Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The eternal question

"Witness screamed 'Why?' in gunman's face"

And even with no other data but that headline, one feels the presence of Unitarians. (Confidential to AFT: Race you to seminary!)

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Guess he thought the peace & love liberals were just going to sing Kumbaya and wait to be shot. Fucker forgot he was still in Tennessee.

Hmm. Sewanee...

mfheadcase said...

Yeah, if there is a proper way for unarmed folks to handle a crazy bastard with a gun in a crowded room, that is as close as it gets.

Running away? Only a chance of helping yourself, leaves anyone slower than you screwed.

Hiding? once again only helps yourself, and leaves you cornered if the psycho decides he has the time and ammo to do a search.

Do what ever the nice man with a gun tells you? If you are gonna be that helpful, might as well cut your own throat and save him the ammunition too.

Even my preferred option, returning fire, has more drawbacks. Confused witness may think you are one of the bad guys, so might the police when they finally get there. Beside, to the best of my knowledge, in most states it is illegal to be armed in a church.

A policy that mostly guarantees idiots like Adkisson have a turkey shoot.

Most available adults dogpiling the asshole with the gun? Priceless. Leaves the shooter alive the be charged, stops the shooting and the folks at greater risk have chosen to put their lives on the line.

And these were all folks who the likes of Ann Coulter would have informed us a week ago are lilly livered, yellow-bellied liberal chickenshits by default.

AG said...

Ann Coulter and his ilk on such things = Silence of the Lames. And I thank you for leaving me sitting here with "Dude Looks Like A Lady" running though my head.

Meanwhile, ah, the tangles of concealed carry. As I know I've mentioned, I'm a big fan of all ten of the Bill of Rights -- but in this case? I'll let Arminda address the question if she likes, but I'm wondering how many Unitarians attending Sunday services are gonna be carrying.

The whole everyone-packing prospect worries me for other reasons, too, not least the element of surprise. We all like to think we'd have our wits about us in something like this, but unless you're the bastard walking in with the arsenal, how trained does one have to be to mount an effective defense? I'm asking pretty seriously, actually; there's a case to be made for, say, trained officers and maybe veterans having the training to respond effectively, but I don't worry about them; it's the bubba who gets a .45 and takes it everywhere without benefit of actually knowing how to operate the damn thing in a combat situation. THAT guy will cause more trouble than he cures, and will most likely cause 5-0 no small amount of grief as well when, alas, the situation presents itself.

Thoughts?

mfheadcase said...

Considering i have a concealed carry permit, and have attended a Unitarian Church on a semi-regular basis in the past, you may be surprised.

But no, i never carried IN the church since IIRC Church buildings are on the list of places where people cannot carry legally, licensed or not. Schools and courthouses are also on that list.

These places also seem to be popular targets for armed rampages. And i don't think that it is a coincidence either.

Yeah, an untrained idiot with a gun can make these situation worse when they arise. But they also seem to arise less often in places where the attacker cannot tell who is armed by just glancing around for uniforms.

And maybe it is just because of who i am most likely to go shooting with : http://www.pinkpistols.org/ But the bubba with a .45 type is not one i tend to run into often in the fleshy world, though they are common online http://lonelymachines.org/mall-ninjas/

I have met a drag queen who owns a gold finished .50 desert eagle with pink grips... but she never carries it, preferring a compact 9mm for ease of concealment.

AG said...

Schools, courthouses, churches and bars, right? Or is the last one just a hopeful thing? (Seriously, the town I grew up in needed to stipulate that guns and bars are a bad mix. Your mileage may vary; I just grew up in a bubba-heavy little town.) Agreed re rampage frequency in those places, though as much as anything it's probably to do with places that have some emotional trigger for these wackadoos. That said, I wonder if (legislation aside) there's a middle ground here -- if you're gonna carry in certain places, someone has to know? I'm thinking the air-marshal program here.

Meanwhile -- PINK PISTOLS! I LOVE THESE GUYS! (Though the Seattle branch is a rotten trek for someone who does not drive. And I'm slated for motorcycle drivers-ed first. Long story.) And my regards to your drag-queen friend; herself need to post some photos...

(God, the Gecko45 files -- trying to remember if my "review" of that was something that posted to Late Lamented Tech_Space. Though alas I *have* met that guy offline; went to school with three or four of 'em in fact, as per previous description of hometown. They're still there in fact -- go home and you'll find those guys all sitting on car bumpers in the gas-station parking lot, talking crap. Always with the talking of the crap.)

MC said...

I am sad to say I actually saw that comment yesterday at the place it was original posted.

I go there just to get a little bit mad.

AG said...

I just love that you have a specific destination site for that effect, and that it is not simply news.google.com...

MC said...

Occasionally I am bemused by certain pieces of news on a wider news site. That and I always get distracted by the entertainment news at Google anyway.

mfheadcase said...

I do strongly agree that being drunk and being armed mix about as well as being drunk and behind the wheel... But there is such a thing as a designated driver, and if that person also has a carry permit, i see no reason for it to be illegal to carry in the bar.

As far as churches, make it the choice of the individual congregation whether to ban weapons on premesis, NOT the state legislature. That is the type of "feel good" legislation that lets people pat themselves on the back for "protecting" churches... while actually turning them into soft targets.

I am iffy on court houses, since they are often attached to jails and criminal courts as well. But despite the ban, shootings happen at family courts all to often, with the law abiding party guaranteed to be disarmed.

Schools have also been turned into a nearly guaranteed soft target, lets face it, the fact that it is a federal crime to carry a gun on school grounds does not even phase some asshole showing up to murder people... OTOH if schools had firearms safety and proficiency classes, and teachers who qualified for carry permits were allowed to use them, i suspect that even the psychos would seek out easier targets. Because violent and crazy =/= stupid.

Re the Malkin commenter... figures, surprised the commenter didn't claim that the shooter was "obviously an Atheist..." and never mind that UU=/=Christian.