Abusus non tollit usum. (Misuse does not preclude proper use)

In keeping with the subject matter of the past three posts, I've felt it necessary to compose yet another. Why? Because I have more to say, that's why. And the more I think about it, the more pissed off I get.

Take a look at the map above. You'll see that there are 4 colors on this map of the 50 States. The blue States are called "Shall Issue" States and have adopted a "Florida style" policy on the issuance of concealed weapons permits. That simply means that when applying to obtain a concealed weapons permit, unless you are legally disqualified you "shall be issued" the license provided you complete all of the required steps.

The yellow States are known as "May Issue" States. In these States, you must demonstrate a "need" above and beyond the simple desire to obtain one to be issued a license to carry a firearm. For instance, carrying large sums of money as a condition of one's employment might be a qualifying "need" to be issued a concealed weapons permit in California or New York.

The green States have little or no restrictions on firearms. Anyone, save convicted felons and children under 18 can purchase, obtain, possess, and carry a firearm on or about his or her person, either concealed or openly with no licensing or registration requirements.

Then there are the red States. In these States, the right to bear arms is unconstitutionally denied. No one is issued concealed weapons permits. No demonstrated "need" is good enough. No one can carry a gun on their person under any circumstances except law enforcement and criminals. Everyone else must fall into the inevitable and unfortunate category of "hapless and helpless victims".

One of those red States, you may notice, is Illinois. Illinois is where the most recent university shooting happened. Illinois is where the department store shooting that killed 5 women happened. Illinois is also where one of the most violent cities in America happens to be. No one had a snowball's chance in hell of stopping these men because no one had a firearm. Had one not killed himself and the other not fled, more people would have surely died in a cowering heap of pathetic pleadings for mercy.

How can this not anger the hell out of you? Who the hell is the State Legislature to tell you that you cannot protect yourself? Who the hell are these self-righteous imbeciles at the Brady Campaign to assume that you cannot safely handle the situation of using a firearm to protect your own life and should therefore just die? What gives them the right? Who gives them the authority?

I am constantly outraged by the audacity of those who speak for the Brady Campaign when they argue against legislation that would allow law abiding, adult citizens to purchase, own, or carry firearms. Their arguments are never based on statistical data or facts. On the contrary, they are nearly always based on assumptions and opinions and always presented as though they were fact. They cannot argue with statistics that show that States with looser gun laws suffer less violent crime. They cannot discount the factual data that shows that legal gun owners are far less likely to commit violent crimes. They cannot argue, intelligently so they don't. Instead, they appeal to the audience's emotions by postulating, speculating and theorizing based solely on conjecture or otherwise using the SWAG method to presuppose what they think might happen. SWAG...that stands for Scientific Wild Assed Guess!

In a recent Newsweek interview with a nonprofit organization called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus or SCCC (referenced in a post below), Brian Malte, the State Legislation and Politics Director at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said, of course, that the legislation that SCCC seeks simply would not work. He had no valid reasoning for such a conclusion, mind you...just speculation. "It's ridiculous to say someone with a gun could have saved the day"..."with people running all over the place and people getting caught in the crossfire." Newsweek went on to quote Malte as saying that "...his group opposes the concealed-carry legislation, because allowing firearms to saturate college campuses, where young people drink heavily and live communally, would only heighten the danger of deadly violence."

Did you see that? Did you see what he did? He made an assumption and then projected that assumption onto you as fact. How does he know that people would be running into the line of fire and not taking the natural reaction of getting as low as possible? How does he know that the person who may be carrying concealed would not exercise due caution so as not to shoot innocent bystanders? How can he say that college campuses would be "saturated" with guns if this legislation is passed? Saturated? Not everyone qualifies. Not everyone would want to carry a gun. One would have no reason to believe that any different proportion of the campus population would choose to carry concealed firearms than the general population as a whole. And because stereotypical college students binge drink on movies like Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds, it would be irresponsible to allow such an out of control group to have guns. Never mind the fact that these same people already have the permits necessary to carry guns concealed in places like restaurants and malls and marketplaces. Somehow, this genius concludes that the specific surrounding of a college campus makes it too dangerous for these same people to carry those same guns under the same constraints of the law with the same responsibilities and with the same standards and expectations of reasonable behavior. Why? How?

Can you smell the bullshit? These people are living in a fantasy land. A land where they honestly believe that it is possible to get control of all of the hundreds of millions of guns out on the street. They envision a day where guns are only in the hands of the police and the military....preferably only the military. They are delusioned idealists who couldn't rub two statistical facts together to come up with a coherent conclusion to save their pathetic pacifist butts. If you could magically wave a wand and make all privately owned guns, both legal and illegal just disappear from within the borders of our country today...then tomorrow, people would kill, rob and carjack other people with knives, baseball bats, claw hammers and power drills. History supports this. People have been killing people since Caine smacked Abel over the head with a rock! And people will continue to kill people no matter what sorts of primitive or technologically advanced weapons are afforded them. But the simple fact is, you have no magic wand. You can never get control over all of the guns available on the black market...ever. The German Gestapo couldn't do it in WWII, and you most certainly cannot do it with any of the First Ten Amendments to the Constitution of the United States intact.

Guns aren't going anywhere, folks. This is about evening the odds. This is about allowing victims to have a sporting chance at survival and giving predators a legitimate deterrent. This is about recognizing that the right to live and the right of self-preservation is inherent and inalienable to all sapient beings and cannot by their very nature be relieved from one by another because, despite any law prohibiting them, they will be enacted anyway as a natural course of instinctual reaction. You cannot make it illegal for me to meet a force likely to cause death or great bodily harm with the same or a greater amount of force anymore than you can make it illegal for me to breath. My life depends on both and despite any law to the contrary I will continue to do both. On the same side of that coin, depriving me of the very means of self preservation is akin, in my opinion, of depriving me of oxygen to breath....tantamount to murder. It is not for the law to presume whether I will act reasonably in any given hypothetical life threatening situation. It is only for the law to decide whether I have acted reasonably after the fact. For the law to step in and preemptively judge that I might act unreasonably and then, for that reason, remove from me the right or ability to act in that instance, forces the law to act in my place. Any failure of the law to act in my place under such circumstances should thus constitute negligence or malpractice, up to and including not having any representatives (ie, law enforcement) nearby.

Now I know that might be a far reach in legal interpretation on my part but theoretically it is sound and there are integral parts of that theory that cannot be refuted, such as the inherent instinctual compulsion to act with deadly force in defense of one's own life. If it is true that access to black market firearms cannot be feasibly curtailed, especially in a free state, and it is also true that all humans have the right to defend themselves and others with deadly force if a force likely to cause death or great bodily harm is met and it is also true that to deny a person either the right or the ability to apply that force in a situation where it is needed might cost that person their life, then it must be reasonably concluded that a person has the inherent right to arm themselves with weapons likely to be capable of deterring, repelling, or quashing an encountered deadly force. Whether I act reasonably and in accordance with the law is up to a jury to decide after the fact, not for legislators to decide before it ever happens under hypothetical presumptions.

Fish In A Barrel

It's just too damned bad that no one told the suicidal gunman at Northern Illinois University that he was in a "Gun Free Zone". Maybe if he knew that it were "against the law" to have a gun on campus, he would have refrained from going on this rampage. Good thing that everyone else there was following the law, though huh? I mean at least they died as "law abiding citizens", right? That's all that really counts, isn't it? I wonder how come you never hear of a "crazed gunman" going on a shooting spree at an NRA convention? Quite puzzling.

This is getting old, folks. It's getting ridiculous. Anti-gun moonbats continue to demand that college students remain defenseless while a crazy man takes as many as he can with him to his grave. The law protects no one. No law ever has. The law punishes offenders "after" they have committed their crime. So what if it's "illegal" to have a gun on campus? It's also illegal to shoot people! So when a man sets out fully intent on killing a bunch of people and then ending his own life, he surely doesn't care that it's illegal to possess the tool with which he plans to execute them. Any laws that supposedly "prohibit" such actions mean absolutely nothing! And this is not unique to college campuses, either. It is true of any place where the government says you cannot carry a weapon to defend yourself.

I propose that instead of posting a sign that reads "No Firearms Allowed", or "This is a Gun Free Zone", that they advertise with the following words: "It is illegal for you to defend yourself in this place. If attacked by someone with a gun, yell, scream, pray, or cower but you may not use deadly force to protect your own life." As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, one thing will always remain true: The only thing that will ever stop a person with a gun, is another person with a gun. That is an indisputable fact. The question is: Who will that person be? A cop? Yes, that would be nice and tidy provided there happens to be one nearby. But just as a kid doesn't stick gum under the desk when the teacher is looking, neither will a criminal decide to act when a police officer is present.

So let's say you're the helpless citizen trapped in a building with a crazed gunman or worse yet, more than one. What will you do? Call the police? Yeah, that's a good idea. What's that? They're on the way, you say? Oh, OK! Well then, that makes it all better now doesn't it? We'll just wait for them to arrive and put a stop to this madness. Good thing this gunman is busy shooting "other people" while we all wait on the police to arrive and not YOU, right? Oh, look! Look out there! There's a policeman outside. Hurry, dude! What's he doing? He's hiding behind his car with his gun drawn and talking on his radio! Why is he not rushing in to save the day? My God, there are people dying in here! What the hell is he waiting for!!?? BACK UP? We don't have time for back up! He's coming my way, I'm going to be next. Oh my God, here he comes! Please! Please! Oh God, PLEASE DON'T SHOOT ME!

So what will you do when there's no cop around? You don't know? I'll tell you what you're going to do. If you are a law abiding citizen in a "Gun Free Zone", YOU WILL DIE! In an horrific and grotesque fashion, you will meet your end at a time of someone else's choosing. No glory or purpose shall have come from your sacrifice. No greater good shall have been served by your willingness to adopt no means of protection. All of your struggles and pleadings will have been in vain and it will be then, amidst your suffering that you will come to the stark realization that no sign, no policy, no law, no court opinion or interpretation, no blind faith in the gentleness of mankind, no pacifist philosophy and no chanted slogans, could have saved you nor prevented the tragedy you have become a part of. Like so many cattle, you and those around you will have been put down, all without a single means of protest. Death will be the only release from your pain. You will have been forced to this point. You will have followed the wide, paved, well beaten path of law abiding citizenship to this very cliff's edge. You will have had no choice. You will have had no alternative. You will have had no escape and above all....You will have had no protection. You will have met this demise....because the government says so.

How long can we stand for this madness?

Empty Holster Protest

The SCCC or “Students For Concealed Carry on Campus” will stage another “Empty Holster Protest” for the week of April 21-25, 2008. At campuses all over the United States, students will wear empty holsters to school. This is the second such protest staged by this organization, now some 11,000 members strong. The first protest was held in October of last year on the campuses of 125 separate US Colleges and Universities. SCCC says this protest will be different from the last in that it will focus more on educating the uninformed on the facts of concealed carry laws and how they differ on college campuses. I applaud their effort but “educating the uninformed” on a college campus is akin to bouncing one’s head off of a brick wall repeatedly in hopes that the wall will get out of the way. Nevertheless…off comes my hat to this courageous group of students.

SCCC shares my view that state laws and school policies that forbid duly licensed students and faculty members from carrying their weapons on campus tilts the scales dramatically in the odds of criminals and murderers by disarming the only people who are willing to follow the law in the first place. They drive this point home quite well in my opinion with the graphic on a t-shirt they’ve designed, which has the following caption:

"THIS IS A GUN FREE ZONE. If you were planning on shooting a bunch of innocent people and then yourself, we’re sorry, but that is not allowed here."

Funny stuff, but I think it illustrates the ignorance that permeates the anti-gun left and those that think that if you pass a law, criminals are bound to follow it.

Those who have read this site on any semi-regular basis know that this is a subject near and dear to my heart. Having endured the unfortunate experiences of being robbed at gunpoint, mugged twice and stabbed in the stomach, I can speak with a certain degree of authority when I tell you that if you think it can’t happen to you…you are sorely mistaken. I cannot understand why it is so difficult to convince someone who hasn’t personally experienced the terror of having to fight for his life of the need to arm himself today in case he needs to defend himself tomorrow. Excuses abound. “I don’t frequent dangerous areas.” “I’d never put myself in that situation.” “I’d just run away.” “I don’t think I could ever pull the trigger on another human being.” “That’s what the police are for.” All of these excuses are useless drivel to the man or woman being beaten, raped, or robbed in what they thought was a safe place like their home, their car, or the mall.

I’d never insinuate that I think everyone should carry a gun. Some people just don’t want to. That’s fine. I personally don’t understand that decision but I certainly won’t trample on your right to not defend yourself. But, dammit don’t trample on mine either. How can anyone say that they just wouldn’t feel safe if his or her fellow college students might be carrying a gun? They wouldn’t know! The gun would be “concealed”! How could anyone say that they would feel safer knowing it was illegal for an otherwise duly licensed, law abiding adult college student to carry his or her personal sidearm to class when the otherwise non-licensed, non law abiding, mentally disturbed psychopath who writes poetry about killing people might be sitting in the chair right next to them with 10 guns in his backpack because he doesn’t give a flying crap about some damned policy forbidding him from doing so or some toothless law which threatens to punish him AFTER he’s committed his crime? What other alternative is there besides a Gestapo style Police State where “Big Brother” is lurking in every shadow and there are cameras in the locker rooms? Who the hell wants that?

I finally got my mother “retrained” and “un-indoctrinated”. Now she has three handguns and just mailed in her application for her Concealed Weapon License. I literally drug and cattle prodded my wife to her concealed weapons class this weekend and she is finally completed with the application process, though she still cannot fathom why it is so important to me. With eyes rolling and big nagging sighs and smart-assed little comments about how boring it was, she reluctantly agreed to sit through the class (at my expense) and fill out the appropriate paperwork to get her license. She doesn’t object to the right to keep and bear arms, mind you. She’s just not very enthusiastic about exercising that right herself. Normally, I’d say “whatever float’s your boat, lady” but this is a little different. She is my wife and she is the mother of my children. When I’m not around, the safety of those children falls squarely on her. It boggles my mind, though, how I can work in Public Safety and tell her of all the carjackings, home invasions, rapes, robberies, murders and mayhem that I encounter on a daily basis and her still remain indifferent to it all…living in a bubble. She was there when I stumbled into our little apartment, blood pouring from my abdomen after being stabbed. She saw it. She remembers when two men who wanted my wallet and the measly 10 bucks that was in it, knocked me unconscious. Yet still, she nonchalantly skips through her day, oblivious to the potential danger. If I have to work this hard to convince someone who has lived through this crap with me and who does not object to the right to carry a gun to do so, these students have a long hard road to convince the liberal academia that they should be able to exercise their right to carry an evil firearm. Good luck.