out a few people in short order.
It is my belief if the criminals knew anyone may be armed, they may think twice about an insane shooting spree.
God help us all. I hope it's not too late.
I carry everywhere. Period. As to gun-free zones...they'll never know I have mine unless the unthinkable happens and I have to take action. Then I'll either be victorious and they'll be glad I was there with my sidearm or else I won't survive the engagement and then their opinions won't matter to me one bit.
ReplyDeleteWasn't there a similar incident in Israel a few years ago, except the gunman found that the staff and students were armed?
ReplyDeleteYup, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, sounds trite but its the simple truth. I'm wondering if any news programs will mention that the shooter seemed to hate religion.
ReplyDeleteI laughed out loud when the president claimed that jurisdictions with strong gun control actually worked - you been to Chicago lately ? The last two weekends with double digit murders, with dozens of others hurt. Gun control only works when you obey the law - criminals don't.
http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/shootings
My prayers for the victims families.
Truly I find the views and comments on this issue on your blog mind boggling. There is one simple Truth, an illigal Gun started of life somewhere as a legal Gun.
ReplyDeleteWe had 2 incidents in the UK Hungerford and Dunblain where legaly obtained autmatic weapons where used. Immediately the law was tightened and Legal Gun numbers severly reduced whilst the Police undertook a very strong series of actions to remove from Circulation illegal guns already in Criminal Hands. The result is that in the 4yrs up to 2012 the Police only had to open fire 9 times or just on twice a year in country with a population of 65m.
The fact is until you remove Guns the killing will keep going on, the reason the NRA's statement about "Prising my Gun from My Dead Hand" is so infamouse in the UK is the fact that the reason the NRA member was dead was the criminal who shot him dead had done so with a Gun he privately sold 15yrs previously to a Guy who gave him a good price and looked OK, the fact that the very same gun went through 10 peoples hands before some Gun nut bought it the year before still means he's dead.
until the Gun is removed from American Society large tracts of America will be deadly, look at the evidence of the UK and New Zealand both places with Strict gun control and very little Gun Crime, does it mean we don't get the odd Shooting maybe 1 a year, no we get the odd one, but 1 or 2 deaths a year compared to 400 I think speaks for itself.
You may find it ironic.
ReplyDeleteObama is praising Australia's gunlaws on the same day that a gunman attacked the Parramatta Police headquarters.
Sources within the NSW Police say that they had been alerted by Intelligence that something might be planned,mans as a consequence, all officers were ordered to be armed.
In Australia, a gunman enters a well-armed workplace and kills just one victim before being killed himself.
In America, a gunman enters a gun-free zone, and kills ten people before being killed.
Further irony for you.
To purchase a firearm in this country, you must first apply for a permit to do so, and supply a "good reason" why you should be permitted to do so.
Defending sheep from predators is considered a "good reason".
Defending your children is not.
And our idiot from England doesn't know what he is talking about.
ReplyDeleteNew Zealand proves exactly the opposite...... Our cousins there have far more access to firearms and fewer restrictions than we face in Australia...... and a lower homicide rate.
As for England.... If you examine the historical data, you find that their low (relatively) homicide rate has nothing to do with gun laws. When a London was the largest city in the world and gun ownership was common and completely unrestricted, is was unusual for the firearms homicide tally to get into double figures.
Increased restriction has frequently been followed by an increased use of firearms in violent crime. (See Greenwood)
Our anonymous friend's logic is akin to arguing that umbrellas cause rain.
Australia also has very strict immigration laws....
ReplyDeleteWell all of you try and do the impossible; Using logic and reason to refute a reaction based in pure emotion. To our friends in the UK and down under. The constitution of the United States is the reason we have guns, NOT the NRA. Our government has no authority to confiscate or "outlaw" firearms. America currently has an estimated 400 MILLION firearms and uncounted BILLIONS of rounds of ammunition in the hands of its citizens. If only a tiny fraction (3%) of the gun owners in America decided on armed resistance to gun confiscation they would outnumber the combined government forces of the entire world by millions to one, and a civil war lasting for decades would be the only outcome. "We The People of The United States" constitute the largest armed population in world history. Further it is our RIGHT to hold arms, and one that government cannot question or abolish. What Obama, The UN, The EU, The Communist party, or anyone else wants in this matter is meaningless. Peaceful forced gun confiscation will never happen in America. Because to try and implement such a stupid idea would result in bloodletting on a scale never before seen in human history. We are not and never will be "subjects of the ______ Crown" ----Ray
ReplyDelete@-Anon 6:41 AM:
ReplyDelete"The fact is until you remove Guns the killing will keep going on..."
So, once guns are gone, no more killing? Awesome. Just one question, though. If guns (and not violent criminals) are problem, then how did all these people die?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11328746/17-violent-deaths-in-Britain-in-first-six-days-of-2015.html
Oh, they didn't die by guns, (except for one of them, which raises another point, but I'll get to that). They were beaten, stabbed, burned and in some cases, their manner of death is not revealed. But all of them are just as dead as if they had been shot dead. Are their deaths any less tragic? Are the people who are shot somehow more important because they died by criminal use of a firearm?
Now, you'll note, of the people who died was shot. That means there are still guns out there, in circulation, despite the "police under[taking] a very strong series of actions to remove from Circulation illegal guns already in Criminal Hands."
Imagine that! Criminals holding onto their guns when everyone else who follows the law gave them up! It almost as though they have no regard for the law.
"...look at the evidence of the UK and New Zealand both places with Strict gun control and very little Gun Crime...."
Yes, look very closely at the evidence. "Gun" crime may be down, but crime in general is not. Assaults have gone up, murders still at about the same rates (though by new means), rapes, robberies and other assorted violent crime are all up. But, hey, people aren't being shot, so all is good?
Open your eyes. Open your mind.
I'm a 65 year old Australian male.
ReplyDeleteDone 32 years Service, two years Army, the rest Air Force.
When the shooting massacre went down in Port Arthur, Tasmania, 32 murdered, more than that wounded, the Prime minister of the day, John Howard, being the politician he was, and as the leader of his party, waxed critical of existing Australian gun laws.
Blah, Blah, Blah, and so-on, he said.
Point is.
Australia has no constitutional laws that give a citizen the right to bear arms, as is the case in America.
Therefore, Obama,....MATE,....!
I, Stuart John Garfath, as I speak, 2 October, 2015, living at number 19, Fourth Avenue, Toukley, Central Coast of New South Wales, Zip code 2263, am really FUCKING PISSED OFF!.
YOU, OBAMA, you DARE to use my country for your political aggrandisement!.
Sunshine, you doin' that, you have fucked up, BIG TIME!.
You dare to infer that Australian gun controls' would have prevented this latest tragedy in Oregon.
How DARE YOU use my country for your political gains.
YOU bull-shittin', lying self-serving bastard!.'
NEVER use Australia for your self-serving personal or political bullshit.
Clearly, you know NOTHING of the Battle of the Coral Sea, NOTHING of New Guinea, and little if anything, of the men, the Americans that are forever part of Australian history.
Obama, I've given you my details, and I've got yours.
Don't EVER fuck with my Australia, or me.
Remember this.
We Australians remember our friends, and we NEVER forget our enemies.
CLEAR?!.
Carry on.
Mark Duggan anyone?
ReplyDeleteAcademia (et al.) teaches the wrong lesson.
ReplyDeleteWhich makes more sense?
• "Thou shalt not hurt ANYONE'S feelings!"
• "Let's roll!"
Anti-gun rhetoric will continue until the idiot politicos learn that guns do not create violence, people do. If there were no guns, what would they outlaw? Cars? Automobiles kill more people on any given day than guns do. People have been violent since Cain killed his brother. Maybe they should try outlawing rocks.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with gun control advocacy is that on the surface it sounds so plausible. The only sure *cure* for a deranged gunman may be the use of another gun. But the only sure *prevention* for a deranged gunman (it is thought) is to prevent him being a *gun*-man by ensuring he can't get his hands on a gun. And since the only way to guarantee the wrong man can't get a gun is to make sure *nobody* can get a gun, both by cutting off legal access and by destroying as many of the weapons that currently exist as possible, that's always where the policy proposal ends up. It is tremendously plausible to conclude that fewer guns must, by definition, equal fewer gun crimes, in the same way that fewer cars tends to equal fewer car accidents. (It must be acknowledged here that for all the bad knock-on effects of Prohibition, for example, the social costs of widespread alcoholism *did* decline under that law.)
ReplyDeleteThere's also the fact that -- as one commenter on another site demonstrated yesterday -- one of the driving beliefs behind gun control advocacy is the conviction that what makes someone "deranged" enough to kill is actually far more common than most of us think; that it is, in fact, universal -- that literally *anyone* can in theory snap under enough stress, and that the only way to prevent that snapping turning into violence is to guarantee that at the moment it happens the would-be killer can't get hold of a gun *at all*, by *any* means. This, too, is dangerously plausible.
I was myself an anti-gun advocate at one point, and only reluctantly came around to the opposite conviction by virtue of acknowledging (a) that the correlation of gun availability to actual gun violence was far more variable by community and subculture than I had realized, and (b) that I could think of no law enabling compulsory confiscation which was not dangerously vulnerable to abuse. (It should be noted that this fear of abuse of rights is exactly why the mass discharge of mental patients in the '80s was adopted -- a factor that has as much to do with mass shootings as gun availability does.) I am still, in a sense, for "gun control" -- I simply think that control is better effected by a community of responsible independent citizens than by a centralized authority vulnerable to corruption and prone to bureaucratic inefficiency.
Larry Correia's "An Opinion on Gun Control" is just as applicable to this shooting as to the Sandy Hook shooting when he wrote it
ReplyDeletehttp://monsterhunternation.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/
Yet another demonstration that a 'gun free zone' is a 'killing spree zone'.
ReplyDeleteMy wife is a self-described "bleeding heart liberal." I, on the other hand, am a radical right-wing nutjob. (Yes, it can be interesting.) However, she is generally anti-gun control. Why? She tells the story of an East German co-worker of hers that she sat next to years ago. That co-worker was a great believer in the second amendment because, as she put it, "Even in East Germany, the criminals had guns." I put it to you that if a totalitarian state on the order of East Germany with its feared Stasi was unable to stop the trafficking in illegal weapons, then nothing that any Western democracy can do will suffice for the purpose either.
ReplyDeleteDavid
I like that Stuart John Garfath guy. He should go to every major american news website and cut-n-paste his above response.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but I bet the STASI loved them some gun control.
ReplyDeleteAll the politicians sob talk about killings, violence,etc is all deception . Governments HATE citizens having firearms. In the end, the sole reason they want gun control is the very same reason that criminals don't want you armed-
Because they intend to do something to you , that they could not, if you were armed.
"Everyone Is Asking How We Can Stop Mass Shootings Like Umpqua"
ReplyDelete"We can’t. But we can reduce the frequency of them and the number of victims of each attempt."
http://therealrevo.com/blog/?p=136560
Everyone above is right, not firearms, but people kill people.
ReplyDeletePeople are part of society and there are many countries in the world with no-guns laws.
Mass kills by firearms practically missing there or they are very rare.
Think about your society, people.
It will take the winning of a civil suit from the victims families against the collage. The collage had the gun free killing zone. It was up to the college to ensure the student and instructors safety which they were not able to do. The college needs to pick up all medical costs and pay for pain and suffering, lost potential wages, etc. to the victims or their estates.
ReplyDeleteI used to work for Lockheed Martin. A defense company. Guns were not allowed on the campus in Sunnyvale. So I never had my grandfather's Model 12 Winchester Pump there. Nope. Never. Didn't happen.
ReplyDeleteD. Scruggs