Representative Peter King's solution to the Arizona massacre is to ban arms for 1000 feet of lawmakers. This assures the only armed persons within 1/5th of a mile will be assassins who surely will bring a knife or ice pick since guns are illegal. Is he that big of an idiot or just thinks his constituents are? If they continue to re-elect him, they are, and truly represented by one of their own.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) seeks to restrict sales of high-capacity ammunition clips like the one Loughner allegedly used in his attack. To work around this, assassins can simply bring two automatics with 15-round clips rather than one with a 30-round clips. Apparently Rep. McCarthy is another faithful representative of the New York electorate, and an fine example offsetting the oft-heard charge that Congress is out of touch with their constituents.
Not that the Constitution means much to those in Congress, judging that they act as if were mere literature if it exists at all, but one asks which part of "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" do they not understand?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the two tacklers in Tucson was carrying. The young person who apprehended the shooter ran towards the shooting. He exited Safeway confident that he could meet force with force, if needed, to find the shooter had been tackled by an elderly person that would have soon been overpowered had help not arrived. If he had not been carrying, would he have gone towards the shooting, or would the 22-year-old shooter overpowered the elderly person, reloaded and continued killing? Care to bet your life or your loved ones on that answer?
In 1991, in Luby's Cafeteria, Suzanna Hupp was not carrying because, as required by law, she left her handgun in her truck. The shooter drove into the cafeteria, killed 22 and wounded 20 more before police arrived and moved the shooter to suicide. Two of the people lost that day were Ms. Hupp's parents. She ran for the Texas Legislature and got the law forbidding concealed carry overturned. Care to talk to her about stricter gun laws?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Gun is Civilization
by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.
People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.
The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
By Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
