This appeared in my local paper today. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My Comments in bold.
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Everybody’s got a pistol. This must really please the NRA” — from “Gun” by Gil Scott-Heron
So maybe the NRA is about to get its wish.
Here we are, a little over three weeks after the massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., a little over two weeks after the National Rifle Association said there should henceforth be armed guards at every school, and at least one school system, Marlboro Township in New Jersey, is taking its advice. Under a pilot program in partnership with local police, students who returned to school last week found their campuses patrolled by armed officers.
But here’s the thing. If this is truly a good idea — “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre in a news conference — then why stop there? After all, it is not just our schools that are being shot up. So let us follow this advice to its logical end.
Consider:
Four firefighters in upstate New York were shot, two of them killed, on Christmas Eve when they responded to a call and were ambushed by a man with a semiautomatic rifle. So we should have armed guards on all our fire trucks.
Two customers were killed two days before Christmas when armed men opened fire with semiautomatic handguns inside a grocery store in Delray Beach, Fla. So we should have armed guards at all our grocery stores.
Two people were killed and one injured on Dec. 11 by a gunman who started shooting at a shopping mall near Portland, Ore. So we should have armed guards at all our shopping malls.
Two people were killed and two others injured Nov. 6 when an employee started shooting inside a chicken processing plant in Fresno, Calif. So we should have armed guards at all our chicken processing plants.
One man was killed and five others wounded in a shooting at a New Year’s Eve party in a private residence in Lakewood, Calif. So we should have armed guards at all our private residences.
One man was killed, a pregnant woman and her unborn child wounded, in a Dec. 9 drive-by shooting on a street corner in Miami. So we should have armed guards on every street corner. (Obviously winning a Pulitzer prize does not ensure clear thinking. Mr. Pitts thinks he is being clever, but he clearly doesn't understand the idea of deterrence. For a criminal, the possibility of meeting with armed resistance will dissuade him in favor of easier pickings.
But more to the point, why shouldn't there be armed deterrence? If indeed there were armed guards in the fashion he describes, wouldn't there be a decrease in the events he chronicles? Really, how many of these would not have happened if citizens were routinely packing heat? That is not to say that I advocate placing armed guards in the fashion he describes, because it wouldn't be necessary. Just the sheer possibility of the presence of weaponry is enough.
Let's flip this around. By Mr. Pitts' criteria, how does he then justify an armed police force? How does the presence of weapons improve the situation? On what basis can Mr. Pitts claim that weapons are a good thing for police, but a bad thing for private citizens?
Or how about an analogy? Leftists want safe sex, and kids have sex, so we should have free condoms in schools. People have sex everywhere, so there should be free condoms everywhere. Oh, wait. That's already happening. I guess the logic works when it's a cause you agree with.)
By the reasoning of the NRA, you do not address that sad state of affairs by crafting laws that strive to balance the rights of responsible gun owners with the need to block the irresponsible, the dangerous, the criminal minded, the unhinged, from access to these WMDs. No, by the NRA’s reasoning, the solution to too many guns is more guns still (Mr. Pitts cleverly misrepresents the equation by shifting the terms in the space of two sentences. The problem is not too many guns, it is guns in the hands of "...the responsible, the dangerous, the criminal minded, the unhinged..." That is, the problem in not the number of guns, it is the improper distribution of those guns. But note from his above comments that he pooh-poohs the idea of having people legally equipped with guns. Now he is concerned with guns in the hands of evil people. Oh, and by the way. When has a state of mind {i.e., criminal minded} been illegal? How does Mr. Pitts know to not allow the possession of a gun based on the possibility the person is criminally minded?).
The organization frames this as a defense of freedom. To which the best rejoinder is provided by Gil Scott-Heron in the song quoted above: “Freedom to be afraid is all you won.” (Freedom can be a messy business. No one has suggested that possessing freedom will not have negative consequences. Freedom includes the freedom to engage in chaos. However, the second amendment freedom has the particular advantage of being able to deter chaos.)
It is a trenchant observation. Just the other day, two seventh graders in Tillamook, Ore., found a handgun, with a round in the chamber and the safety off, on the floor in a movie theater. It had apparently slipped out of the holster of one Gary Warren Quackenbush, 61, who said he felt the need for protection as he watched “The Hobbit.”
Quackenbush reportedly feared someone might shoot up the place — as happened in Aurora, Colo., last July during a Batman movie.(Seems like a justifiable conclusion. Happened once, could happen again.) So add movie theaters to the list of places we should have armed guards. We are a people shot through with fear, a nation under the gun (When people are committing crimes with impunity, and chaos reigns in society, and the government is powerless to stop it, the decision to protect oneself is natural and healthy. And isn't it ironic that the Left seeks to release criminals back into society on early release programs, or keep them from ever going to prison at all, or how they fight tooth and nail to abolish the death sentence, or to eliminate mandatory sentencing initiatives like "three strikes," and then they're surprised that crime is on the upswing and people want to protect themselves? The Left is exacerbating the problem while simultaneously decrying the proven and effective solution of arming oneself?).
And one wonders how much more of this “freedom” we can take.
Leonard Pitts Jr., winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
Or how about an analogy? Leftists want safe sex, and kids have sex, so we should have free condoms in schools. People have sex everywhere, so there should be free condoms everywhere. Oh, wait. That's already happening. I guess the logic works when it's a cause you agree with.)
That list, by the way, represents only a random sampling of recent shootings, most so run of the mill, so plain vanilla ordinary, they didn’t even make news outside their local areas. Which should give you an idea how common gunfire in this country is. According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, nearly 98,000 of us are shot each year, a figure that includes law enforcement activity. That’s 268 a day, 11 every hour.
By the reasoning of the NRA, you do not address that sad state of affairs by crafting laws that strive to balance the rights of responsible gun owners with the need to block the irresponsible, the dangerous, the criminal minded, the unhinged, from access to these WMDs. No, by the NRA’s reasoning, the solution to too many guns is more guns still (Mr. Pitts cleverly misrepresents the equation by shifting the terms in the space of two sentences. The problem is not too many guns, it is guns in the hands of "...the responsible, the dangerous, the criminal minded, the unhinged..." That is, the problem in not the number of guns, it is the improper distribution of those guns. But note from his above comments that he pooh-poohs the idea of having people legally equipped with guns. Now he is concerned with guns in the hands of evil people. Oh, and by the way. When has a state of mind {i.e., criminal minded} been illegal? How does Mr. Pitts know to not allow the possession of a gun based on the possibility the person is criminally minded?).
The organization frames this as a defense of freedom. To which the best rejoinder is provided by Gil Scott-Heron in the song quoted above: “Freedom to be afraid is all you won.” (Freedom can be a messy business. No one has suggested that possessing freedom will not have negative consequences. Freedom includes the freedom to engage in chaos. However, the second amendment freedom has the particular advantage of being able to deter chaos.)
It is a trenchant observation. Just the other day, two seventh graders in Tillamook, Ore., found a handgun, with a round in the chamber and the safety off, on the floor in a movie theater. It had apparently slipped out of the holster of one Gary Warren Quackenbush, 61, who said he felt the need for protection as he watched “The Hobbit.”
Quackenbush reportedly feared someone might shoot up the place — as happened in Aurora, Colo., last July during a Batman movie.(Seems like a justifiable conclusion. Happened once, could happen again.) So add movie theaters to the list of places we should have armed guards. We are a people shot through with fear, a nation under the gun (When people are committing crimes with impunity, and chaos reigns in society, and the government is powerless to stop it, the decision to protect oneself is natural and healthy. And isn't it ironic that the Left seeks to release criminals back into society on early release programs, or keep them from ever going to prison at all, or how they fight tooth and nail to abolish the death sentence, or to eliminate mandatory sentencing initiatives like "three strikes," and then they're surprised that crime is on the upswing and people want to protect themselves? The Left is exacerbating the problem while simultaneously decrying the proven and effective solution of arming oneself?).
And one wonders how much more of this “freedom” we can take.
Leonard Pitts Jr., winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
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