Is the Anti-gun personality backing down or being brought down?
by John Longenecker
There is no single person who has an anti-liberty personalty; there are simply hundreds of thousands of them. You know them by their notions which seem to work against the better judgment of the electorate, and their use of abusive laws to make them stick.
The entire report from ABC’s 20/20, "If I Only Had A Gun..", was to fabricate how silly, how futile, how dangerous is the idea of armed self-defense. But, dangerous for whom, is what I ask. Thugs in a large civil disturbance? Anti-liberty activists fighting for their prestige? Somali Pirates?
The report-that-became-an-informercial posited that we cannot functionally defend ourselves, which humiliates the anti-gun personality more than the gun owner the program clearly tried to humiliate. Thugs and the gun control shills who support violence as an evergreen cash cow feel the pressure of a mounting interest in the armed citizen who wishes, along with tens of millions of other Americans, only to get out from under bigger and bigger government. Is this to be done with force? Shoot-outs with our own troops?
Not at all. Violent Crime is to be met with resistance, so that crime cannot be used as an excuse for more and more programs adverse to the interests of the United States. Hegel pointed out to Marx and Marx points out to shills how taking weapons from the electorate grows crime such that officials may continue to preside over crisis. Paranoia, or a blueprint among the pages of history? People who never read Hegel or Marx can go to the library and see how such a blueprint for many of our stupid policies was drafted generations ago almost down to the very language used today. One of our chief arguments for liberty points to how history is erased from our education content, a product of what I call the anti-gun personality: people who oppose liberty and who oppose our independence of them. Crisis is used to enforce our dependency on them, and it makes them the anti-liberty personality they are.
Last night, April 12, 2009, 60 Minutes did a piece on the increase in gun sales. 60 Minutes delivered on what the headlines promised. With the exception of the emphasis on the so-called Gun Show Loophole, I’d say the piece was informative for non-gun owners and gave some good air time to gun ownership interests (liberty). Yes, Americans are buying more guns and ammunition. Why: because tens of millions now know that we are on our own in the first moments of a crime, that government cannot protect you from immediate violence any more than they can protect your money, and new gun laws in the offing may profoundly affect how violence is fought, processed and funded. This affects families, and people are beginning to make the connection now of gun laws and other seemingly unrelated actions which seem to go against the better judgment of the People.
And undecided non-gun owners might like to remember one more thing: the Militia referred to in the Second Amendment meant then and it means now the everyman, i.e. citizen, and not military. As the sovereign in this country, it’s only consistent. This very first Militia as enumerated in United States Code does not come under the control of the Commander-in-Chief. It never was meant to, and the few attempts to merge the unorganized militia (everyman) with the military failed so as to not be under control of the Commander-in-chief at all.
Perhaps with all of this attention paid to a more critical analysis of what guns are really all about, with more gun sales, with more understanding of who is the sovereign and who is not, we could be seeing a greater involvement of the family in the knowledge base and purpose of the armed citizen and what the armed citizen is really all about.
Perhaps the anti-liberty personality is backing down and being brought down? Many Democrats in Congress signed a letter against the assault weapons ban. Others are quieting their rhetoric about gun control. Anti-gun groups are as silly as ever, no change there.
This trend of an ever-increasingly informed electorate could very well be why Senator Dianne Feinstein said on 60 Minutes last night that the time is not right for her to try to renew the (so-called) assault weapons ban. Perhaps you picked up on how the Senator subtly revealed a hostility to the armed citizen (to you and your family’s liberty) when she announced that "I’ll pick the time and the place, no question about that."
Source: Examiner
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by Paul Valone
Cleverly aimed at undermining growing calls for arming concealed handgun permit-holders in schools and other allegedly “gun free” zones which attract active killers, Friday’s hit piece on ABC’s “20/20,” entitled “If I only had a gun,” claimed to demonstrate that mere citizens are incapable of preventing mass murders like Virginia Tech. What “20/20” avoided mentioning, however, is that the personality characteristics of active killers actually make them more vulnerable to armed intervention than common criminals.
BANG! YOU’RE DEAD
Recruiting college students for what was described only as free firearm training with what were incorrectly called “paintball” guns (actually Glock semi-automatic pistols converted to fire Simunition® marking cartridges), “20/20” gave them minimal training and assigned them to classes on “protective gear” (Simunition® scenarios require protective masks).
Over repeated trials, one student, the “defender,” was armed with a Simunition® pistol but told that it wouldn’t be needed until later that day. The lecture began until…”BANG”…in stormed the “killer,” who proceeded to shoot everyone in sight, including each of the students assigned to defend the class.
In the first trial, “Joey,” billed as an “Airsoft” champ (as if this was relevant), flubbed the draw as his handgun tangled in his concealment garment. Other students’ attempts at armed defense were equally dismal. In later scenarios, defenders developed tunnel vision on the first perpetrator, only to be shot by a second.
This, “20/20” alleges, would happen to any of us because we, after all, we are not highly trained and qualified police officers.
KNOWING ONE’S WAY AROUND A HANDGUN
Before I critique the specifics of ABC’s deception, you should understand that I know what I am talking about:
Beyond being an NRA-certified firearms instructor who has been certified by North Carolina to teach our concealed handgun course, I am a federally-deputized law enforcement officer who has shot competitive pistol for most of my life, starting with NRA Conventional Pistol and moving on to IPSC and IDPA, among other disciplines. Having trained repeatedly at Smith & Wesson Academy and once at Thunder Ranch (where I completed “Urban Rifle” with members of the San Antonio SWAT team), I have cleared darkened alleys, using flashlight-assisted shooting techniques, while being stalked by perps using exactly the sort of Simunition® pistols depicted on “20/20.” I’ve also trained repeatedly with electronic shooting simulators like that shown by “20/20,” including in active killer scenarios. Suffice to say that although I’m sure as hell not Clint Smith, I can manage to find my way around a handgun.
RIGGED FROM THE GET-GO
To call “20/20’s” scenario rigged would be charitable. Although the show made much of Joey’s Airsoft skills, nobody who knows anything about guns would consider them relevant.
Joey, of course, had no apparent advice on concealment garments or presenting a firearm from concealment, much less practice. Given no training; a full-framed Glock; and a clingy T-shirt to conceal it, the resulting snag was inevitable.
Then, of course, we have the aggressor. Leaving nothing to chance, “20/20” used the students’ firearm instructor, ensuring that he not only had far greater gun handling skills and determination, but also that: (1) He knew someone in the classroom would be armed; and (2) He could even identify him for immediate termination. Throw in the fact that the defender wore a protective mask which greatly reduced peripheral vision, and voila: Dead students.
All of this, of course, was accompanied by dismissive narration describing how the perpetrator would have “simply taken [Joey’s] gun away from him,” or how Danielle, who thought she had hit the attacker in the head had actually hit him “nowhere near the head” (she hit him in the area of the femoral artery, which would have disabled him immediately and quite probably caused death within minutes).
Logical fallacies perpetuated by “20/20” include:
- Armed attackers rarely train with firearms: Cho seung hui, for example, purchased guns only weeks before killing 32 at Virginia Tech. His “training” seems to have primarily comprised taking menacing pictures of himself.
- In “active shooter” scenarios, many victims get warnings: Gun shots ring loud and clear through the halls of campuses and malls. Even if the ABC scenario was accurate, an armed citizen hearing shots from outside the classroom could easily have ambushed the attacker.
- Cops aren’t necessarily better shooters than citizens: I have shot with police officers, and give them plenty of respect. But some are better than others. Many train rarely. Gunfight cases abound in which cops expend dozens of rounds of ammunition, hitting nothing. Police “hit rates” routinely hover around 30%. So blinded by ideology was the “20/20” crew, that the irony of the video they showed of a DEA agent shooting himself in the foot while lecturing school children was lost on them.
THE MYTH OF THE OMNIPOTENT KILLER
“20/20” wants you to believe that active shooters, like the instructors who played the role, are more ruthless and effective than mere armed citizens. But how do experts describe such individuals?
Here are the conclusions of Ron Borsch, a 30-year law enforcement veteran and 17-year SWAT team member who manages the South East Area Law Enforcement Regional Training Academy in Bedford, Ohio.
- Unlike on “20/20,” 98% of active killers act alone;
- Despite heavy armaments and obsession with murder at close range, they have an average hit rate of less than 50%;
- They strike “stunned, defenseless innocents via surprise ambush. On a level playing field, the typical active killer would be a no-contest against anyone reasonably capable of defending themselves.”
- “They absolutely control life and death until they stop at their leisure or are stopped.” They do not take hostages, do not negotiate.
- They generally try to avoid police, do not hide or lie in wait for officers and “typically fold quickly upon armed confrontation.”
- 90% commit suicide on-site. “Surrender or escape attempts are unlikely.”
So how tough are Eric Klebold, Cho seung hui and their ilk? Are they the omnipotent killing machines “20/20” would have you believe? Says Borsch:
“They choose unarmed, defenseless innocents for a reason: They have no wish to encounter someone who can hurt them. They are personally risk- and pain-avoidant. The tracking history of these murderers has proved them to be unlikely to be aggressive with police. If pressed, they are more likely to kill themselves.” In his research, he has found no evidence of any LEO in the U.S. yet being wounded or killed in an active-shooting incident where mass murder was intended or accomplished.
Source: Examiner
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