On Dec 18, 8:13 am, Bruce L. Bergman
wrote:
On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:37:40 -0800 (PST), wrote:
On Dec 18, 6:50 am, Don Foreman wrote:
On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 04:22:03 -0800 (PST), wrote:
On Dec 10, 5:05 pm, "SteveB" wrote:
I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve

OK. I will probably regret the flames I get BUT

Are you saying that the populace needs to be armed when they go out to
get a bottle of milk, lest they encounter a "bad guy" and need to
defend themselves?

Not the entire population, just a non-zero fraction of them. And a
policeman or security guard still counts, if they are allowed to carry
their weapon legally while off duty and doing their grocery shopping.

If there are 50 people in the grocery store when a criminal decides
to conduct a robbery, it only takes one armed and pro-active citizen
to stop it. Two or three would be a bonus, in case the perp tries to
fight back.

And it can't hurt if an un-armed yet alert and aware citizen takes
other active steps available to them, like hanging back in the shadows
or duck into the back room for cover, and quietly call the police on a
mobile phone. Get them rolling, and get the dispatcher a full and
accurate description of the criminal(s) and what's going on.

What if the "bad guy" gets the drop on you, and kills you. Is it YOUR
fault as you were not quick enough to "defend" yourself? (seems to be
a common thread by some here...)

Some people simply don't have the temperament to pull that trigger
in an emergency, and they should not be carrying a weapon - those are
the ones who could be overpowered before they got the nerve to fire,
and their own weapon be used against them.

Do you want to be in a combat ready state of paranoia when you leave
your house?

No, and I'm not in a 'combat ready' state like that - but armed or
not, you have to be at a slightly elevated state at all times when out
in public, aware of your surroundings and what's going on in the world
around you. Keeping proper Situation Awareness is the best way to not
get in trouble like that in the first place.

not perfectly what I want, but adequate:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation_awareness

It's that feeling of "It's quiet - TOO quiet..." or "Someone's
watching me..." When that feeling triggers, /then/ you notch your
alert level up higher and find out why. Might well be nothing at all,
but you need to find out.





Are you happy living in a society where such things see to be a
frequent occurrence?

How come you Yanks are so obsessed with guns?

The vast majority of us aren't. A few that are make a great deal of
noise. About half the households in MN have at least one gun,
percentages are higher in rural areas. You never hear a peep about it
from most of those folks who enjoy hunting or shooting sports. Only 1%
to 2% of the population of MN have carry permits, and most of those I
know that have them don't carry routinely.

Your otherwise decent people - what gives with this gun nuttiness?

Sensational media to sell TV time and paper is part of it. People
aren't afraid of bridges, even though many are injured when one
collapses. Far more are killed by drunk drivers than by guns every
year, but that doesn't make good ink. And so on.

Television News Rule #1: If it bleeds, it leads.

And if you are the anti-gun lobby you pick the nastiest possible
incidents to push your agenda. There are many sympathetic news
reporters eager to help you push thee "Guns Are Bad" agenda. You will
note that the media does not point out all the times that an armed
citizen stopped an incident cold in it's tracks.

They don't report on all the times when a crook brandishes a weapon
at the store clerk and announces "This is a Robbery!!" And a citizen
in line behind him quietly screws a 9MM into the crook's left ear and
firmly and calmly says "No, it isn't..." and he's right. Crook drops
his weapon.

They don't report on all the times where there are criminals openly
stalking a pedestrian or disabled motorist like hyenas circling their
prey - and said potential victim chooses to expose the fact that they
are armed, whereupon the perps magically evaporate.

The power of "Acute Lead Poisoning"...

Thank you, Don, for your courteous reply. I think I have figured it
out, - for whatever reasons, you Americans have a country thats awash
with firearms, and so there are going to be incidents that would
probably horrify you people as much as they do me. The gun advocates
response to this is to counter force with force, and from that point
of view, it makes perfect sense.

It's not "awash", just the figure is non-zero. Big difference.

And I wasn't aware of the stats either - I had imagined that most of
you were able to carry concealed weapons rather than the 2% quoted.
And that was a terrifying prospect. The media again, I guess.

There are some cities or counties that make it very difficult (or
impossible for all practical purposes) to get a Concealed Carry Weapon
permit - and those also tend to be the higher crime areas, with much
higher assault rates against the disarmed (by local law) populace...

It's easy to chart the correlation.

City of Los Angeles has a 6-Million population, and under 100 CCW
permits. And if you don't have a LOT of political pull, you aren't
one of them.

Probably why a lot of people working as bodyguards and security live
in rural counties where the permits are issued much more readily, and
commute into L.A. for work purposes.

Celebrities like Rosie O'Donnell rail against the evils of guns -
and then they employ armed bodyguards. Hypocrisy, anyone?

You've let the genie out of the bottle - you cant get rid of the guns,
you cope with it as best you can. And, as you say, the massacres get
the news - because their horrible. It does seem to happen several
times a year at least - I don't know of any other Western country
where it does.

With, I can recall, only 4 exceptions in our 200 year history, we
don't have the same problems here, because we don't have a history of
a gun culture like you guys do.

No, you (The UKoGBaNI) have a history of serfdom and fealty to the
Monarchy and a caste system of lords and barons.

We (The US) tossed that whole mindset straight out the window and
colonized untamed lands, where a large portion of the population
needed to be totally self-sufficient. Including self-defense.

Mountain lions, black bears and grizzly bears, wolverines, buffalo,
poisonous snakes. Not to mention bandits and cattle rustlers. And
the nearest law enforcement weeks away if you can find them at all -
some places one person for thousands of square miles...

My reaction was horror, that you people are living in this horrible
situation where gun massacres seem all too commonplace. My
commiserations on your tragic loss of life - and if it was simple to
fix, it would have been done by now. As as evidenced by the number of
posts on this topic, most people have some sort of solution. I dont.

You have massacres too, just not on the same scale. Look at the
terror bombing incidents around London - Not on the same scale as WTC,
but a whole lot more of them, and in the aggregate just as deadly.

(I await a Gunner RANT of obscure internet references to prove me
totally wrong - his last references to seatbelts, smoke alarm
batteries, spare tyres was MAGNIFICENT in its intellectual rigor and
subject relevance..Please Gunner, speak, I beseech thee, that I might
learn from one so...........)

No fire breathing rants from here today, but some reasoning. No
matter how "civilized" any country becomes (or likes to delude
themselves and THINK they are...), the police cannot be everywhere and
pro-actively protect everyone - by their mandate they can only react
after the event.

The UKoGBaNI tried to foster the fiction of "we're so civilized that
even our Bobbies don't need to be armed." Well, that actually worked
for quite a while, but the wheels have fallen off that cart with a
resounding crash...

Some US citizens choose to take active steps where they can take
matters into their own hands, and have the ability to either stop the
event in the process, or proactively stop it in the formative stages.

If the criminal is armed, often the only way to counter that is to
be armed yourself - "Never take a knife to a gunfight."

You can't effectively counter a ranged weapon like a gun with a
close-combat weapon like a knife or fists, they have the advantage of
"reach" that you don't. It's possible to talk or fight your way out
of a bad incident, but it's not the preferred method and your odds of
failure are vastly increased.

And if the criminal knows that some of the populace that he may
choose to assault may themselves be armed and able to protect their
interests, and the odds of a bad outcome (criminal ending up dead) are
high, he'll go find another line of work that isn't as hazardous.

The ones that don't have the smarts to figure that one out usually
end up dead, or in jail for the majority of their lives.

-- Bruce --- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Great post Bruce.

The present situation in England of "slashers" points-up
the differences between our countries.

As all know, the rate of personal violence in England
(not including homicides) is about 3 times the rate in
the U.S. I'm not sure, but I feel the English have be-
come more or less inured to a situation citizens in
the U.S. would find totally unacceptable. In the U.S.
citizens believe they have a right to protect themselves
and their families; in England citizens depend on
their government (as they have for centuries).
I would depict the English (and in fact many others)
as counting on, what I call, "The Sardine Factor."

Anyone familiar with TV nature programs may have
seen shows depicting the method sardines use to
survive in the presence of sharks and other predators:
The school forms into a ball and allows the predators
to consume the members near the outer edge. I
imagine, if sardines could talk, they'd be saying "I
hope it's not me, I hope it's not me" while watching
as other members are killed and eaten. This _is_
the reality of life when the government won't allow
you the means to defend yourself.

In the U.S. some of us feel it's ok to have teeth instead
of waiting passively for our turn to be eaten. Anything
else would be ludicrous. And yet folks in England
and many other countries think this is the correct
way to live. How they've been duped into believing
theirs is the correct way to live baffles me, but I know
I, and many other citizens of the United States believe
this is not the way for free people to live; and we're in
no hurry to change.

To all our friends in England: I hope your turn doesn't
come-up any time soon. Try to get near the center of
the ball.

dennis
in nca