Noted firearms/tactical expert Anna North weighs in on the recent festivities in California
It’s become a standard response to mass shootings in America: If only more “good” Americans were armed, the “bad guys” wouldn’t have a chance to kill.
Ted Cruz said it on Monday, arguing in a radio interview that “you don’t stop the bad guys by taking away our guns. You stop the bad guys by using our guns, and a free and armed American citizenry is how we keep ourselves safe.”
But Jerry Falwell, Jr. took the argument to a new extreme on Friday, telling students at Liberty University, where he is president, that “if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walk in and kill.” He urged students to get their own permits so they too could carry concealed weapons and, apparently, shoot Muslims: “Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here.”
His comments are chilling because they imply that Americans should use concealed weapons to “end” Muslims simply on the basis of their religion. On Saturday Mr. Falwell clarified that he was referring only to Muslims who commit attacks. It remains unclear how an armed Liberty University student is supposed to decide which Muslims are about to commit acts of terror before they do so. An AK/AR in hand would be one hint. Backpacks with IEDs would be another.
But Mr. Falwell’s remarks are disturbing beyond their obvious bigotry. He and Mr. Cruz conceive of an America in which every citizen is essentially obligated to carry a firearm and be ready to use deadly force at all times. Not even "essentially" obligated. Getting a CC permit is a voluntary act. And the way matters stand now, every citizen should be ready to fight, whether with firearms or by other means. What is wrong with that?
Such a system would, as Francis Clines has pointed out, create serious problems for law enforcement. If everyone at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino had been armed and firing, the result would have been an even more chaotic situation in which police would not have known whom to target. Many more lives might have been lost in the crossfire. Not everyone would have been armed and not everyone would have fired their weapon. There were only two obvious targets, so once the rounds hit home any further firing would conceivably have stopped forthwith. And Anna: many more lives were lost; about a third of those present died because no one was armed.
Our country would be far more dangerous than it is now if everyone brought a gun to every argument, as Matt Valentine illustrated at Politico in October. No one brings a gun to an argument, Anna. Jeez, you should get out more.
Nor are ordinary citizens prepared for the responsibility of serving as de facto law enforcement. An online class is enough training to qualify for a concealed-carry permit in some states, while soldiers and police officers are trained for months or years. Even this training has not been sufficient to keep some police officers from fatally shooting unarmed black men and boys. Do we really think an online certification is enough to enable average Americans to take the law into their own hands? The notion here is not "taking the law" into one's hands. It is about responding to deadly force with deadly force, specifically for the purpose of ending the threat without anyone else being harmed. And Anna, police are prosecuted for bad shoots just as an average person would be, so please holster your hostility, s'il vous plait.
And do we, as Americans, really want to do this? The responsibility to kill is an incredibly heavy one, and the consequences of exercising it can be severe. Some police departments offer therapy to officers who fire their weapons. The military has only begun to reckon with the devastating psychological toll of combat. We are not prepared for every American, all the time, to feel and behave like a police officer in a firefight or a soldier at war. We should not have to prepare for it. Agreed, but when a situation is thrust upon the ordinary firearm carrier, it is far better to be able to respond with deadly force than to wonder, in your case, what did we do to deserve this as you bleed out. Carrying a firearm is a bad solution to violence, but for all the others. Ms. North forgets the aphorism attributed to Trotsky: you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. You may not want to participate in the home defense of your country and loved ones, but the other side isn't giving you that choice.
One of the great benefits of a civil society is that it selects and trains people dedicated to keeping everyone safe. This group, in the United States, is not perfect. But the alternative — everyone, always, a potential killer — is far worse. Uh, Anna? "Society" ain't s'posed to "select" anyone for the job of "keeping everyone safe." And, as we have seen, the cops' job is to protect the state, not citizens. What better way to do that than for the citizen to carry his own protection.
#6
The point is to shoot back, because these thugs are cowards. As soon as they perceive that they could be shot, they stop shooting random people and start trying to protect themselves.
You don't need to hit them at all, just send a few rounds their way to make the situation change.
#7
As the attackers mowed people down, a police commissioner and his driver, learning from the police radio that they were near the site, sped to the concert hall before more elite teams could get there. They charged inside, shooting one of the gunmen before the attacker had a chance to use his high-powered rifle. Then they retreated so that special-operations teams could assemble.
It was a key action that slowed the pace of carnage. "In hindsight, I know that we saved dozens, maybe hundreds of lives," the commissioner, who hasn't been named, told private television channel M6. While the Bataclan death toll of at least 89 was horrific, most of the partygoers survived.
"It's their action that made it possible to stop the killing," Christophe Molmy, who heads the elite BRI police intervention squad, said of the police commissioner and his driver. When Molmy's rapid-reaction team arrived at 10:15, "there's no shooting, there's no noise, there's an oppressive silence inside the Bataclan."
[NewEnglishReview] I-tele aired an excerpt from an interview with the sister and brother of one of the Bataclan killers. They are horrified, simply horrified by what he did. He's not our brother, he's a monster, they sob. They repeat their horror, their sorrow, their distress, their stupefaction. And to think it was happening a few blocks away from the thÊâtre de la Main d'Or where they were watching DieudonnÊ perform. The interviewer is a bit stupefied himself. "You went to see DieudonnÊ's show? He's very controversial. Are you anti-Semitic?" And they reply, hidden behind the thickest biggest most checkerboard face blur I've ever seen, "No, we were just having fun, it's a comedy show."
I suppose most readers will have seen footage of the bespectacled guy who lent the apartment in St. Denis where Abaaoud made his last stand. Interviewed by BFM TV during the standoff, he could barely contain his arrogance and contempt for the journalist who dared to ask him how he came to give refuge to the notorious terrorist. "A copain asked me lend the place to some of his potes for a few days. I said ok. I helped him out, monsieur, that's all, a helping hand." Of course he didn't know they came from Belgium, he didn't know they were terrorists. And perhaps he didn't see the policemen standing nearby that gently took him by the arm and led him to the paddy wagon. He's still in custody. According to an article in LibĂŠration the snooty chap subsequently identified as Jawad Bendaoud, is the goon of slum landlords that were renting apartments in the building, officially declared unfit for habitation. Bendaoud reportedly was sentenced to an 8-year term in 2008 for manslaughter. The victim was a friend. So I guess this wasn't the first time he helped out a copain. The downstairs neighbor of the hideout also told her story to TV cameras. The building was shaking, plaster was raining down from the ceiling. She didn't need to be blurred. She was in niqab. A cute young flirty looking friend of Bendaoud gives a different version. She says the apartment was abandoned. Her copain just broke in and expropriated it. He lent it to people who needed a place to crash. Is that so? Then how does she explain the fact that the armored door was so strong it resisted the explosive charge used by the SWAT team to break in and surprise the occupants?
What do they want? From time to time, an enlightened Muslim guest responds: they want to establish a caliphate in every corner of the world. That leaves the newspeaker speechless. Of course, if you call them jihadis instead of terrorists, the answer is in the question. Today, words are increasingly calibrated with realities. French citizens demand decisive action, authority, power. They want to fight back individually and collectively, morally and militarily.
[NationalReview] There are many popular demons in American public life: Barack Obama and his monarchical pretensions, Valerie Jarrett and her two-bit Svengali act, or, if your tastes run in the other direction, the Koch brothers, the NRA, the scheming behind-the-scenes influences of Big Whatever. But take a moment to doff your hat to the long, energetic, and wide-ranging careers of three of our most enduring bad guys: laziness, corruption, and stupidity, which deserve special recognition for their role in the recent debates over gun control, terrorism, and crime.
The Democratic party’s dramatic slide into naked authoritarianism — voting in the Senate to repeal the First Amendment, trying to lock up governors for vetoing legislation, and seeking to jail political opponents for holding unpopular views on global warming, etc. — has been both worrisome and dramatic. The Democrats even have a new position on the ancient civil-rights issue of due process, and that position is: “F— you.” The Bill of Rights guarantees Americans (like it or not) the right to keep and bear arms; it also reiterates the legal doctrine of some centuries standing that government may not deprive citizens of their rights without due process. In the case of gun rights, that generally means one of two things: the legal process by which one is convicted of a felony or the legal process by which one is declared mentally incompetent, usually as a prelude to involuntary commitment into a mental facility. The no-fly list and the terrorism watch list contain no such due process. Some bureaucrat somewhere in the executive branch puts a name onto a list, and that’s that. The ACLU has rightly called this “Kafkaesque.”
Here’s where our old friends laziness and stupidity play a really prominent role: The no-fly list is not composed of identities, but merely names. Lots of people share the same name. So, for instance, the late Senator Ted Kennedy ended up on the no-fly list, because somebody had used his name (or a similar name) as an alias. Among people called “Kevin Williamson,” we find myself, the famous Scream screenwriter, a notable Scottish politician and political activist (he is also the author of Drugs and the Party Line), a Canadian entertainment journalist, a fine woodworker who sells his wares on Twitter, and a famous underwear model for whom I am unlikely to be mistaken. If a trip to the DMV or the IRS one day eventually sends me over the edge into full-on barking mad durka-durka-Mohammed-jihad territory, those other Kevin Williamsons are going to suffer simply because we share a name. And, of course, every third actual dirtbag terrorist has the same name as a million other ordinary schmoes, because Arabic names tend to be a little repetitive. (Is there a Mohammed al-Mohammed in the house? Seriously, go to LinkedIn and see how many graphic designers and accountants walking this good green Earth share that name.) More at the link One of the better rants out there...
[DAWN] ALONG the Golden Hillock Road in Birmingham, UK, a huge procession celebrating the birthday of the Holy Prophet (PTUI!) is taken out every year.
It wends its way through a mainly Muslim area which, as can be expected, includes people from diverse sects just as can be found in Pakistain.
Listen to what I'm going to tell you now. And trust me, as an American-born Israeli who has lived with Muslim terror for fifty years, it's the truth: They hate you not because of how you treat them, but because you exist and you don't believe in their religion, or their wondrous prophet. Because you treat women and homosexuals as human beings. Because you won't agree that they take over your country and your lives, and submit to their rules.
So when you die, they will tell you it's all your fault. Because you made them mad. You made them really, really mad, so whatever horrors they are at this very moment busily planning to inflict on you (because that's the only thing they are good at; the only thing they believe in), you deserve them. It is inevitable and you should have seen it coming.
And so if you welcome them into your country, and give them good jobs and educations, and you throw them baby showers, and allow their foreign born fiancĂŠes K-1 visas to enter the country, they will add to their anger their contempt because you are weak and foolish and don't understand that they are at war with you and want you dead.
And your politicians, who are still getting advice from CAIR, will outlaw guns to make it easier for them, because they don't need licenses for guns, believe me. But you will.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
