Massad Ayoob's Blog, page 130

A BATTLE, NOT THE WAR

I think we all have a right to a “high five” over Harry Reid’s announcement that the assault weapons ban is going to be dropped from the Democrats’ current legislative package in the Senate.  However, it’s far too early to declare victory and go home.

Dianne Feinstein has already announced that she’ll try to restore it as a late amendment to other legislation before the session is over.  And there are still the matters of the proposed ban on standard capacity magazines, and the “universal background check” remaining before Congress.  The latter, of course, has particularly huge loopholes which promise to criminalize the innocent, and create the gun registration which, historically, has been a precursor to gun confiscation.

And, the fight continues in numerous theaters.  New York, where the already passed and ironically named “SAFE Act” waits to trickbag citizens of the Empire State.  Colorado, where Governor Hickenlooper is expected to sign a truly Draconian anti-gun package into law this very day.  Connecticut, where some totally off-the-wall legislation is under discussion at the state house. And the rest of the country.

An excellent perspective on the hidden dangers in some of this poorly conceived legislation is seen here: http://completecolorado.com/pagetwo/2013/03/19/colorado-magazine-ban-range-officer-perspective/ .

At best, we’ve won one round of a long fight.

That’s my take, anyway…what’s yours?

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“VIGILANTE,” MY BUTT

So, this hefty mammal is stomping the crap out of a woman he once claimed to love, and a passerby who has fought for his country stops to help.  The Creature From the Testosterone Lagoon decides he’ll stomp him into jelly, too.  Ordinary size military vet with concealed carry permit from Wisconsin basically says, “Uh, no” and draws his 9mm pistol and takes the woman -beater now assaulting him at gunpoint. Woman-beater decides not to push the matter.

Street-savvy cops arrive, sort things out, can tell good guy from bad guy.  Bad guy arrested, good guy is recognized as such, and gets accolades from the sheriff, as seen here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/16/charlie-blackmore-marine-veteran-draws-gun_n_2891176.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl8%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D284796 .

HuffPost, not exactly what you’d call a pro-gun entity, gives him props.  Cool so far.

Read all the way to the bottom, to where Huffington Post compares him to other “vigilantes.” In a bizarre twist of journalism, they include a high profile case not yet adjudicated in Florida as an example of “vigilante justice,” along with Jack Ruby and some guy who threw marbles at a traffic control camera.

Uh…does anyone who writes for HuffPost understand words like “research”?  Do they understand that “words mean things”?

The term “vigilante” comes from “vigilance committees,” folks on the nineteenth-century American frontier who gathered together without benefit of government authority – in a time and place where there WAS no such thing to speak of – and became judge, jury, and occasionally executioner of those they felt were wrong-doers.

In the instant case, we have a man who fought for his country and carried a pistol to protect himself, his loved ones, and others within what the law would call “the mantle of his protection.” He made, essentially, an absolutely appropriate citizen’s arrest, and kept a helpless woman from being beaten to death.

“Vigilante,” my ass.

The words you were groping for, HuffPost, were “Good Samaritan.” Or, if that’s too many syllables for your current generation of reporters and editors, maybe just…”Hero.”

But, hey, I’m an old dinosaur who thinks in the Old Ways.

What do you, reading this, think?

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HYPOCRISY ALERT

By now, you’ve all heard about Mark Kelly, former astronaut and the husband of Gabby Giffords, who was grievously brain-damaged in the mass murder spree by the madman Loughner in Tucson.  After establishing his territory as a high-profile opponent of “assault rifles” and “high capacity magazines,” he was observed and photographed buying an AR15 to go with his new 1911 .45 pistol.

As soon as he was “outed,” he claimed he was doing it to show how easily such armament could be acquired. (Like it wasn’t already legal for law-abiding people to buy those guns.) He added that he planned to give it to the Tucson Police.

This strikes me as right up there with, “Your Honor, I only bought that heroin and cocaine to get it off the street and show the world the scope of our drug problem…and then I was gonna turn it over to the DEA.”

David Codrea, one of our most indefatigable fighters for gun owners’ civil rights, deconstructs Kelly’s lame excuse here.

And of course, the gun control propaganda machine mainstream media comes to Kelly’s aid. For him, it’s not an “assault weapon,” it’s just a different kind of rifle. Dissected by Dave Workman, here.

Whew.  It’s chilly out today, but I feel an urge to go to the shooting range nonetheless.

It should be at least one place that’s free from blatant hypocrisy.

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RECHARGING THE BATTERIES

Recently got home from the 2013 Polite Society event, a/k/a National Tactical Conference, in Memphis.  A symposium like this allows you to recharge your batteries and remember what you fight for. There were roughly 150 attendees – 25 of them teaching – and damn near all of them were carrying loaded guns the whole time.  The name of the conference comes from a Robert Heinlein quote popularized by armsmaster Jeff Cooper: “An armed society is a polite society.”  One quick translation of that is, creatures with fangs and claws do not see other creatures with fangs and claws as prey…and unless it’s a mating issue or a turf issue, they generally leave them the hell alone.

There were too many fine presentations to relate here, though each is discussed on an upcoming ProArms podcast that four of our crew who attended were able to record in the car on the way home.  Yes, the drive of eleven hours each way was more than worth it for what we got out of the conference. It is not “up” yet, but should be soon; patience appreciated.

Many of the presenters and attendees alike were cops or retired cops. Across the board, there was unanimous agreement that the current trend toward private citizen disarmament was deplorable and wrong-headed.  Host Tom Givens, the founder of the program, made a telling point: real-world analysis of violent crime indicates about a one-in-thirty chance that any individual American will face it at some time in his or her life.  (Virtually ALL of the presenters had come face to face with it already, one reason they were selected to teach.) Tom pointed out that over the years, sixty or more of his civilian graduates have been involved in lethal force encounters.  All but two prevailed and survived.  The two who didn’t prevail, died.  Not coincidentally, those were the two who were unarmed when it happened.  Tom reminded us all of the advice of Jeff Cooper’s acolyte Mark Moritz, a gun-wise attorney: “The first rule of gunfighting is, Have A Gun!”

The eclectic program encompassed emergency first responder trauma care for gunshot wounds, stabs and lacerations, and blunt trauma injury, taught by MDs.  It included a veteran psychologist on one side and a homicide investigator on the other delineating how human predators think and act.  There was hand-to-hand work, and knife awareness, and recognition of assaultive behavior cues.  There was aftermath management: the blocs I taught revolved around lessons learned in some of the more recent homicide trials I’ve been involved in, including one a month ago, all of which were killings done in defense of self and/or others. (And yes, in each case the jury agreed.) The veteran cop who talked about “active shooter” scenarios deplored the fact that this has become the terminology, since human monsters such as those should be considered “active killers” or indeed, “active mass-murderers.”  He had been involved in two such incidents himself, both of which ended in the quick death of the monsters as soon as they were confronted with lethal force resistance, and he quite pointedly noted that some of the cases under discussion were ended by armed citizens who saved countless lives.

Time with people who understand the ugly reality of having to stop murderers, is time well spent for those who may have to one day face such murderers.

And “those who may have to one day face such murderers” includes everyone reading this, and indeed, everyone, period.

Thanks to Tom Givens and his team for making this top-tier level of training available to law-abiding private citizens, as well as the many cops who were in attendance.  Next year’s program will be held on February 21-23, 2014 in Memphis, and you can get more information from the Rangemaster Website.

 

 The RangeMaster complex in Memphis had room to train 150 good people.

Jon Hodoway gave an excellent lecture on the survival capabilities that can be found in an ordinary smart phone.

J

Ever heard of SouthNarc? He’s retired from police work now, so I can finally publish his picture…and I’ve long recommended his street-wise training.

Here, I’m briefing the audience on lessons learned from recent homicide trials. On screen is the Ruger .45 used in a self-defense shooting.

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UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: THE HIDDEN COSTS OF “GUN CONTROL”

Bill Dietrick, observing from a long career serving his country and the public interest, has this to say about gun industry companies being driven from their home states by insane feel-good laws being promoted at the state house level:

Something to keep in mind in regards to firearms manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors, etc. moving their operations: the economic loss to the state is far greater than those jobs would indicate.

For instance, Remington is seriously negotiating to move out of New York, with five other states, as a result of Cuomo’s ill-considered ramming through of his new idiot bills.

Remington is the economic mainstay business of Ilion, New York. True, they’d perhaps directly lose perhaps 2,500 jobs, but consider how many other people depend on those jobs for their livelihood.

If those folks move, there goes the income for the firefighters and cops (not as many needed), the real estate agents, the car dealers, the grocers, the clothiers, etc. etc. Ilion will become a ghost town.

All directly attributable to Cuomo’s self-aggrandizing posturing.

The losses will be monstrous.

Mag-Pul and its subsidiary suppliers may actually only move 800 jobs directly out of Colorado, but figure, at minimum, double that in lost jobs.

Then, how about the loss to the state in the form of property tax, sales tax, vehicle tax, gasoline tax, etc? These politicians think Mag-Pul is bluffing. I assure you they are not.

Neither are Remington, Beretta, etc.

They may piss off their constituents to the point we’ll not see another Democrat majority for decades, which wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all.

…And here is a New Jersey employer explaining to legislators how their proposed anti-gun law is making it harder for him to import qualified personnel, and is driving New Jersey workers to other states.

Meanwhile, a lady in Florida who got herself elected to the state house there now proposes a law that no one can purchase ammunition unless they show proof of having taken an anger management class.  (You know: the kind of class the young mass-murderers Klebold and Harris reportedly took before they slaughtered their classmates at Columbine High School in 1999.) Read about it here: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/06/florida-lawmaker-wants-anger-management-courses-for-ammunition-buyers/

 

Madam, if your goal is to achieve anger management, why do you provoke general public anger by insulting the intelligence and mental competence of your entire constituency? Talk about unintended consequences…

 

Senator Gibson, if you wish to reduce collective anger in the Sunshine State, I respectfully suggest that you withdraw your asinine bill.

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GUNS AND EQUALITY

The gun has long been called an equalizer.  As in, “God made men, and Colonel Colt made them equal.”

My friends and colleagues at the Second Amendment Foundation have a new push for this theme: see it here. http://www.examiner.com/article/saf-launches-equal-gun-rights-campaign?cid=db_articles

The gun is a force multiplier. As has been noted in this blog more than once, it allows a handful of beleaguered black Americans to fend off larger numbers of Klansmen.

The gun allows the righteous few to hold their own against many who are doing violent wrong. Do a Google search for Elfego Baca. Wise modern gun experts from Don Kates to Tamara Keel have pointed out that if you want to know how warm and fuzzy it would be to have a world without guns, you have only to look back to the outlawry and oppression of the Middle Ages.

The gun allows the female of our species – generally smaller and lighter, and always with proportionately less upper body strength and less cultural predispositioning to using physical force – to defeat men attempting to rape her.  The modern feminist version of the Old West saying about Colonel Colt and equality is the popular tee-shirt slogan that says, “God made men and women equal…and Smith & Wesson keeps them that way.” I remember one of my graduates who confronted a burglar in her home. She drew her gun and snapped, “Don’t move!” He came at her. She shot him in one of his upper limbs. He came at her again.  She shot him dead with a bullet to center chest. The shooting was, of course, ruled justified. To this day, I shudder to think what this aggressor would have done to her if she hadn’t had her SIG-Sauer.

The gun allows the poor and powerless to protect themselves as well as the rich and powerful. It is axiomatic in our country that any citizen should be able to become President. A poor kid raised by his grandparents recently did so, and got re-elected.  He and his family are surrounded by Secret Service agents with high cartridge capacity firearms. Us ordinary po’ folks don’t have heavily armed security guards provided by taxpayer funding to guard us and our families like Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, or Michael Bloomberg.  How sad and ironic that the poor kid who grew up to be President doesn’t want your potential-future-President kids to be protected as his own potential-future-President children are.

Equality. Freedom. Guns.

Yes, they all do belong in the same sentence.

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TIME GROWS SHORT

We’re getting to crunch time. According to the folks at Breitbart, the Feinstein “assault weapon” ban bill goes before the Senate committee Thursday, February 28. Details here: http://www.breitbart.com.

People, we’re up against the heaviest and most underhanded full-court press against the civil rights of gun owners that this nation has ever seen.  Mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly threatened Democrats in the Colorado state legislature that if they didn’t vote for Draconian gun bans, he’d use his billions to finance Democrat challengers to unseat them in the next election.  The White House is calling state legislators to intimidate them into voting for gun bans at the state level.

And now, we are told that the Obama White House has fielded Internet ninjas, apparently with liberal use of fraudulent accounts, to create the illusion that a huge majority of Americans want our legislators to take our rights away: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/obama-admin-aims-keyboard-commandos-at-gun-control_022013 .

If you haven’t yet contacted those who represent you on Capitol Hill, now is the time. If you have, contact them again and remind them.

I hear a lot of gun people saying, “Aw, they’ll never pass the ban.”  I think they’re whistling past the graveyard.  Remember that any bill which includes a provision for registering firearms will be a precursor to confiscation, as it has virtually always been in the past.

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YA CAN’T MAKE THESE FECES UP…

So, the man a heartbeat away from leading the Free World – and who has eagerly taken the point on gun prohibition for his Numero Uno – tells us we don’t need semiautomatic firearms to defend ourselves from home invaders because if we just have a double-barrel shotgun and fire it into the air with live ammunition, it will scare the bad guys off. (Scroll to the 6:20 mark)

Yeah, that’s it…hose out into the air and render empty and useless the only thing that can save your life from violent home invaders.  Ignore the fact that the ounce of lead you discharge with each pull of the trigger has got to come down somewhere…like a while back when a careless hunter emptied his muzzle-loader into the air, and the projectile came down and killed a teenage Amish girl far from the scene.

And, gee, if the purpose of defensive firearms is just to make noise guaranteed to scare violent, committed, homicidal criminals away, I guess all we need for ammo is blanks, huh?

Defending your home against (predictably multiple) home invaders with a two-shot weapon is rather like being forced into a boxing match alone against multiple opponents in the ring at once, and agreeing that you’ll stop punching after you’ve swung twice.  And if you’re going to just use it as a noisemaker, the way the VP supposedly told his wife to do, it follows both  your punches in that full-contact, bare-knuckle fight are gonna just have to be shadow-boxing “air punches.”

If our Vice-President has this to say about home defense, one has to wonder just how well-informed he is on other critical issues of the day.

My friend Dave Workman had this to say about Biden’s advice: http://www.examiner.com/article/biden-s-self-defense-advice-commit-a-crime?cid=db_articles .

The rush to gun prohibition is monumentally stupid, and the statement above by the White House “face of the (prohibition) movement” shows an appalling lack of knowledge by those driving the push to criminalize a huge percentage of our nation’s law-abiding citizenry.

Will the media make a mockery of Biden for his dangerously bad advice, the way they tried to do to Marco Rubio after he fumbled while reaching for a bottle of water when his mouth got dry during a speech?  Somehow, I’m not ready to bet the farm on that…

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OF MEDIA AND MONSTERS

The mainstream media marches in lockstep with the White House in an attempt to convince the public that good people must give up some of the most effective defensive firearms they can have to protect themselves and their families, because bad people have misused them. A Fox Channel regular noted last month that CNN has become pretty much a 24/7 telethon for “gun control.”

Everyone knows that the twisted Adam Lanza was the one who murdered twenty little kids and six helpless adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, yet few in our society can name Dawn Hochsprung, the courageous principal who died trying to disarm him with her bare hands and save the children. I hope I’m not the only one who wishes that this brave woman might have had the wherewithal to press a trigger and save 26 innocent lives including her own.

Now comes a revelation: police investigators have learned that Lanza was obsessed with exceeding the horrible “record” of murder victims racked up by the massively-publicized mad dog killer Anders Breivik in heavily-gun-controlled Norway in the summer of 2011. See this: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/18/adam-lanza-anders-breivik-norway-mass-killer/1929209/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=206567

More recently, there have been people demonstrating in Los Angeles to demand “justice for Christopher Dorner,” spinning monster into victim.  In the commentary on this very blog at http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2013/02/09/been-a-helluva-week/#comments  , I see people expressing sympathy for Dorner, the serial murderer and cop-killer who recently met his death by his own hand after he refused multiple calls to surrender and the cabin in which he was ensconced and shooting at police caught fire from heavy-duty tear gas canisters.  Since he didn’t murder the women he kidnapped and fastened to chairs or the man he carjacked by threat of death, I’m told, Dorner was kind and compassionate.  Gee…by that standard, Jack The Ripper must have been kind and compassionate because of all the women in Victorian London he DIDN’T murder, disembowel, and cannibalize.

Obviously, not having been directly involved in a real-life-and-death murder trial since, oh, the week before last, I have much to learn and catch up on…

Perhaps, instead of demonizing law-abiding firearms owners, the “mainstream media” should look inward and assess its own culpability in glorifying spree-killers and mass murderers, inspiring the next inevitable perpetrators who seek to die in a blaze of slick “glory.”

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ON VALENTINE’S DAY

On St. Valentine’s Day, I wish happiness and romance to lovers and spouses. It’s a time to reflect on our raisons d’etre.  In an adult lifetime spent debriefing firefight survivors, I learned that the almost universal epiphany in the aftermath of such events was the realization that when you fight to survive, you’re really fighting to return to the people you love…the people who define your existence.

We are embroiled in a battle that will, in the end, determine whether or not we keep the wherewithal to protect the people we love, and for them to protect themselves, now and in future generations.  The juggernaut of ridiculous laws that began at the state level in New York now seems about to crush rights in Colorado. By some interpretations, the Colorado legislation would make it illegal for you to hand your pistol to your spouse on the pistol range without a background check, because its passing hand to hand – even in your presence – might be considered a “transfer.”

See what my old friend and stalwart fighter for gun owners’ civil rights Michael Bane, a Coloradan, has to say about it here: http://michaelbane.blogspot.com/.

I’m hearing pundits and overconfident gunnies saying, “Aw, that won’t pass on a national level.”  Few thought it would be taken seriously in relatively gun-friendly Colorado, either, but it’s happening before our eyes.  We’re up against people with unlimited budgets, with the media behind them in an aggressive attack that has turned from reportage to flat-out propaganda. We’re up against people with the power to say to a few key legislators, “Don’t worry about getting re-elected. If you take the point for me on this, I’ll reward you with a cushy government appointment and you’ll never have to answer to voters again.”

Redouble your efforts to get the truth out. Write letters to the editors, worded politely, succinctly, and logically.  Join your state level gun owners’ civil rights group and become active, if you haven’t already.

Do it for the people you love.

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