If you choose not to own firearms, I ask you to consider your willingness to call people with firearms to come to your rescue if you find your life or limb in jeopardy (“hello 911, please send help, there’s an intruder in my home!”). This is – to me – a classic case of personal disempowerment, where we refuse to participate in our own defense but request or even demand that others protect us. If you find the idea of armament repugnant, I ask you to consider how much of your peaceful, affluent, and creative lifestyle is afforded by the willingness of others to take up arms on your behalf. Consider what your life here at home might be like if we suddenly left ourselves and our nation defenseless.
Daniel Vitalis
January 31, 2013
On Gun Control
[There is a lot more good stuff where this came from.—Joe]
“Consider what your life here at home might be like if we suddenly left ourselves and our nation defenseless.”
Of course there are a few people so detached from reality that they would shout “Free at last, Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” at the prospect, right before we were over-run and enslaved. Jimmy Carter seemed to think this way, when he blamed the U.S./USSR tensions on America’s military capability, calling it “belligerence”. I’ve heard more than a few arguments from individuals who believe that individual readiness and willingness to use force in self defense is the very reason why criminals act violently, and more than a few anti-gun advocates who refer to gun ownership as “provocation”.
Written like someone who lives out in the boonies.
Picture this: You live in downtown Manhattan in a shoebox size apartment on the 8th floor of a 20 story building. You have neighbors who live above, below and on all four sides of you, in similar shoebox sized apartments. Your apartment walls are so thin you can hear your neighbor when he clears his throat. Your building is the type that the police won’t even use firearms in, unless it’s a last resort.
Would the author give this hypothetical “you” the same advice?
Yes, of course.
Indeed. For two reasons.
One, most defensive use of a firearm does not involve firing it at all. So a person who possesses a gun is safer than one who does, even if the walls are paper thin.
Two, you can choose loads that minimize the risk of damage to innocent bystanders. While the NYPD may not understand that, others do. I’m not much up on this (it’s not particularly relevant to my situation) but, for example, a “Judge” revolver loaded with .410 birdshot will definitely give an attacker pause, but probably isn’t likely to cause serious injury to anyone beyond a wall.
The birdshot is a good idea.
Birdshot is a *terrible* idea, unless you’re being attacked by… wait for it… … … *BIRDS*.
Where I live, the odds of finding an intruder in my home or being attacked by birds are probably about the same — pretty darn low.
And the last time I looked up your IP address it was in a small town in a gun friendly state.
Was that in error?
Totally in error! I live in one of the cities that makes up the Los Angeles metropolitan region.
I live in one of the cities on this list:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2014/02/09/these-are-the-10-safest-mid-sized-cities-in-americ/
And Paul, now that ubu’s brought it up: the only worse idea than using *birdshot* as a self-defense round is using the little bit of birdshot that fits into a .410 hull.
Please go look at the Box’o’Truth posts on the ineffectiveness of using tiny-diameter shot as a self-defense round.
Paul,
Yeah, but maybe we’d be better off to focus on the “unless it’s a last resort” part, and ubu’s touching belief that that’s how today’s police forces operate. From coast to coast, from NYPD missing and injuring bystanders who are protected from their intended target by even-thinner-than-paper-thin air on the sidewalk, to the LA area cops who shot up the ladies who committed the crime of driving a pickup truck, at a time when a crazed killer happened to be driving a pickup truck somewhere in the same 50-mile radius, to the too-numerous-to-mention SWAT and pet-killing abuses chronicled by Radley Balko…
…
…
let’s just say I’m significantly more trusting of my random neighbors and their gun-handling these days than I am of the typical big-city police departments.
And if your neighbors miss, you can sue them (and collect) millions of dollars — right?
Huh?
Damn right; none of my neighbors has that magical “sovereign immunity” stuff that law enforcement somehow gets blessed with.
Yep, Ubu misses the irony of this post. She doesn’t want private citizens armed, but what does she propose?
Your NYC scenario has three solutions:
One: Be at the mercy of those who have none to give.
Two: Call the cops, and deal with scenario #1 until they arrive, and let them hose down any innocent person in the way of their poor aim, with no legal recourse.
Three: Protect yourself.
They all pose risk, but ONE has a good chance of a positive outcome.
Please ubu52, lie there and think of England during your rape and possible murder. For me, I will choose the appropriate load for my shotgun and carefully aim with my red dot sight and will hopefully have steady nerves from my substantial practice so I’ll likely live to see tomorrow. For you ubu52, it is more likely a chalk outline for where you expired. I really can’t wrap my head around people who have so fully divorced themselves of the self-preservation instinct.
If I do miss, there is a lawyer attached to every bullet/pellet, so you know I will take extreme care. I doubt the gang-banger/crackhead invading will be so considerate of the neighbors.
Good point, in “Utopias” that Ubu has so much love, the criminals don’t care and you run a risk of getting shot as your neighbor is being murdered.
In places where the residents are known to be robbed her scenario is less likely to happen in the first place.
Can’t argue with facts…and Ubu won’t.
” Your building is the type that the police won’t even use firearms in, unless it’s a last resort. ”
As opposed to people in “the boonies” who don’t use firearms as a last resort. And recommend just shooting through the door. Oh wait, that’s the Vice President.
Hey Ubu, your bigotyry is showing.
Also I’m worried by your taccit approval of the police using lethal force as something *other* than a “last resort”.
“Your building is the type that the police won’t even use firearms in, unless it’s a last resort.”
Personally, I would prefer it to be the case that “using firearms” is *always* a “last resort” for police. Most *especially* for police.
http://gigacrete.com/ballisticrete/
You could just pay to have your apartment retrofitted with this type of drywall – providing ballistic protection against common handgun and rifle rounds.
Ubu — Police procedures on use of lethal force do not change just because they are inside an apartment building.
Secondly, with appropriate weapon and ammo selection (and no, I DO NOT mean $3 a round exotics, or Old Wives Tale advice like “use birdshot” — I’m talking readily available, off the shelf modern defensive stuff that is generally speaking the same stuff you’d use even if you weren’t worried about “overpenetration”), the risk to your neighbors is infintesimally small, even if you miss your target with one or more rounds. (If your defensive ammo HITS the target, even if it exits, the risk to your neighbors is significantly reduced even under that baseline, due to the armor protection known as “meat” it had to get through before even hitting the wall.) The risks to your neighbor FROM THE THREAT are greater than the risks that they will be hit by a missed shot.
Even so, the EVIDENCE (especially in NYC) is that your neighbors are at a lower risk of being hit by YOUR defensive fire than they would if the POLICE were the ones shooting. Even factoring in all the _completely_untrained_ people, civilian defensive shooters simply shoot fewer innocent people than police officers. That’s true both in absolute numbers AND as a ratio of shooting incidents.
Hell, NYPD actually shoots MORE innocent people than it does criminal suspects!
Ubu, I don’t understand your statement. Are you claiming that you only have the right to defend your life when you live out in the “boonies”? That, by choosing to live in crowded apartments, you forfeit your right to self defense? And that civil unrest only happens in the “boonies”?
I’ve lived in Utah for most of my life. While it’s not the crowded “paradise” that New York, Chicago, or LA might be, the Provo/Salt Lake/Ogden metro areas aren’t exactly “one farmhouse per square mile” regions, either. Yet we have “shall-issue” concealed carry, and we are also a relatively safe State to live in.
Having said that, you mentioned that you live in a nice, safe neighborhood in LA somewhere. I’m happy that you live in a place where you don’t have to worry too much about criminal elements of society. As for myself, I have not had that luxery: between living in Albany and Troy in New York State, and a couple of rough neighborhoods in Provo and Salt Lake, and even a few rough places in Great Britain, I have not always had that luxury myself.
Granted, the rough neighborhoods in New York and Great Britain were scarier than the ones in Utah…but that might just be a reflection on the strictness of the gun laws. And, no, the irony is not lost on me!
Frankly, when I look back on all my travels, all the places I have traveled through as well as the places I have lived in, I find it interesting that the scariest places were also the places that had stringent gun laws. I would be willing to trade a little bit of risk that a bullet won’t stop in the wall that separates me from my neighbor if they had to shoot someone in self defense, for an overall safer neighborhood.
Good stuff, but note Jeffrey Snyder got their first in his essay “A Nation of Cowards”, published more than two decades ago.
Yes, it’s useful to have universal truths like these repeated, and in other words, because not everyone has heard them (v. ubu52 above), but let’s recognize the forerunners, too.
I don’t live in an apartment, but my neighbors all around me keep guns. Regular wood frame house walls are VERY transparent to small arms fire. I practically never think about my neighbors owning guns, but when I do it makes me glad. I makes it a safer place to live.
Once again, ubu hoists a straw man and beats the stuffing out of it. I’m not sure what that proves, but it isn’t anything good.
It proves that it’s good not to be a straw man.
Also note that Ubu’s example is NYC.
Where there IS civilian carry.
However, the NYPD only extends it to the select view.
That’s one of the more telling things about the antis. The ease and comfort they have with making faustian bargians of “Well, I don’t like people being armed, but to get from here to there I’ll support letting the rich and the cops be heavilly armed. At least tehn the proles won’t have guns.”
Pingback: Thursday News Links | Shall Not Be Questioned