Quote of the day—Michael Z. Williamson

Once again, we have a high profile shooting, and once again, the hysteria is out in force.

Let’s start with some facts:  If you don’t shoot, or have only occasionally shot on a range, then your opinion on how useful an armed respondent would be is garbage.  If you don’t drive a car, you aren’t qualified to tell professional drivers what they should have done in an accident.

Seriously, shut up, you’re an idiot.

Michael Z. Williamson
June 15, 2016
After An Attack: Understanding the Fear
[He continues with an enumeration and examination of the possible outcomes. It’s a very clear and logical analysis which demonstrates there is significant chance of a big upside and very little, if any, chance of a downside to people having guns to defend themselves in a mass shooting situation.—Joe]

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12 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Michael Z. Williamson

  1. I don’t care for the opening “facts”. It feels elitist. It seems to say that, unless you can do something at the expert level, you’re not qualified to understand it.

    Clearly that’s wrong. There are lots of people with an excellent understanding of music who cannot play an instrument, let alone do so at the professional level.

    It most definitely is valid that you have to study a subject before you should feel qualified to have an opinion on it, and this is the reason why most of what the disarmers say is garbage. But that’s not what Michael said.

    • Paul,
      I think that music appreciation is a poor analogy for this subject. Music is an Art, and can be appreciated by virtually all humans. In no way is that true of martial arts, and especially the application of firearms to that world. This is especially true of liberals, who can’t think logically about the subject, AT ALL.

      “It most definitely is valid that you have to study a subject before you should feel qualified to have an opinion on it, and this is the reason why most of what the disarmers say is garbage. But that’s not what Michael said.”

      From my perspective, that IS what he said.

    • It’s fine to have an opinion about something you know little about. We all do, and you know what they say about opinions. What’s not OK IMO is pontificating about things you know jack-all about, and actively pushing for action with regard to it. That’s what he objects to most, I think, as do I. Don’t like guns, or know anything about them, and want to vote accordingly? fine. Stupid, but fine. Try to write and pass laws about them when you can’t tell a shoulder thingy that goes up from a pump-action high-cap semi-auto machine-rifle, then well, we have a problem. A big problem.

      • >a pump-action high-cap semi-auto machine-rifle,

        I once tried to explain to a reporter why her report about some stolen muskets as “high capacity muzzle loaders” was laughable while she was doing the taped stand-up shot. All I got was a deer in the headlights look from her. At least I was nice enough to tell her to have her mechanic check her van’s blinker fluid.

      • What’s the joke women make about male gynecologists? It’s like hiring an auto mechanic who’s never driven a car. But hiring that sort of person is supposed to be the best way to solve the problem of murder by criminals and terrorists.

  2. The bigger issue is one of simple incoherence. The shooters claim to be muslims, and we are constantly told we cannot tar all muslims by the actions of a single person, and we are told that his actions are not “real” islam by people who are not islamic, nor have ever studied it, and they warn against an “anti-islamic backlash.”

    On the other hand, they demand that all gun owners be tarred with the same brush as the gun-using shooter, that we are all crazed lunatics that support mass shootings, etc., etc., etc., pushing to use anger and fear surrounding the event to create a backlash against a specific enumerated right and people who exercise it, while at the same time calling us paranoid for saying people want to take out guns, even as they call for people to take our guns.

    It’s a script co-written by Kafka and Orwell.

    • You can’t use that brush on Muslims! We want to use it on gun owners.

  3. It’s a shame it requires membership in one of those social media groups to comment there.

    The first commentor goes on and on about how much possible trouble it could cause if more of the potential victims were armed.

    He is typical of the cowardly Progressives in making the demand that if a public response to a threat isn’t perfect, than NO response is acceptable, and we should simply wait until the .gov forces bother to show up and actually do something.

    • Will,
      I’ve heard the hysteria from idiots before too. If someone else has a gun it’ll only make it worse! Or they complain multiple “gun nuts” will make it look like Saturday night in Dodge City! The type who makes the argument is a man-child looking for an authority figure to come save them from the mean people. They’re completely vested in the idea that only “highly trained” government men can deal with it while your armed citizen will be “slaughtered helplessly” before he gets a shot off.

      And to be more descriptive, in the chaos of the Bataclan or Opus club shootings they claim an armed citizen responding might kill innocents instead of hitting the gunman. Thus, no one should shoot back.

      So I asked one of these Einsteins, Worst case possible – if no one takes action, what happens? The answer is, of course, the shooter kills every soul in the venue. Every. Single. One. And while we always hold out hope that a few may survive or “merely” be wounded we must assume the killer’s intent is wholesale murder of all. I can get agreement on that point. If that’s the case the armed citizen can’t make it worse. IF, despite his best intentions and skills, he misses and strikes a club patron, does it matter that much? If we follow [the commentator’s] advice won’t that patron be just as dead? On the other hand if an armed citizen engages somewhere between the shooter’s 10th and 30th shot and does manage to neutralize the shooter the net positive is counted in every person who leaves the club alive.

      This is where I disagree with the legal “strict liability” principle that puts the liability for the patron’s injury on the citizen because it was his bullet, rather than putting the liability on the mass shooter’s head. Were it not for the killer’s wanton disregard for life it wouldn’t have been necessary for the citizen to do everything he could to quickly save the most lives.

      • An objective observation of mass shootings clearly shows that someone, anyone, already in the venue, armed, is the best response possible in real life. That is because historically, no matter how quickly any official police types show up, the early action by them will be of minimal benefit, and the necessary followup will happen too late for most of the occupants.

        Anything coming from the .gov, or the media (but I repeat myself) that conflicts with that statement is self-serving bullshit. Nowadays, if they have a badge, you can’t expect them to be effective in this sort of situation. The necessary mindset is lacking, especially in their management.

        The most used equipment of police at these sort of situations is Police Tape, chalk for outlining bodies and brass, and cameras to document the carnage.

        They are NOT troubleshooters, they are the cleanup crew.

        • Indeed. It would be worth changing the terminology. Police are not “first responders” — they are second responders. Citizens on the scene are the first responders — one hopes they are armed so their first response can be effective.

          As a result of the Orlando experience, a well known saying has to be modified: When seconds matter, the police are only 3 hours away.

          • I can’t and won’t disagree with what either Will or Paul said above.

            I’ve long argued that the whole first responder nomenclature is false. The citizens on the scene are the real first responders. Shooting, stabbing, heart attack, it doesn’t matter, citizens almost always beat the civil servants to the scene.

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