Ten Years After Columbine, It’s Easier to Bear Arms

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In the decade since, massacres perpetrated by deranged gunmen have continued – including the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre in which Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people and wounded many others. But something odd has occurred. Whatever momentum the Columbine killings gave to gun control has long since petered out.
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But efforts like Woods’ are up against powerful headwinds – and not just because of the powerful gun lobby that often strangles gun-control laws. Americans in general have cooled significantly to the idea of restricting gun rights. A poll released last week by CNN showed that support for stricter gun laws was at an all-time low, with just 39% of respondents in favor. Eight years ago that number was 54%.

The author blathers on about how this makes no sense at all, and that people who oppose gun control are obviously confused. However, while gun control advocates like this author continue along in their willful ignorance, a growing number of people are recognizing two important facts:

1. Crazed gunmen almost always strike where the lawful population has been disarmed (schools, etc), reducing their ability to fight back;
2. When a shooting starts, seconds count. A personally carried pistol is one second away, whereas police are hundreds and hundreds of seconds away. Further even if the police show up within 300 seconds, they might sit outside with their thumbs up their butts for another 3600 seconds before moving inside.

We can talk about getting help and treatment for those who carry out these attacks, and that’s all well and good. But we must also face reality: when the shooting starts, the single best thing to do is to fight back, and the best tool for the job is a personally-carried gun.

Those of us who oppose new gun control and advocate the private carry of arms see reality. It’s the gun-control crowd that is confused.

Apparently, the Hope and Change has even reached the Civilian Marksmanship Program:

ORDER BACKLOG

Normally, we average receiving 2,000 – 3,000 sales orders per month and ship an order in 2-3 weeks. However, these are not normal times. Since October, 2008 we have been receiving 5,000 – 10,000 orders per month, which is several times normal. As a result, we are very backlogged and running several weeks behind on processing orders. Our staff is working up to 12 hours per day 7 days a week, and only today finished the 4,000 orders we received on 1 December alone (except for those 1 Dec orders with credit card or other problems). Customers with outstanding orders should expect orders to ship approximately 100 days from the date the order was received by CMP. We expect to recover from this surge in another 3-4 months (assuming the number of orders being received drops somewhat).

I’m already making plans to get my hands on one of those nifty government Garands before our new President tries to shit-can the entire program. Obviously lots of other folks are thinking the same thing. Obama: the best salesman the firearms industry has ever had. Hope and Change!

Mexican government officials have complained that the availability of sophisticated guns from the United States have emboldened drug traffickers to fight over access routes into the U.S.

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“Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades,” the warning said. “Large firefights have taken place in many towns and cities across Mexico, but most recently in northern Mexico, including Tijuana, Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez.”

So, what you’re saying is that automatic weapons and grenades are available on the US market? Damn, and all this time I thought I couldn’t own those. I guess I’d better get down to Big 5 and pick up a Stoner & Pineapple special!

If that hasn’t gotten your blood pressure high enough yet, check out this additional ABC buffoonery. Amazingly, even when something is illegal (straw purchases, smuggling, possessing firearms in Mexico, trafficking and using drugs, etc. ad nauseum), people still do it. According to ABC, that is somehow my fault.

DENVER – A gun belonging to the pilot of a US Airways plane went off as the aircraft was on approach to land in North Carolina over the weekend, the first time a weapon issued under a federal program to arm pilots was fired, authorities said Monday.
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The “accidental discharge” Saturday aboard Flight 1536 from Denver to Charlotte did not endanger the aircraft or the 124 passengers, two pilots and three flight attendants aboard, said Greg Alter of the Federal Air Marshal Service.

I’d be interested in finding out how this pilot fired his weapon. I should point out that a gun doesn’t “just go off”. Someone fires it by pulling the trigger. Incidents where a gun is fired unintentionally are more properly called negligent discharges since they result from an act of negligence.

This quote at the end of the story pisses me off, since it comes from an “aviation expert” who really should know better:

“If that bullet had compromised the shell of the airplane, i.e., gone through a window, the airplane could have gone down,” he said.

Explosive decompression due to gunfire is a myth. Obviously this guy needs to watch fewer movies and more MythBusters.

As for the negligent discharge, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the democratic Congress use it as an excuse to strip pilots of their ability to defend themselves and the passengers.

Update: More here, including photos.

I became vaguely aware of two scruffy young men behind us as I stopped to look for traffic in preparation of entering the parking lot. They stayed behind us, rather than coming alongside.

I handed Little Darling her bag and took her hand as we began to negotiate the maze of parked automobiles. I glanced back and saw that the two young men had spread apart, one on either side of us and to the rear. That is when I felt it. They had matched my stride and were circling me. Like an antelope, I knew I was being stalked by jackals, only I did not know why. Time was accelerating at head pounding speed, and Little Darling, blissfully unaware, was along for the ride.

I saw our vehicle and began to approach it, but I wanted to be certain. I walked past, and cut between two unoccupied SUVs, grabbing a shopping cart to block the path from my front. The man on my right turned towards me and cursed as he saw his path was blocked by the cart jammed between the two vehicles sideways. I spun and drew my pistol from it’s holster, keeping it at low ready, facing off the other young man who was quickly approaching me from behind. My thumb had already snicked off the safety and Little Darling, confused, peered from behind me.

It seemed an eternity looking into the menacing, sneering face of the hoodlum who had began his approach from my rear. He sized up the man with the gun, a little girl behind him. I heard nothing to my rear. Not a word was spoken. Then “God damned mother fucker…….” he snarled as he sauntered away. I said nothing.

No shots were fired, but the fact that this poster was armed allowed him to prevent becoming a victim. Read the whole thing.

Update: The author has posted a follow-up which is also worth reading.

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — Elizabeth City State University is offering counseling to faculty and students after some became unknowing participants in an emergency response drill.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported in Wednesday’s editions that an armed man burst into a classroom Friday, threatening to kill students. The drill came eight days after a gunman killed five people and himself in a classroom at Northern Illinois University.

Anthony Brown, vice chancellor of student affairs, said ECSU was testing its response to such shootings. E-mail and text messages were sent five days before the drill, notifying students, staff and faculty, he said.

“The intent was not to frighten them but to test our system and also to test the response of the security that was on campus and the people that were notified,” Brown said.

But not everyone got the word, including assistant professor Jingbin Wang, whose American foreign policy class was held hostage.

“I was prepared to die at that moment,” Wang said Tuesday of the moment the gunman entered the room.

The “gunman” was in fact a campus police officer, but the prof and students didn’t know that:

The seven students were lined up against the wall, and the intruder threatened to kill the one with the lowest grade point average. Wang said the man told them that he had been kicked out of school and that he needed a lung transplant.

First, I’d like to know just what the hell the hair-brained administrator who came up with this “drill” was thinking. Oh, never mind, they weren’t thinking. Fucking Moron doesn’t begin to describe this person.

Second, I’d like to point out that waving a gun around and threatening to kill people — even if it’s “just a drill” and a “toy gun” — is a good way to get shot by a law-abiding gun-owner, as North Carolina is a shall-issue state. It’s also a good way to get tackled, cut, bludgeoned, or tasered.

And lastly, I’ll just say: Unleash the Lawyers. It’s inevitable that the school will get sued, and quite rightly, for this little stunt.

Update: Instapundit agrees with me: “The guy’s lucky that nobody shot him, or cold-cocked him. Which would have been an appropriate response to what seemed to be going on.”

Update Mar 7, 2008: This is an interesting point: a mouse that Brenda found in her garage showed more bravery than any of these students:

Not one of the students fought back. Not one thought to pick up a chair or a desk, or even a book, to defend themselves. They all lined up against a wall and passively waited for death.

One of the students said, “I was prepared to die at that moment.” Several students say they considered leaping from a window.

My mouse had more courage than this. Against insurmountable odds, it growled at me and prepared to fight, even to its death. The college students who meekly bared their throats to those who wanted to rip them out are dead already – they just don’t know it.

I would think that people would know better by now. When a gunman bursts into a classroom, they’re there for only one purpose: to commit a massacre. They aren’t there to steal books or wallets; they’re there to kill everyone in the room. I’d also think that people would know that fighting back is the only way to save their lives against a murderer. Alas, many people tend to disappoint me.

Behold: the Hello Kitty AR-15. It’s even California-legal! I’m not sure what else to say…

The SKS is not an assault rifle.

The SKS is not an assault rifle.

The SKS is not an assault rifle.

The SKS is not an assault rifle.

The SKS is not an assault rifle.

The SKS is not an assault rifle.

The term assault rifle has a very specific and technical meaning: an assault rifle is a rifle that is capable of selective fire. That is, it’s a rifle that can fire both semi-automatically (one shot per trigger pull) and fully-automatically (multiple shots per trigger pull).

The SKS is not an assault rifle because it is not capable of automatic fire.

The SKS doesn’t even count as an “assault weapon” — that chickenshit, scary-sounding, made-up word that leftists use to refer to semi-automatic rifles that simply look like assault rifles — because it doesn’t have a pistol grip or a detachable magazine.

I’m not sure if the press has an agenda or is merely incompetent when they report on shootings. Certainly, using a real term incorrectly (assault rifle) is little improvement on using a made-up word (assault weapon).

Update 12-7-2007: It looks like it was a Kalashnikov, not an SKS. Most people refer to these as “AK-47s”, probably because that sounds scarier. However, while these commercial sporting rifles are based on the AK-47 design, they are not true AK-47s, nor true assault rifles, because they are also not capable of selective fire.

AK-47 (and later AK-74) refers to the assault rifle issued to Communist bloc soldiers. Kalashnikov (also AK clone) refers to semi-auto sporting arms sold commercially and resembling the AK-47. So:

The Kalashnikov (or AK clone, if you like) is also not an assault rifle.

The Kalashnikov is considered by some to be an “assault weapon” because of its pistol grip, detachable magazine, and general resemblance to the military AK-47, but remember that “assault weapon” is just a made-up word that doesn’t mean anything.

UPDATE: An excellent essay by John Lott.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – A burglar in Montgomery chose the wrong family to mess with, literally. Adrian and Tiffany McKinnon returned home on Tuesday after a week away to find that thieves had emptied almost everything the family of five owned, Tiffany McKinnon said through tears.
. . .
“My husband Adrian caught the thief red-handed in our home,” she said. “And what is even crazier, the man even had my husband’s hat sitting right on his head.”

Adrian McKinnon held the suspect, 33-year-old Tajuan Bullock, at gunpoint and told him to sit on the floor until he decided what to do.

“We made this man clean up all the mess he made, piles of stuff, he had thrown out of my drawers and cabinets onto the floor,” Tiffany McKinnon said.

Maybe he picked the right family to mess with, if this cop’s quote is any indication:

When police arrived, Bullock complained about being forced to clean the home at gunpoint.

“This man had the nerve to raise sand about us making him clean up the mess he made in my house,” she said. “The police officer laughed at him when he complained and said anybody else would have shot him dead.”

Funny.

Update: This story was also picked up at HotAir.