Wednesday, August 8, 2012

POURING GAS ON A RAGING FIRE...


 The city of Houston recently released a video advising citizens what course of action to take in the event they are caught up in a mass shooting.  The video suggests three options:  Hide, run, or fight back.  It emphasizes the first two and suggests the third is a course of last resort.  They are now under fire, pardon the pun, for the content of their advice.

     It seems a number of Houstonians, and Texans in general, are upset the video doesn't call on people carrying guns to be a primary option in stopping a shooter.  Critics of the video say it ignores all the pistol-packing Texans who could turn a theater, shopping center or school into the Alamo or the O.K. Corral.

     In San Francisco, in any city or community, it costs hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to train a police officer.  A great deal of the training is focused on how to control adrenaline in a tense situation, and how to avoid using your weapon.  More time is spent teaching emotional control and how "not" to shoot then on actually firing a gun.  The tension levels after a high-speed chase, a long chase on foot, or an excruciating step-by-step search of a building in the dark not knowing if someone is there who means to use deadly force, are through the roof.  Tragedy occurs when the officer doesn't control the tension and pressure and succumbs to the easy solution of using a weapon only to discover an unarmed "victim" or a child or another cop.

     Inside a dark theater in Aurora, Colorado, a man throws tear-gas canisters at the crowd, fires a shotgun into the ceiling and then starts shooting with an assault weapon.  Imagine for a moment some members of the audience jumping up and firing back.  Imagine all the others in the crowd caught in the crossfire.  Imagine several audience shooters shooting from different directions and angles.  As they are shooting, they are hit and jostled...as they shoot, they also have to duck to avoid being shot...as they shoot, they have to identify a suspect dressed in black in the midst of tear gas...as they shoot, they have to figure out if the other shots they see and hear are from more bad guys or are friendly fire...as they shoot at a man wearing body armor from head to toe, they attract his attention to them and everyone around them.

     How many times have you read news accounts of police shooting 40 or 50 times and their target sustains two or three wounds?  In one case, police fired over 100 shots and only hit the suspect once.  These are trained officers, certified at their gun range, who fire their weapon regularly in practice and under stress-induced scenarios.  How many more victims would there have been in that theater if patrons had opened fire at the original gunman?

     This lunacy has to stop.  Someone has to stand up and say the emperor has no clothes.  I am much more frightened of an armed citizenry, spraying the air with bullets as they try to play Dirty Harry, than I am of the occasional deranged individual.  Every police shooting is considered so serious it automatically requires a full investigation and, in many cases, people are shot who should not have been shot.  Who is responsible if an amateur shoots someone by accident?  If while trying to stop an alleged crime I shoot someone, can I be guilty of a crime too?  Will regressive legislatures, in states all over this nation, pass new versions of "stand your ground" laws immunizing citizen shooters from arrest if they are shooting "in good faith"?

     The gun lobby is pushing to let people carry concealed weapons at church, college campuses, IN BARS, and then, like in the movie Casablanca, they will be "shocked", "shocked", when more innocent people are the subject of gun violence.  Pogo is right again.

3 comments:

  1. Well put. You stated very articulately he reasons why this knee-jerk "If only everyone had been carrying, this massacre would not have happened" reaction is nonsense. If everyone were carrying, in most situations the result would be more disastrous.

    And as to an ancillary argument I have heard, that future would-be crazed gunmen would be deterred if they knew that other people were armed, I would say that is also nonsense. In the first place, so often these people are eventually shot by either armed law enforcement or themselves that it seems that dying is either irrelevant or part of their plan. In the second, if someone's main goal is carnage, it's more likely that they'll try to take advantage of the magnifying effect of wild shooting in the crowd than be deterred by it.

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  2. If there would have been an armed person in the crowd there would probably be less dead people.

    The commentary is the usual liberal play on "what if's".

    We just had a person in Milwaukee stop a robber in his steps. The robber was armed and now dead.

    A firearm is a tool, nothing less. All of the gangbangers have them.....which is a misdemeaner in WI. Yeah, that makes sense, right?
    But, if I, a law abiding citizen wants to carry protection, here come the regulations.

    The liberal left, with Hollywood leading the way, have all but ruined this country.

    To the party of the Baby-Killing, God haters: Go back to your beloved Europe.

    Dr. Jack C Fisher Jr.

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  3. I will stay in my house until the crazy people with the guns and ammo all shoot each other. That's what they do in the gang neighborhoods and i have heard it is working out quite well.

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