Category: Guns

Chief Tango sends us a link from the Washington Post columnist, Colbert King who wants to cuddle up to the Jeff Bezos party line at the Post by explaining to us who he won’t get his concealed carry permit from the District of Columbia after the latest round of bouts in the courts dismantled the District’s anti-gun owner restrictions.

While my own weapon is trigger-locked with the key out of reach, I don’t particularly like myself when I have a gun on my hip.

Recalling my experience years ago when I was pressed into service to help protect a foreign leader attending a U.N. General Assembly session and making an official visit to Washington, I back off the idea of carrying a lethal weapon.

I liked the experience way too much.

I loved the weight of the weapon on my hip, the glances I got from the people on the streets, in the hotels and at receptions who noticed the gun when my jacket slid open.

I liked too much the feeling of empowerment, and the what? — the itchiness to show off, to be seen taking on possible threats. Just spoiling for a challenge.

Back then, the lure of coming off macho was in my head.

It could be with me now.

Actually, I agree with King’s reasons to not carry a gun – particularly if he’s going to be a big pussy and emote all over the internet about it. His only gun is a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle, for crying out loud. He’s so afraid of the pea-shooter that he keeps a trigger lock on it and hides the key from himself.

If he was “spoiling for a challenge” while he wore a handgun on his hip, he’s too immature to be carrying a gun.

I wear a gun every time I leave the house, and I don’t even think about it. My jacket has never “slid open” in public – it’s a concealed weapon. I’m planning to get a permit in DC because I’m buying a business in the District, and King is correct – there are too many illegal guns there in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. I’m very happy that Mr King won’t be one of them.

According to ABC13 a nineteen year-old student shot and killed a Texas Tech University police officer late last night;

University spokesman Chris Cook said that campus police made a student welfare check Monday evening and – upon entering the room – found evidence of drugs and drug paraphernalia. Officers then brought the suspect to the police station for standard debriefing.

While at the station, Cook said the suspect pulled out a gun and shot an officer in the head, killing him. The suspect then fled on foot before being apprehended a short time later.

Before gun-control advocates blame this crime on Texas’ new laws allowing students to be armed on campus, we should probably look at the law first, something gun control fascists won’t bother to do before they start shooting off their mouths.

First, the law only grants that privilege to students older than 21 years if they have a state license, unless they are in the military. The youngster in Texas Tech was only 19, so he shouldn’t have had a gun.

Students are not allowed to keep the guns in their rooms – another violation for this student. But then, they’re not allowed to have drugs and drug paraphernalia in their rooms either – criminals don’t follow the rules, that’s why we call them criminals.

The officer still should have patted the student down for firearms, something he apparently neglected to do in this case.

Our prayers go out to his family and his fellow officers.

ADDED: Like I said;

As news of the shooting was breaking late Monday, the Texas Democrats’ Twitter account posted, “Allowing concealed guns on college campuses was a dumb and dangerous idea.”

[…]

Texas Democratic Party Deputy Executive Director Manny Garcia said in a statement Tuesday that “our words were inadequate, hurried and we apologize,” adding that the tweet has been removed.

National hero, Jonathon Pring, decided to turn in his guns to the Phoenix Police Department in order to “do something” in regards to the horrendous mass shooting in Las Vegas, according to the Arizona Central;

“Who doesn’t love Las Vegas?” Pring said. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I was watching news and on Facebook and seeing lots of different posts … and I was just mad … I thought, ‘You know what, I’m going to do something.’ ”

Pring said he called Phoenix police and asked them to come and pick up his guns. He could tell the two police officers who arrived were “anxious” about entering the home of someone who declared having guns.

From Phoenix’ Fox 10;

Pring said he could have pawned the guns and collect a few thousand dollars. Instead, Pring said he wanted to do the right thing.

“We can do something about the guns, we can just get rid of them, it’s that easy,” said Pring.

He went on to tell any literate evildoers that he intends to fight them off with a baseball bat.

“If I have a break-in at my house, I’ll hit him with a baseball bat,” said Pring. “I’m not afraid. I don’t need a gun to be a man.”

That’ll look nice on his tombstone.

It’s a free country and we’re all able to do what we want – but this is grandstanding over a serious issue. I hope Pring survives his little display of theatrics, but it’s Phoenix.

Another modified Ruger 10/22 is off the streets;

Unless Pring had been planning a mass shooting, he really didn’t do anything except make himself a target.

Somehow an opinion piece from Leah Libresco made it into the pages of the Washington Post. It was entitled; I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise. Libresco used to write for the Huffington Post but apparently, she’s had a conversion;

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

She talks about her revelation that 66% of gun deaths in the country were suicides and 20% were gang-related or the result of street violence – young men killed by other young men.

And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.

After looking at the actual crime statistics, she found that proposed gun control laws weren’t targeted at the actual gun violence. I could have told her that without the math, but at least she looked at the causes of gun violence without the typical hysterical emotion of the Brady crowd and the Giffords bunch.

When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.

As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.

So, Ms Libresco’s solution to gun violence is a more focused look at the causes, rather then the more popular emotional knee-jerk reactions to feelings;

I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protections.

Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.

As always with articles in the Post that actually make sense, you should stay out of the comments, most Post readers can’t summon the intestinal fortitude to read past the headline and their comments reflect it.