I'll bet that, today, Officer Kittrick wishes that woman had been in the NRA and had had a gun handy so she could have shot the scary black dude herself, instead of leaving him to do it.
A modest proposal from RtO: In debates about the 2nd Amendment, can we abandon the one-to-one calculus of "bad guys shot" compared to "good guys shot"? I propose that when people in trouble seeking a Good Samaritan are shot to death, we should apply a multiplier (say, 3) to the total.
That is, when exercising your 2nd Amendment rights and shooting one traffic accident victim or little kid asking for a drink of water in the night, those deaths should NOT be treated as equivalent to shooting a carjacker. They should be treated as much worse. much more socially damaging.
(A personal prediction: A college friend who lived in that Tennessee Williamsian boarding house [precisely, its twin next door] I wrote about the other day ["Freedom, yeah," Sept.8] and today lives near the site of Kittrick's crime posts regular FB updates on gun safety courses he teaches, but I bet he won't mention this.)
Once again I ask: are you proposing that we disarm law enforcement?
ReplyDeleteAlso, the woman might well have been an NRA member. Just because one belongs to the NRA doesn't mean you're not allowed to call the police for defense.
How are you going to determine "good guy" and "bad guy" in your modest proposal? For example, when a member of a drug gang is killed in a gun battle, was he a "good guy" or a "bad guy?" Is it even possible to tell in a majority of cases?
Victims of traffic accidents and 4-year-olds for sure.
ReplyDeleteI think we could easily disarm "peace" officers. In my county, a peace officer has never been shot except twice: once by a crazy person who got the officer's gun; and once by an officer's wife.
There might be an argument for arming a minority of officers who are in districts where gun assaults are common -- maybe. Most of them, no need.
If YOU cannot tell who is the bad guy, though, then everybody needs to be disarmed because in that case all shootings are arbitrary. Even I don't claim that.
I'm claiming a heck of a lot more of them are bad guys than might appear on the surface.
ReplyDeleteThen there's this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/nyregion/firing-at-man-in-times-square-police-wound-two-bystanders.html?hp
I know you are. I believe you are in the brigade that thinks Martin was doing something shoot-worthy. That's what scares us: shoot first, ask questions never.
Do you think the guy shot in Charlotte was 'bad'? Show your work, please.
No. Anecdote and data are two different things though.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the guy shot in Charlotte was bad. Rather, he probably had some kind of head injury that made him suicidally stupid. Or just suicidal.
ReplyDeleteAs for me, I'm in the reality based community that thinks when you pin someone to the pavement and start pounding the crap out of them, you had better hope that person isn't armed.
Or do you think Zimmerman was doing something pounding-worthy?
Here is a modest proposal from the RtO commentator. In debates about the 2A, why don't you substitute actual arguments for reflexive, relentless demonization? I know that will be hard to do, since that sort of thing comes so reflexively to the Left, but give it a try anyway.
On my side of the argument: millions of 'not bad' dead and maimed Americans.
ReplyDeleteOn yours: millions of 'not bad' dead and maimed Americans.
On my side math, and reality.
ReplyDeleteMath: 2/3 of gun deaths in the US are due to suicide most, if not all of whom would have found another way to kill themselves (Hint: look at the British suicide rate before and after banning guns).
More math: How many years of gun deaths in the US does it take to get to millions?
More math: Of the remaining, the rate is 3.59/100,000. Probably half of them are African Americans. So leaving them aside, what is the rate for the rest of us?
Reality: Speaking of leaving them aside, how do you propose to take guns away from people who could not possibly care less about the law? And what do you say to people who would not rather rely upon the state for self-defense? (Which is to say, they who do not expect the impossible.)
But since you prefer magical thinking, instead of taking guns away from law abiding people, why don't you just magically make the crazy sane and the bad good?
You keep saying that suicides would eventually succeed if guns were not involved, but the mortality bills do not support that.
ReplyDeleteIt is a complex situation, obviously driven more by cultural factors than anything else, so that cross-cultural comparisons are at best suggestive.
But gun suicides don't get second chances.
Apparently, an unbeatable disarmament strategy is to get people to move out of the countryside. It would help the process if, also, the childish ideations about self-defense and saving the republic from imaginary insurgents were treated as the vapors they are.
A little more attention to events like this:
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/09/frantic_911_call_from_wife_of.html
In the comments, it is stated (I do not know if accurately) that one of the law-abiding citizens was caught DUI but not convicted, which allowed him to continue his CC permit.
My question to you is: In going among an armed populace, how do I know which are the law-abiding citizens and which are not?
Go ahead and find the suicide stats for any country that has prohibited guns -- that is an intra-culture comparison. In the UK, the rate has scarcely budged.
ReplyDeleteBut gun suicides don't get second chances. Newsflash: no successful suicide gets a second chance. Obsessing over one particular means, as you do, is quite beside the point. Banning firearms doesn't reduced the suicide rate, so using suicide as an excuse to confiscate guns is just that: an excuse, a pretext.
My question to you is: In going among an armed populace, how do I know which are the law-abiding citizens and which are not?
In going among an unarmed populace, you can be quite certain that the criminals will still be carrying guns.
It would help the process if, also, the childish ideations about self-defense and saving the republic from imaginary insurgents were treated as the vapors they are.
Only an axe grinding progressive would deny that the criminally inclined respond to incentives.
Non-black murder rates in the US are virtually the same as in Canada and the UK, and are decreasing faster than either of those countries.
There are many reasons why crime is so high among blacks, but one thing in common unites nearly all black urban communities: confiscationist gun laws.