Armed School personnel common sense vs wacko liberalism, Good guy with gun to stop bad guys, NC news writers opinions, Liberal college education weakens IQ and nation
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.”… Mahatma Gandhi
“Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.”… John F. Kennedy
“Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.”…George Orwell
Below are 2 editorials from newsmen in NC. The first from Tim White of the Fayetteville Observer and the second from John Hammer of the Rhinoceros Times based in Greensboro.
From the Fayetteville Observer December 23, 2012.
“I’m comfortable around guns – although not when they’re in the hands of thugs or idiots. I grew up in a gun family. Shooting is a good, challenging sport. And in a time when break-ins are common – even into occupied homes – it’s hard to fault anyone who wants to keep a gun handy.
I was about 8 years old when I first fired a .22 at a target. About two years later, I got my first gun as a birthday present – a bolt-action Remington .22 that became my regular companion a few years later in my wanderings around the farmland where I grew up.
I added some guns to the inventory as I got older. I grew up in a hunting family, a shooting family, and it was the same way for most of my childhood friends and my many cousins. Guns were part of life, and we spent many an hour comparing muzzle energy and velocities of various ammunition loads.
I got my first concealed-carry permit in my early 20s. I worked long hours, often late at night, and sometimes found myself in pretty unsettling places as I chased stories. I thought I needed the extra protection.
I didn’t.
I was threatened a few times, but nobody ever put a hand on me. Nobody ever flashed a gun at me. Nobody tried to do anything that required me to defend myself.
And then I thought the self-defense thing through. I had no qualms about shooting a bad guy who was trying to cause me harm. But did I have enough training to do it safely – to be certain I would hit only my target and not anyone else?
No. I didn’t.
And getting that training was more than I had time and inclination to do. Proficiency in combat shooting – as the thousands of military veterans around here know well – isn’t something you pick up in your spare time on weekends. It’s a serious, dangerous business that requires regular practice after you learn the basics.
Even well-trained police officers sometimes wound or kill innocent bystanders. Consider, for example, the nine bystanders wounded by two New York cops when they confronted a shooter at the Empire State Building last summer. I can only imagine what the likelihood of that is when the shooter has far less training, experience and regular practice.
That’s why I’m astonished that anyone is serious about arming teachers to prevent another Newtown. Teachers are in the classroom to teach, not to stand guard duty. Knowing that a teacher wouldn’t have the time to keep up his or her professional skills and shooting skills, too, I’d be worried about leaving my child there for the day.
And do we want our schools to become armed camps? I don’t. Friday’s Dana Summers cartoon on the editorial page summed it up – a big, blocky building with barbed wire and guard towers, that looked like a prison but was actually an elementary school.
I may not fear guns, but I do fear what can happen when an inexperienced shooter tries to use one in a crowd. That’s why we’re fools if we think we’ll save lives by allowing people to carry their concealed guns into bars or churches or schools. We’re only increasing the likelihood of innocent people getting shot and killed.
I honor the Second Amendment as much as I do the First. But the freedoms that both confer must be exercised carefully and responsibly.
Perhaps more so with the Second Amendment. If my words miss the target, nobody dies. If my shot in self-defense misses, I may take the life of an innocent man, woman or child – or several of them.
That’s why for the most part, public safety belongs in the hands of professionals.”
http://fayobserver.com/articles/2012/12/23/1225602?sac=fo.opinion
I agree with the following:
“I honor the Second Amendment as much as I do the First. But the freedoms that both confer must be exercised carefully and responsibly.”
Otherwise, unless Mr. White has left part of his message unwritten, most of this article is some of the dumbest stuff I have ever read.
Mr. White, why don’t you ask family members of those killed at Sandy Hook or Norway or any other massacre site where there was no armed resistance to an armed maniac. Do you believe they would have chanced an armed good guy firing at the nut job? I know what my answer is.
Rational people who care about their families have weapons at home and treat them responsibly. So why would anyone send their children to a school where they do not provide the same protection?
From commenter bob strauss today at Citizen Wells.
“San Antonio Theater Shooting
On Sunday December 17, 2012, 2 days after the CT shooting, a man went to a restaurant in San Antonio to kill his X-girlfriend. After he shot her, most of the people in the restaurant fled next door to a theater. The gunman followed them and entered the theater so he could shoot more people. He started shooting and people in the theater started running and screaming. It’s like the Aurora, CO theater story plus a restaurant!
Now aren’t you wondering why this isn’t a lead story in the national media along with the school shooting?
There was an off duty county deputy at the theater. SHE pulled out her gun and shot the man 4 times before he had a chance to kill anyone. So since this story makes the point that the best thing to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun, the media is treating it like it never happened.
Only the local media covered it. The city is giving her a medal next week.”
From John Hammer of the Rhino Times December 27, 2012.
“A lot of folks who are not gun control nuts are talking about the need for gun control following the horrific killings at Sandy Hook. If you fall into that camp, please don’t fall into the “ban assault weapons” camp. The term assault weapon was invented by the Clinton administration for a ban that was in place from 1994 to 2004. Go ahead and look it up and see if there was a great drop-off in people being shot during that time. Or you can believe me when I say I can’t find one.
Also, during the ban on assault weapons, to make us all safer was the Columbine shooting.
The ban on assault weapons was a typical Clinton action that had much more to do with form than function. The Clinton administration got to define assault weapon, since it is not a real term. They defined an assault weapon as a weapon that had characteristics that made it look like a military assault rifle. So an assault weapon is defined by how it looks not what it does.
If a semi-automatic rifle had a detachable magazine and any two of the following characteristics it was banned – a folding or telescopic stock, a flash suppressor or barrel that can accommodate a flash suppressor, a pistol grip, bayonet mount or grenade launcher.
During that ban a fellow newspaper publisher showed me a gun he had recently bought and pointed to a threaded hole in the side of the gun and said, “If I put a bolt in that hole, possessing this gun is a felony.” During the ban on assault weapons, I think a bolt would have been considered a bayonet mount or one of the other illegal features. It had nothing to do with how the gun operated, but simply how it looked.
Assault weapons are very popular with hunters and gun enthusiasts because they are light, accurate and dependable.”
Read more:
http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/Articles-Under-the-Hammer-c-2012-12-24-214291.112113-Under-the-Hammer.html
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