Update 12-3-2015:
I still see absolutely nothing to change any of my views. Please also see the yellow-highlighted text in the original posting below. It is the fact set that supports my contention that stricter gun control is utter nonsense.
The shooter at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado has turned out to be a locally-known nutcase who was never judged insane by a court. Hence, he could legally own and buy guns. The way we choose to "keep guns out of the hands of the insane" is therefore so very clearly wrong. Change that, and most of this last year's mass shooting incidents go away. But you MUST do something different about the way you keep guns out of the hands of crazy people!!! Face facts!!!
The most recent attack in San Bernadino seems to be turning out to be a self-radicalized local citizen and his wife here on a "fiance visa". It doesn't actually matter what sets them off, once they believe in a radical creed which teaches that one must kill outsiders for God. That simply isn't God they are listening to, and until such teachings are eliminated from our midst, we will always have this problem. The problem is NOT the guns, it IS the radical creeds. All religions have them, not just Islam, although Islam is the source of our biggest radical creed problem in recent years.
The Planned Parenthood center in Colorado, the government facility in San Bernadino, and all the others we have witnessed (Newtown, Gabby Giffords, Columbine, all of them), were gun-free zones attacked by someone with a motive that made some sort of sense to them. Every single one of these was effectively undefended, a sitting-duck target. THAT is why each was selected for attack by their respective perpetrators, regardless of detailed motive.
This derives from a lesson that many Americans learned the hard way in the 19th century, but is also a lesson so very clearly completely forgotten today. There are perfectly-good reasons to have gun-free zones. But, once you create one, you are obligated to defend it (the part which is so completely forgotten today). The criterion for defending a gun-free zone that worked acceptably well in 19th century frontier America was very simple: having an armed peace officer responding within 60 seconds, no longer. Period. End of issue.
Fix THAT, and you will greatly-reduce this wave of mass shootings in America. Dealing properly with keeping guns out of the hands of crazy people will reduce it further. But, you will NOT stop them ALL, until you completely eliminate all radical evil creeds from the entire world. Yep, the entire world!!! Religious, political, makes no difference. Evil creeds do evil. Simple as that.
And, by the way, fearing Syrian refugees is nonsense. No matter how effective or ineffective the refugee vetting process has been, the fact is that not one refugee has caused a terrorist or mass shooting incident here. All of our perpetrators have been either domestic citizens or persons here on some kind of visa. That ought to tell you where the worst "leaks" requiring "fixes" really are. Everything claimed otherwise is nothing but election-year political BS.
Update 11-16-2015: I have seen nothing to change any of these opinions or conclusions.
Original Posting:
Yet another mass shooting (this one at a community college on Oregon) prompts yet again calls for stricter gun control laws. That’s the “usual response”, and it is wrong. Here’s why….
I still see absolutely nothing to change any of my views. Please also see the yellow-highlighted text in the original posting below. It is the fact set that supports my contention that stricter gun control is utter nonsense.
The shooter at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado has turned out to be a locally-known nutcase who was never judged insane by a court. Hence, he could legally own and buy guns. The way we choose to "keep guns out of the hands of the insane" is therefore so very clearly wrong. Change that, and most of this last year's mass shooting incidents go away. But you MUST do something different about the way you keep guns out of the hands of crazy people!!! Face facts!!!
The most recent attack in San Bernadino seems to be turning out to be a self-radicalized local citizen and his wife here on a "fiance visa". It doesn't actually matter what sets them off, once they believe in a radical creed which teaches that one must kill outsiders for God. That simply isn't God they are listening to, and until such teachings are eliminated from our midst, we will always have this problem. The problem is NOT the guns, it IS the radical creeds. All religions have them, not just Islam, although Islam is the source of our biggest radical creed problem in recent years.
The Planned Parenthood center in Colorado, the government facility in San Bernadino, and all the others we have witnessed (Newtown, Gabby Giffords, Columbine, all of them), were gun-free zones attacked by someone with a motive that made some sort of sense to them. Every single one of these was effectively undefended, a sitting-duck target. THAT is why each was selected for attack by their respective perpetrators, regardless of detailed motive.
This derives from a lesson that many Americans learned the hard way in the 19th century, but is also a lesson so very clearly completely forgotten today. There are perfectly-good reasons to have gun-free zones. But, once you create one, you are obligated to defend it (the part which is so completely forgotten today). The criterion for defending a gun-free zone that worked acceptably well in 19th century frontier America was very simple: having an armed peace officer responding within 60 seconds, no longer. Period. End of issue.
Fix THAT, and you will greatly-reduce this wave of mass shootings in America. Dealing properly with keeping guns out of the hands of crazy people will reduce it further. But, you will NOT stop them ALL, until you completely eliminate all radical evil creeds from the entire world. Yep, the entire world!!! Religious, political, makes no difference. Evil creeds do evil. Simple as that.
And, by the way, fearing Syrian refugees is nonsense. No matter how effective or ineffective the refugee vetting process has been, the fact is that not one refugee has caused a terrorist or mass shooting incident here. All of our perpetrators have been either domestic citizens or persons here on some kind of visa. That ought to tell you where the worst "leaks" requiring "fixes" really are. Everything claimed otherwise is nothing but election-year political BS.
Update 11-16-2015: I have seen nothing to change any of these opinions or conclusions.
Original Posting:
Yet another mass shooting (this one at a community college on Oregon) prompts yet again calls for stricter gun control laws. That’s the “usual response”, and it is wrong. Here’s why….
If stricter gun control laws were actually successful at
reducing violence, then Chicago and
Washington DC would be the safest cities in America in which to live, precisely because they have the strictest gun
control laws. They are actually the most
violent cities in America by the statistics,
and by far.
So, clearly, this approach is wrong, it does not work. QED. Get over it!
Look a bit deeper than the customary knee-jerk
reaction, for something that might
actually work, and try that
instead! To keep trying something again
and again, that does not bring about
what you want, is a pretty good
operational definition of insanity. Just
how insane are you, my neighbors?
This means that you look for what might actually be causing
the problem, and do something about
that, instead. You will not find it by listening to knee
jerk reactions and political sound bites.
You might try history instead, but you’ll have to be read between the lines
to find any truth in history. It’s
written only by the winners/survivors.
If you look at mass shooting incidents over the last several
years, there are really only two common
threads. And that’s a good place to
start. (1) With one exception, every one of these incidents is an example of
people known to have mental problems getting guns legally. (2) Without exception, every single one of these was a gun-free zone
that was not adequately defended.
The exception to (1) was the Newtown school incident, where the perpetrator obtained his guns
illegally. He killed his mother, so he could get access to her guns, otherwise locked up beyond his reach. That right there ought to tell you something!
Current laws are based on a federal standard that is
essentially an “on-off switch” with too high a bar. To be prevented from obtaining guns, a crazy person must be judged crazy by a
judge in a court of law. Otherwise, he may buy the gun legally, and the seller has no grounds not to sell it
to him. Period.
That’s demonstrably the wrong standard. It was written that way to make things easy
and convenient for lawyers and judges.
Yet it quite demonstrably kills people.
The people who sold “xxx” the gun with which he shot congresswoman Gabby
Giffords were uncomfortable selling him a gun,
but they had no choice. That is a
matter of public record.
It is simply outside my expertise to give you practical details, but I do suggest a staged, multi-step approach to this. If a seller is uncomfortable, that should spark a deeper investigation by
local law enforcement than just a review of existing paperwork on file. Family,
friends, and colleagues should be
questioned about just how well we can trust “xxx” to behave responsibly with
his weapons.
As for item (2) defense of a gun free zone, we have the example of the 19th
century American frontier. There are
perfectly-good reasons to establish gun-free zones, well-known since long before that time. It actually works quite well to reduce
violence, if done correctly. Not done correctly, this approach demonstrably does not work.
There are two items, completely
forgotten today, that are required to do
a gun-free zone correctly. (1) An
easy way to comply by checking your weapons with local law enforcement when
you enter the gun-free zone, with
easy retrieval when you leave. (2)
Timely defense of the gun-free zone (extremely crucial). Of the two,
(2) is more important, but both
are actually crucial to success.
The
history of the 19th century American frontier confirms this
assessment, if and only if you look very
closely at it.
Today, we completely
ignore item (1), and force people who
are armed to leave their guns at home,
or (more damaging to us all), in
their cars. Guns left in cars are targets for
criminals who steal them and use them to commit violent crimes. Period.
End of issue. Not to mention
terrorists.
We have known this since the 19th century. That’s why back then, you checked your guns with the local
sheriff/town marshal/constable (pick a name) when you entered town. You knew they would be safe in his custody. And you knew you could drop by his office and
pick them up easily when you left town.
This stopped a huge proportion of the drunken-cowboy gunfights in
saloons.
Item (2) is more arguable today. Back then,
a town was a physically-small thing around 2, or at most 3, modern city blocks in dimension. An armed deputy could arrive anywhere in town
within about 60 seconds, at a dog
trot.
This standard of response time actually worked quite
well. It did not prevent every problem, but it did prevent the vast majority of
them. That’s the real truth of our
history.
There’s absolutely nothing in any of the accounts to suggest that
anything is any different today.
In point of fact, the longer the
response time, the worse the typical
outcome. 5 minutes is too long. 20+ minutes is way too long. Period.
Now, the mistake made
at every mass shooting site in the last several years is not defending the
gun-free zone adequately (essentially a 60-second response).
In Oregon,
they not only declined to have an armed officer on site, they declined to have an unarmed
officer on site (all this is a matter of public record). Just how stupid is that?
So, what do you
defend your gun-free zone with? I
suggest that only folks with actual peace officer training qualify. You are quite literally counting on whoever
might be armed to do a peace officer’s job.
The holder of a concealed-carry permit might be trained in
what he can and cannot do with his firearm,
but HE HAS NOT BEEN TRAINED TO BE A PEACE OFFICER. There’s quite a difference.
What that says is that Donald Trump is wrong when he says
the faculty should have been armed at the community college in Oregon. It takes a real peace officer to defend a
gun-free zone, just like it did in the
19th century American
frontier.