Gun buy-backs are popular, but ineffective . It gives the community a false sense of hope that police departments are doing something to reduce crime when, in fact, those who possess firearms unlawfully never appear at those events.
James Barry Wright, former chief of police, Opa-locka

via No way to fight crime – Letters to the Editor – MiamiHerald.com.

But they make for good press and people think you “care.”

It is all optics… sadly.

No one with a three-digit IQ has blamed officers Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo for their own deaths: they were bushwhacked suddenly and without discernible warning. Not so the private citizen, Joseph Wilcox. An amazing number of people on the Internet accused him of “getting himself killed,” with one idiot even suggesting that he died while “playing Barney Fife.” An interesting parallel was seen on two threads over at www.glocktalk.com. In the “Carry Issues” section, quite a few people thought Wilcox had overstepped his bounds. They took the position that the gun they carried was only to protect themselves and their families, not the public. Interestingly enough, in the “Cop Talk” section of the same forum, police officers felt he had done the right thing and agreed with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, who publicly proclaimed Wilcox to have died a hero and probably saved multiple innocent lives by interrupting the plans of the two whacked-out murderers.
Readers…I’d be very much interested in hearing YOUR take on this.

via THREE WEEKS LATER… Massad Ayoob.

How would I respond? Defense of others is one of those situations that are tricky and can become a legal nightmare. But as Andrew Branca explains in his second podcast, an active shooter situation is perhaps the less legally troublesome of all.

But even that is just a legal platitude. How would I react if present at an event like that? We are not talking about if a shooter is coming your way and you have to choose between running and confronting. In my particular case no doubt I would confront as I believe that we humans, natural predators, are attracted to movement and I would call attention to the shooter; plus the fact that I don’t move fast and I am a big target does not make for good odds. So yes, I will engage and hope my accuracy under stress trumps madness.

The question remains: what would you do if you see an active shooting situation and you are not in immediate danger? Do you run to safety or do you engage? You decide, I can’t tell you what to do.  I can only tell you what I will do: I will engage if I can.

No the question: Why? Truthfully because that is who I am. Maybe it is because I felt powerless as a kid seeing my mother sick and not being able to help her and when I had the chance to start learning basic First Aid at 13 years old, I took to it with fervor (but never had the intention of becoming a doctor, go figure that.) And in one way or another and even haphazardly I have been acquiring training that is not possibly the best, but  I have the ability to do something right then and there when SHTF.

It is said that the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. I have been present when accidents happened or just happened and my reaction has always been the same: Go Help.  Car and other type of accidents, shootings, stabbing, you name it, I have come forward to help those. Maybe all it was needed is to stop others from doing more damage because of good intentions or having to don gloves and deal with bloody messes till more trained personnel arrived and took over.  I simply cannot stand by and see somebody just die because nothing was done on my part. And I am fierce about this as a supervisor found out when a stabbing victim landed on our laps and against his direct orders I treated him instead of watching him bleed waiting for paramedics to arrive.

Now extend that attitude to the carrying of the gun. Just as my first aid kit (or tactically now know as First Responder Kit), it is a tool for emergencies and to help myself not to bleed and/or die.  If I am willing to use my kit on myself and to help others live, there is no way in hell that I cannot apply the same concept to my gun.  And as much as I have preached that we as civilians have no duty to charge towards “the sound of musketry” I find myself in the contradictory situation to say I would not follow my own advice.  It is simply not in me to remain a witness to a massacre happening in front of me.

And knowing this might be a controversial issue and to avoid unnecessary arguments, the comments for this post will be closed. Again, whatever decision you make is yours and it is OK. and we do not need a “My position is better than yours” moral exchange.

A Gun Is  A Life Saving Device…

Demonstrating once more that “In your face!” activism does not work when applied to business, Moms Demand got evicted out of a San Antonio Target.

Now, if we could get certain idiots that claim to be on our side to stop doing the same crap….

I finally had a chance to listen to Andrew Branca’s podcast. Go subscribe now.  Don’t argue, do it.  The first three episodes alone are jewels to be memorized.

If you have an iPod thingie or iPhone equivalent, you can get it via iTunes and the other option is the RSS feed. 

Andrew has the great gift of explain things in such a way that even obtuse people like me go “Oh hell so that is what that means.”  Use this podcast along his book as part of you defensive lifestyle. It is cheaper than a box of good ammo and can save you tens of thousands of bucks in the long run.

I guess you do have to be prepared for any eventuality.  It is history now, but it has been forgotten that the whole Space Program back there had a total computer power of  a smart phone of today (and think how many people get screwed just following the wrong map inside their own city) on spaceships made of the thinnest material possible filled with chemicals that recreated the worst fires of Hell on Earth and to do something just 9 years before was said it could not be done.

No wonder this preparation was a necessity.

He is so toast…hehehe

This has to be one of the worst predictions ever in the history of Journalism.

Associate Press, no less.