great read......

[dogdinger]

this is a letter to the editor in my local paper yesterday.....great read.....AJ

Define roles of 'first responders'
Dear Editor:

My warmest and richest thanks and admiration for publishing the guest opinion titled, "Good Citizens and Guns," April 17.

I never in my lifetime expected to see writing of this quality on this topic in any daily paper in America. Never. You amazed me.

I'd like to add to the article by defining two relevant mindsets. These are "first responder" and "second responder" and involve a correct understanding of what they are.

Invariably, the public considers law enforcement officers or other emergency personnel as first responders. We believe that and are programmed to await their arrive. This error in thinking is, quite literally, dead wrong.

One proper first response to lethal criminal behavior may be for a trained person to use a legally carried weapon to stop a valid threat. It is far more common for a criminal to flee on seeing his victim is armed than for an armed victim to actually fire a weapon.

Yet the usual first response remains that the victim surrenders his or her safety and future to the "mercies" of a potential killer

When seconds count, a law enforcement officer is only minutes away. We saw that again as 32 people died at Virginia Tech.

Law enforcement officers staged their "second response" as the killing proceeded.

A similar second response was filmed outside Columbine, yet action by trained first responders (ie: victims) are considered vigilantism by the sheepish.

If absolute and authoritative control and "zoning" of weapons is so effective, why are prisons so dangerous? No gun-grabbing law has ever stopped so much as one crime. Not one, not anywhere.

Watch this chilling surveillance video .

It's difficult, but in it you see a father realize that a first response is his to make and his alone. What seems to be an alarm in the background hasn't had the desired effect.

True first responders to assaults in every single instance are either the guy in this video or they are armed and ready or they are ditzy and dead. Any response by a victim is the real first response.

The sooner we correct our misguided assumptions about the dream of rescue, the sooner fewer families will miss a loved one and the sooner recidivistic career criminals might start figuring it out.

Law enforcement officers and other second responders are priceless in the functions they perform so well. They take over and handle things once on scene. But until that time, you'd best be ready to mount an effective response in your own private moment of dire and desperate need.

First response. Second response. These are critical mindsets and an ingrained understanding of them will determine what action is taken by whom and when. That can keep you alive when you and you alone are there to respond

Robert E. Gleason, Salida

[dogdinger]

this is the article that prompted the letter....


Good citizens and guns
Guest Opinion

by Don B. Kates

Wednesday marked one year since the massacre at Virginia Tech by mentally disturbed student Seung-Hui Cho.

Last week the university offered anguished parents a settlement of $100,000 per murdered child. There are three things wrong with this.

First, even in financial terms, it is hopelessly inadequate to redress the deaths of these talented young people. Second, it does nothing to correct the useless, symbolic policy which facilitated their deaths. Third, if you don't think the policy is wrong, Virginia Tech has no liability for the deaths it facilitated.

That policy is the "gun-free zone." Even if the victims had possessed permits to carry guns, Virginia Tech forbade them to have that means of self-defense while on campus.

That ensured only the killer - who, of course, violated the "gun-free zone" policy just as he violated the laws against murder - and uniformed police would have guns.

Obviously the university could not afford to station officers in every lecture hall. Yet nothing less would substitute for the victims themselves having had the power to stop the massacre.

Israel has a better alternative. Decades ago, Palestinian terrorism was being directed at schools. Yasser Arafat calculated small children can't shoot back, and killing them was the best way to terrify parents into fleeing Israel.

Israel's response? They armed school teachers and school bus drivers. Now, even suicide terrorists don't attack schools - lest they be shot down before they can reach their helpless victims.

Thousands of civilians are armed all across Israel, as the following incidents illustrate.

• Shavei Shomron - a Palestinian shot into a kindergarten, but did not dare to enter. Next he attacked neighboring buildings where he was killed by a civilian gun owner.

• Bethlehem - A terrorist threw one bomb into a supermarket, but was prevented from throwing another when a shopper shot him in the head with a gun from her purse.

• Tel Aviv - William Hazan, his wife, and some friends were eating in a restaurant when a terrorist began machine-gunning the establishment. Ducking under a table, Hazan killed the terrorist with a pistol he had carried for years.

Such incidents are numerous not only in Israel but in the U.S. Last December, a woman parishioner shot and killed a gunman who had just slaughtered four unarmed people in a crowded Colorado church complex.

Three separate school massacres have been ended when good citizens violated school "gun-free zone" policies by rushing to their cars for guns with which they were then able to arrest the perpetrators. Except for those policies, they might have been carrying their guns and the massacres could have been ended earlier - and with fewer deaths.

Since 1980, the majority of states have adopted laws under which 5 million law-abiding responsible adults have gun-carry permits. Contrary to dire predictions, permit-holders have not abused the privilege - and murders and other violent crimes have been sharply reduced.

Everyone opposes violent crime, except the perpetrators. "Gun-free zone" policies which disarm everyone, except the perpetrators, assist murder rather than precluding it.

Universities and businesses who facilitate murder by imposing such empty symbolism should be held strictly liable for the killings those policies assist.

Don B. Kates is a criminologist and a research fellow with the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.

[royinidaho]

Good posts......

They got me thinking a little more than usual.....

Several weeks ago Local Law Enforcement held a public meeting at our local high school where local gang activity was the topic. It seems that gangs are increasing in activity especially from within the local Indian Reservation.

Most happens in town as there isn't much fun to be had out here in the couty as several neighbors and myself shoot in the back yard (200 to 1K distances) at least weekly.

However, the 9mms are locked in the safe and all I usually carry is the the piece of plastic that says I can carry. That seems kind of dumb, doesn't it?

[James Jones]

I'm a firm believer that every able bodied man should be a commissioned officer of the local department. This does several things for you , it allows you to carry your side arm in ALL 50 states (except DC) , you WILL be treated differantly than the average citizen with a CWP if (god forbid) you do have to shoot sombody , you will likely be required to ride at least one shift a month though but this allows you to get better framiliar with your area and its people.

I carry everywhere that the law says an off duty officer is allowed , my kids soccer games , the mall , church , the gym , everywhere and people never understand why a 6'3" 280lb man that is a competive power lifter and will be competeing in body building this year and is also a martial arts instructor carries a gun , its simple "Never bring a knife to a gun fight !!".
When my wife and I first started dating , it scared her that i carried a gun and she thought I was nuts for insisting on things like where we sit in a restraunt and what direction I face , that I constantly analize my surrounding and what and who is going on around me , after a little while of explaining that I wasen't looking for trouble but looking to avoid it and her watching the steady decline of socitey around us she now relizes that what i'm doing is completely understandable and doesen't know why everybody doesn't think about it. We go to dinner with some of her coworkers at least once a week and when we first started this they asked her "why does he go to the restroom every time we go in someplace" my answer would have been to wash my hands but she explained that I make a qucik pass through the restraunt and evaluate the layout , they thought I was crazy and after running a few situations by them they now fully understand why and three of them are now lifetime NRA members and registered carriers , all of them have asked me for some basic self defense training.
If you have the right to carry a gun you had better be damn sure that you will use it if its called upon , in most cases simply drawing down on sombody will bring the situation into your control but the instant you relize that your attacker is not either going to run away or submit you better have the mental focus to shoot , if you have to think about it your chances of survival have gone down dramaticaly !!! You must also remember that if your packing that makes every confrontation you get into an armed one weather its bitching out the buggy boy at the market for hitting your car with a shopping cart or some crazed jack off thats mad you diden't use your blinker and has now followed you to a parking lot looking for a fight.
At the same time you must relize that the public isin't going to look at you as protecting your life but as sombody that just killed another human and after the media gets involved its gonna get worse , its going to be very hard for you defend yourself in court against a lawyer thats hell bent on making you look like a cold blooded killer , their will be a spin put on the events that make the road raged butt hole look like a lamb that you ran down and slaughtered even though he followed you !!. here is another damn go reason to be a commisioned officer , as you will be looked at in a totaly differant light than the average joe.
some of you will likely look at me now as sombody thats looking for trouble and thats fine because you just don't understand. I have gotten into WAY to many phyiscal confrontations and thats because the instant that i think a situation can get physical , I make sure that its gonna end up going my way. I don't go around looking for trouble but rather watching for it , I will avoid it if at all possible but I will not turn my back on an aggressor and they are looking for a fight i'm willing to give them more than they can stand and thats my god given right as well as my legal right to protect myself.