17 December 2012 John Wayne to the rescue

“I've been reading a bit about armed citizens intervening in mass shootings. A lot of people have said in recent days, "If only an armed citizen nearby had a gun, nobody would have been killed. The problem is not too many guns; it's too few." 

Well, I decided to see what I could find. I can't find ANY cases where a private citizen (not a police officer and not a trained, professional security guard) intervened and prevented a shooting in progress.

I found a couple cases where armed citizens apprehended and subdued a shooter after the shooting spree was over. I also found two cases (one at a shopping mall in Washington and one in a courthouse in Texas) where armed citizens confronted a gunman and wound up getting shot themselves - one guy got killed, and one was comatose for a while but later recovered. Though it technically falls outside the "citizens" criterion, I also found a case where police officers in New York confronted a gunman in the middle of a shooting and wound up wounding an additional nine innocent bystanders. 

I did find a couple church shootings stopped by security guards, including the well-known New Life Church shooting where a security guard (and former police officer) wounded a gunman who then shot himself.

All in all, the score is lousy at best. When an armed citizen confronts a gunman, it actually appears more common that the gunman wins. So at this point, we've got 300 million privately-owned guns in a country of 314 million citizens, and more gun stores in America than there are Starbucks coffee shops in the entire world. If the score is still that lousy with this many guns, how many more do we need before these armed citizen interventions actually work???

In summary, it's an easy fantasy to say "if we had a few more guns around at Sandy Hook, none of this would have ever happend." But in the real world, the facts are a lot more messy.

-Brian Dunigan”

Cassi Creek:  I’m sure that uploading Brian’s piece will initiate another chapter of the NRA orchestrated grand chorus, “They’re coming for your guns!  “Buy more guns to protect yourself from the government that wants to take away you freedoms, your religion, and your 2^nd amendment rights.”

            Honestly, I’m very tired of hearing those bits of propaganda.  “They” aren’t coming for your guns.  Limiting the number of guns one person may buy in one day may be annoying, but so is finding the grocery store out of your favorite bread.   There is no logical reason for any private citizen to own a machine gun or assault rifles to protect their selves from societal collapse/end of the world.  Those myths are just that, myths.  If someone is so frightened of the future that they build an underground bunker, stock it with freeze-dried food and all the latest survivalist toys, they may as well go ahead and move into the bunker; then close and bolt the door.  That freeze-dried shit is just that, No matter how much food they store, some will spoil due to age and the rest will become so boring that it becomes a chore to choke it down.  If society degrades that much, someone will remember, where their bunker is, find the air intake, and gas them all in order to take over the bunker.  All their hoarded bullets and guns will be of no benefit. 

            So the segment of the populace that wishes to take their guns and migrate to a place populated by “real patriots” should be encouraged to move to Texas.  It won’t become a self-regulating nation as is predicted in the survivalist novels.  It will become anarchy until it depopulates itself in an immense blazing gun battle that erupts when half the population insults the other half about caliber, bullet weight, or some other earth-shattering topic. 

            Then, perhaps it will become safe enough for the people who realize that John Wayne was only an actor , shooting blanks  and throwing punches in a carefully scripted performance, to let their children live normal lives again.