SWATing because GUN!

According to an article by Charles C. W. Cooke in National Review Online, this is what our anti-gun fellow citizens are thinking, and apparently actually doing:

‘You see a GunFilth waving its penis substitute, exit, call police. Armed robbery in progress.” So wrote Twitter user “Little Black Dog” on September 13 of this year.

The injunction was a particularly colorful one, but the idea behind it, alas, is not as uncommon as one might wish. “I see you #opencarry with a gun in public,” a man named “joe villa” threatened earlier this week, “i’m calling the cops. psycho behaving erratic. make your day.” A translation for the more literate among us: “The law be damned; exercise your rights under the law and I’ll threaten your life.”

or this:

Reacting to a photograph of a man standing at a checkout with a handgun holstered upon his hip, mom-who-demands-action Joyce Ward asks, “Why weren’t the police called immediately?” And “why,” Ward continues, “wasn’t he shot by the police for having a weapon”? Fellow poster Lisa McLogan Shaheen has a similar inquiry, wondering, “Why hasn’t someone called 911 so the cops can gun him down?”

This sort of reaction is the reason I choose to carry concealed. These people are advocating murder by proxy, in this case using the police as a murder squad. These men, or women, were not threatening anyone, merely publicly carrying a weapon, which is not a crime, and actually shows good common sense. But I choose instead to emulate the cat.  After all, a cat has sharp claws, capable of rending flesh, and with which it can in very short order inflict hundreds of cuts to the body or an opponent. But, the cat usually keeps its claws sheathed. It usually appears to be a harmless fuzzball unless attacked.  On the other hand, people who are advocating SWATing open carriers who are doing nothing wrong are bearing false witness against fellow citizens. Whether the intent is to merely scare them, or to have them "gunned down" as one commenter stated, doing something like this is despicable and revolting.

That said, I sympathize with the Open Carry movement, and share its goals.  The ultimate solution for both concealed carriers and open carriers is to have what has been dubbed Constitutional carry.  Concealed carriers are people who have gone through background criminal checks, been fingerprinted, and taken mandatory State training to obtain a license to practice what should be a Constitutional right.  As such, the government knows if we have guns, and we would likely be the first they came after if, as some have advocated, they decided to confiscate guns.  Not likely in North Carolina at the moment, but things can change.

Some would say that my risks of being killed or seriously injured by criminals, or now we are facing our Muslim brothers as well, are pretty low, to which I say "Thank god."  I would not want to have to shoot someone, and I am the type that tries very hard to avoid conflicts which might erupt and put me in these situations.  I carry my weapon as insurance. You have insurance on your car, right?  Do you intend to get into an accident?  You have health insurance, right?  Do you intend to get sick?  You have life insurance, right?  Do you intend to die prematurely?  The issue of carrying a gun for protection is an emotional one for many people, but for me it comes down to risk, and I evaluate those risks as small, but not small enough to ignore.

Further, using Leftist words against obvious Leftist, who are you to judge?  If a single mom with small children has been attacked in her home by a crazed ex, I will not find fault with her carrying all day, every day, whether at home or abroad.  If a guy has a job that sometimes takes him to a sketchy neighborhood, I certainly understand why he might want to carry a gun with him.  Would you rather that such neighborhoods receive no service because a few drug gangs set up shop there?  You meet all sorts out in public, of whose background and situation you are totally unaware.  Perhaps the guy you just SWATed is an off duty police officer buying groceries for his family.

The open-carry movement can at times be needlessly provocative, unforgivably impolite, and depressingly counter-productive. Mom’s Demand Action’s mawkish and narcissistic hoplophobia to one side, I share the concern of those who feel that some advocates of the right to bear arms have traded justifiable concern regarding the integrity of their rights for gratuitousness, confrontation, and vanity. Nevertheless, there are constructive and there are disastrous ways of establishing social and legal bright lines, and the proposals that are simmering around the gun-control movement’s fringes fall decidedly into the latter camp. Having been widely chastised for their stupidity, both “Little Black Dog” and “joe villa” removed their boorish warnings and slunk, chastened, back into their festering holes. Their friendlier allies at MDA and beyond would do well to follow suit, politely advising the hotheads that this really isn’t a game.

Exactly.

Anniversary of Restaurant Carry

Yesterday was the 1 year anniversary of being able to carry our weapons into restaurants that serve alcohol. HB 937 became law effective 1 October 2013, which law also permitted carrying at funerals and parades, venues that charge admission, and on school property when you are picking up your child.  Ammoland has published the story here. Of course, you still can not carry in a restaurant serving alcohol if you are drinking, but if not, then you are permitted.  I have often noted that most of the people eating in typical establishments that serve alcohol are in fact drinking the National Drink of North Carolina, sweetened iced tea.  Mrs. Polykahr and I went out last night to a casual dining facility, where Mrs. Polykahr had our National Drink, and I had water with a twist of lemon.  I was armed.

Readers may remember the editorials excoriating legislators for even considering this expansion of concealed carry, claiming alcohol and bars just don't mix.  To the argument that the law did not permit a person to be standing at the bar ordering drinks while armed, some made the ridiculous claim that even so, some drunken fool would just grab your gun and start shooting up the place.  That claim was easily shown to be specious.  After all, your weapon is concealed, right?  But, nonetheless we were treated to editorials claiming blood would be running in the aisle of North Carolina restaurants.  Ohio, Virginia, and Tennessee had all passed similar laws previously, and there was no uptick in crime as a result.

So, after a year, how many incidence of concealed carriers committing crimes in bars and restaurants have occurred?  According to Grass Roots North Carolina, the number is: zero, zilch, nada.  Just as we all predicted.

Rational Solutions

I read an interesting article recently in Concealed Carry magazine, Volume 11, Issue 6, August/September 2014 entitled What Have We Learned About School Shooters by Michael Martin. Sorry, I don't have a link. I read the (horrors) paper version. In the article, Mr. Martin took apart several of the so called solutions offered by the anti gun crowd to school shootings in particular, and mass public shootings in general, by analysing actual statistics from each.

One such solution is to limit legal magazine capacity to variously 5,or 10 rounds.  Martin decided to test whether limits on magazines would have any affect on the outcome. He used live fire tests, shooting at a conservative rate of fire of 2 rounds per second, with magazine changes as required, and came up with the amount of rounds fired in one minute for magazines containing 5, 10, and 30 rounds. He then compared the actual rounds fired for a given shooting incident, and the time the event lasted, and found that all were well below the rates of fire achievable with even a 5 round magazine. His conclusion was that limiting magazine capacity has no effect on the number of people killed or injured in a school shooting.

Martins work confirmed in my mind that the goal of limiting magazine capacity was for reasons other than to solve the school shooting problem.  As soon as news of another school shooting appeared on the wires, hysterical people, most of whom wouldn't know which end of a gun to point at the target, began crying that if only the shooter had less rounds, the damage would have been limited.  The numbers touted by the antis seem to be grabbed out of thin air and have always struck me as more of a marker. If they can limit magazine capacity at all, they can then squeeze the number down later. The point is to get the precedent into law.

He then look at time the killers had without armed intervention to see if that affected the outcome.  He notes that in the case of the Aurora theater shootings, the first 911 call was made within 90 seconds, and the police  arrived in record time, but the killer still had 9 minutes during which to shoot victims unimpeded by anyone with gun to stop him.  Ft. Hood represents a similar situation.  Although a military base, with many guns on base, those guns are locked in an armory, and the base is essentially a gun free zone.  The Ft. Hood killer had 10 minutes to kill anyone he could find, before station security forces were able to respond, and bring him down.

So what is the rational solution, if limiting magazine capacity is not it?  Martin thinks, as do I, that eliminating the legally required "gun free zones" is at least a major part of the answer.  He notes that the Aurora theater killer passed up a number of movie theaters closer to his home that were showing the same movie that night. Instead he chose the Aurora theater.  What is so special about that theater?  Well, the one difference was that the Aurora theater had a no guns sign on the door, and the others did not.

The law is fundamentally based on a belief system.  People generally obey that law either because that believe that doing so protects everyone, or they believe that the potential penalties present too great a risks to their life or liberty should they get caught (I sadly suspect that more people fall into the later category than into the former.)  Moreover, having effective enforcement of a law ensures compliance by all but the most hardened criminals.  So, if you want to declare that schools must be gun free, then you have to treat them like a court house, with armed security roaming the hallways, and manning magnetometers at each entrance.  And while that level of security would pretty much kill the "atmosphere for learning" so touted by educators, nothing less ensures the facility is truly gun free.  Short of that, the law becomes a paper tiger that only the law abiding take notice of.  Yet, the law abiding person can walk through  the school carrying a loaded BAR and no body would get shot.

Mr. Bloomberg's latest attempt to eliminate guns is variously "Every town for Gun Safety" and "Moms demand action on guns."  The Demanding Moms go about the country harassing business large and small demanding that guns not be allowed on their property.  They have managed to elicit luke warm responses from Starbucks and Target which amount to a plea that guns be left out of their stores.  The latest target is Kroger, which chain seems to be holding the line.  Good on them.  These Demanding Moms claim a "right" not to be around anyone who happens to be carrying a gun, whether they know it or not.  They are so sure of that "right," they even have put up "no guns" signs even when the business turned them down, because they no better what the business owners interests are than the business owner does.  What many business owners have concluded is that their best defense against liability claims is to follow state laws.  Otherwise, the only way to enforce a no guns sign is to have armed guards manning magnetometers at the entrance.  Somehow, I don't feel very much like eating in a prison, do you?

Interestingly, I agree with the Demanding Moms in this:  that they, their children, and everybody else should be able to walk everywhere they want in complete safety.  But that vision is of a perfect world, not the world we have.  The world we have is messy, and not everyone plays by the rules.  Shocking, I know.  But, how I choose to deal with reality should be of no concern to anyone else.

Targeting Target Stores

A hat tip to David Codrea at the War on Guns for pointing me to this article at the Inquisitr.com website entitled Target's Gun Ban has Unexpected Results as Assailants Attack Store's Unarmed Customers.  I take no joy from this, and feel no sense of schadenfreude.

 I guess the first thing to note is that Target didn't really issue a ban. Instead, it issued a request that folks leave their guns at home when shopping at Target stores. Is that a ban? In one sense it might as well be, if concealed carriers choose to honor the request. For myself, if a friend of mine asked me not to carry in his home, because I valued that person's friendship, I would certainly honor that request, though I would also have to question whether that friend valued my friendship as much as I valued his. But I don't have "friendships" with giant corporations.

If you are watching only the MSM news, and you are of a criminal mindset, you didn't get that nuanced message that Target issued. Instead, what you heard was that Target stores are now a target rich environment of unarmed victims with money to spend and merchandise free for the taking. Everything that is happening at stores in the Atlanta area was fully predictable.  I think the word "Unexpected" in the title of this piece is therefore a little naive.

That the Demanding Moms would hail the statement made by Target as a victory for their cause was absolutely predictable.  That the mostly anti gun media would trumpet it as a victory for "common sense" gun control was equally predictable.  Target's message was essentially that Target stores want to sell stuff, and stay out of the fray over guns.  Instead, what they got was customers being robbed at gun point by armed predators.

The lesson in this, for those who may be looking for lessons, is that nobody can give in to, or attempt to appease anyone who is shrieking at them.  And the Demanding Moms are definitely a small, AstroTurf, group of shrieking harridans, funded by Micheal Bloomberg.  They do not represent any one's actual customers, but instead represent Michael Bloomberg.  The ploy of shrieking at the current target is to get him to do what they want, and not to think about it.  If he thought about it, he would probably have come to the conclusion that the status quo ante was the best policy. But by raising a ruckus, they hope to stampede him into doing something that is  not necessarily in his best interest.  Contrary to what you may have heard or read, the State legislatures in every State that passed "Shall Issue" laws debated the topic ad nauseum and passed them because these laws are the most fair, and protective to everyone involved. And having a policy that defers to State law is probably best for most businesses.
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The NSA Spying Program, and What it Means to Americans

Jacob Sullum has a good article today on the NSA's spying program under Section 702 of the Patriot act. You can find it at Townhall.com at The mass online dragnet warrantless surveillance hits the target, along with many other people. Sullam ends his article thusly:

According to the Obama administration, all this is old news and no big deal. "These reports simply discuss the kind of incidental interception of communications that we have always said takes place under Section 702," Robert Litt, general counsel to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, told The New York Times on Sunday. "The most that you could conclude from these news reports is that each valid foreign intelligence target talks to an average of nine people."

If the mass collection of sensitive information about law-abiding people is to be expected, as my Reason colleague Scott Shackford observes, it is not really accurate to say it happens "inadvertently" or "not wittingly," as Clapper put it in congressional testimony last year. When such a wholesale invasion of privacy is the inevitable and predictable result of certain intelligence methods, choosing to use those methods means you are doing it on purpose.

Indeed.

The program may, or may not be effective at stopping terrorism.  I personally suspect it is not.  Finding the true terrorists in a sea of ordinary Americans is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.  But, in any case, the debate about the NSA spying on Americans comes down to deciding whether as a nation we value liberty, or a smothering all protective government.  For there can be no true safety.  Our government can smother us with "love," but it can not guarantee our safety.  Put in such stark reality, I'll take the liberty to defend myself, thank you.

Happy 4th of July

It's the 4th of July, and if you are a fan of the 1911 pistol, as I am, Townhall.com has a great piece on the history and the continuing popularity of a pistol design that is now 103 years old. You can find the story at The 1911 Pistol by Mark Kakkuri.  In saying I am a fan of the 1911, I am not disparaging Glocks, Barettas, or any of the other polymer framed pistols.  I have fired Glock 9mms, the Springfield XD 45, and of  course, the Kahr PM 9.  All of these are fine, reliable, and accurate pistols that go bang every time you pull the trigger.  They will take a beating, as the old Timex commercials used to say, and keep on ticking.  But for all the reasons mentioned in this article, the 1911 is the gun I shoot best, and most of the time its the one I carry.  And modern 1911s have become just as reliable and accurate as the wonder nines. Still, the 1911 is a tool, and like other tools, is designed for a specific purpose, and compromises were made in its design that render it unsuitable in most other situations. I carry my 1911, but pray I will never encounter a need for it.

Target Stores Want to be Left Alone

While reading today, I discovered that the Target chain of stores had declared itself off limits to guns. Mrs. PolyKahr likes to shop at Target, and occasionally drags me into the store as well. So, I grumbled, "another place where I have to take my gun out of the holster, secure it in the car, before going into the store. Great."

But not so fast. It seems that Target took a neutral stance. Dave Workman has the actual statement made by Target stores interim CEO, John Mulligan at the Examiner site Did Target Really Accede to Moms Demand Social Prejudice?.  In essence, Target said to follow the law, but we would appreciate if you left your long guns when you come into the store.  It is hard to argue with that.

The old saying that you can "catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" is still true today. Sure, you can be shrill, confrontational, and insistent that YOUR rights be respected. Or, you can go through this world with a smile on your face, having patience and understanding for you fellow man, and respecting the rights of others as much as you expect them to respect yours. Frankly, my first reaction to the Demanding Moms is that the group is shrill, and suffers from selfishness and carries an ego driven message which can tolerate no other point of view. Even if I were not a gun rights advocate, I would be repelled by their antics, and I am sure many store and restaurant owners are equally repelled.

My advice, for what it may be worth, is to take the opposite approach from that of the Demanding Moms.  If you are as old as I am, you have seen, and experienced the loss of freedoms in the country.  I can remember a time when everything you think and do was not a matter for public debate at the national level.  We do not live today in the United States I was born into.  Realizing this can make you angry, and righteous anger can make you take counterproductive actions.  The gun rights community can do what it wants, of course, and it will, but think hard before baring your teeth.  You will probably make more allies that way.