Watch the video and count how many incidents of Disparity of Force and Reasonable Fear can you catch. There is a nasty concept that some police forces are being told not to intervene or keep it to a barely minimum like the orders given in Baltimore over Freddy Gray.

I am not expecting the “if”  but the “when” and the “how many.”

“This business will get out of control. It’ll get out of control, and we’ll be lucky to live through it.”

Hat Tip to Tim Z.

https://youtu.be/RxxwVb1XDkE

We wrote about the shooting of agitated convenience store customer Shawn Breland by an open-carrying “firearms instructor” (it says so, right on his shirt) when the incident took place in early April.We noted at the time that the “instructor’s” decision to follow Breland out of the store, overtly attempting to get his license plate number, was a dangerous and needless provocation, roundly panned by defensive firearms experts and serious students of self-defense alike

Source: “Firearms Instructor” Avoids Charges After Shooting Man in Shoving Match – Bearing Arms

”You are not sworn to endanger your life to apprehend a dangerous criminal, nor you are paid to do it.”

Jim Cirillo

Our mandate is to avoid or survive any dangerous situation, not to go into them. But I am not going to pound on the instructor but make a point that may go against the grain: He probably did not see anything wrong or provocative on getting the plates. That does not mean he was right or gets a pass, I am simply stating that his mindset was not properly trained and he was acting truly as society thinks good guys should act. How many times have we seen on TV on both movies and reality/news show police asking if anybody saw the license plate number of an offending vehicle and bemoaning that nobody did?

The problem is that most people do not understand that the criminal mind operate with a totally different software than they do. As we understand that there are limits to our behavior and have embedded a deep sense of respect for human life that is not ours, criminal have zero respect for any life that is not their own nor care about the conventions of civilized society.  The best example I can give you is those people who you seen in Youtube approaching and/or petting a wild animal and then being trounced by it. In their souls, they were being affectionate and non threatening, but the wild animal does not give a damn about your intentions but only cares about priorities. You not touching them is high on their list.

I believe that is what happened in this case. The instructor saw nothing provocative on checking the license plate at what most of us would consider a safe distance, but that did not turn out to be the case. The instructor probably acted with good intentions in his heart, but the reaction of the other subject proved he was in the wrong: he became more aggressive, followed the instructor inside the store and got physical with him. The result was one death and a load of legal problems.

It sounds egotistical, but in cases like this caring for one’s life is primordial and anything else comes second including other lives. We cannot predict the outcome of our interventions no matter how pure our hearts might be at the time.

I have been around guns as long as I can remember.  My dad took me shooting the first time when I was about six or seven, and I was hooked.  I went shooting often.  When I turned 18 I bought my first gun.  I’ve had CCW permits since I was 21, and carry as often as I can.  Many of my friends own guns.  The college I went to had a gun club that I was an active participant in.

I do not know anybody who has been shot or killed in an act of gun violence.  I have never shot or killed anybody else.

To read what the acolytes of Bloomberg publish at The Trace or post on Facebook, that should not be possible.

The Facebook post links to this article: One City, Two Americas: Portraits From NRA Weekend in Louisville.  The tagline for the article is “Striking images show how gun culture is celebrated, and mourned.”

If the Bloombergians didn’t have dishonesty, they wouldn’t have anything at all.

The article pictures NRA members and gun rights activists next to gun safety control activists.  The article juxtaposes the NRAAM against gun violence in Louisville.

“On Sunday, the city woke to news of Donald Trump’s call to arm school teachers, and of a double homicide on the West End, where much of the city’s gun violence is concentrated. Neither headline came as a surprise.

In 2015, Louisville recorded its deadliest year in over three decades. From January through April, more than 150 people have been shot inside city limits, a 40 percent increase over the same period last year.”

The profiles of the gun safety control activists included details of the shooting that spurred their activism.

Let’s be honest, shall we.  As much as the antis like to paint this as two sides to the same gun culture coin, it’s not.  On the left is American gun culture.  On the right is the product of thug culture.  I’m not suggesting that Antonio Tharpe or his uncle were thugs, but the gang who shot him over a dice game were.  Tragically, one does not need to be a thug to be the victim of thug culture.  One just has to be an innocent bystander when the shooting happens.

We know who is responsible for the increase in shootings in Louisville, across the city from where the NRAAM happened.  An increase in the number of gangs, fueled by drug dealing and poverty, is the cause of the problem.  This is the same issue that is causing crime spikes in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and other cities.

Let’s be clear, there is nothing in common between the law abiding, freedom loving, culture of gun ownership that the NRA and like minded individuals celebrate, and the drug dealing, murdering, culture of gang violence that is killing kids in the street.  To say the two are related if not the same is a bold face lie.  Defending the civil liberties of law abiding citizens is not equivalent to an obsession with drugs and violence.  If they were the same, having more than 78,000 NRA members, many of the carrying concealed, in teh same place at the same time, would have been a blood bath.  But it was not.  As far as I have been able to determine, no NRA member, 1911 aficionado has ever shot a Glock fanboy over his choice in pistol.  Thug culture, on the other hand, encourages a group of one gang affiliation to  shoot someone over the color of their shoes.

One of these things is not like the other.

Going through the Everytown Facebook comments on this, of course the SJ left HAD to figure out a way to make race part of this issue and try to make the NRA look racist in doing so.

So allow me to make things a little clearer for them.

This is gun culture.  Mr. Colion Noir, an attorney, posing with his lawful AR-15 at a range, maintaining safe gun handling procedure.

This is thug culture.  An anonymous gang member, posing with his illegally shortened shotgun, pointing it at the cameraman.

See the difference?

Of course not.  Why let facts get in the way of ideology.

Unbeknownst to me, at the same time that I was punting the hornets nest on the issue of Gun Culture 2.0 and women, SayUncle was covering a post by PJ Media  on items for women at NRAAM.

The theme was: gun + pink = lady gun.

I have heard the complaint ad nauseam that pink guns don’t appeal to women.

So let me set the record straight on my beliefs on this issue.

I am an ardent free market capitalist.  I believe if there is a niche out there that is not being filled or being filled poorly, fill it yourself.

There are guns that I want, and would LOVE to have that nobody makes.  Why don’t other companies make them?  I don’t know.

God, luck, and financed willing, one day I’ll be rolling my own when it comes to guns.  I’ll design what I think will sell.

If I’m right… BANK!!!

If I’m not… bust (or change in business model).

All I can do is encourage more women who like shooting to start their own ranges and their own training schools and even their own gun or accessory companies.

I don’t want to design guns for women, for the same reason I don’t want to design pants for women.  I don’t know what they want.

But, if one day, I’m cranking out my own products, I’ll be happy to hire some women shooters to design what they think will attract more women into shooting, and we’ll let the market see if they’re right.

There is plenty of room in the tent for everybody.

Sirhan Sirhan was a Palestinian Arab with Jordanian citizenship, born in Jerusalem and very anti-Zionist. Even applying the laws as we have them now,  he would have passed the Background check and waiting period since he was not a felon, nor was adjudicated mentally unstable or was a wife beater.

Dear Everytown, next time select a victim that would have been saved according to your guidelines and was not killed by somebody who in this day and age, would be sitting with the liberal leadership of the Democratic party.

I am thinking if we get every NRA member to pony up $100 and then write a massive check to the Clinton Foundation, not only Hillary will shut up about guns, but get Bill neutered, give Chelsea he much-needed orthodontic work,  tell the ATF to re-interpret the Hughes Amendment favorably for gun owners and bring NFA to $5 and a three-day waiting period.

And free ammo.

An XDS-9 came in the mail today for a customer. I turned the case to the side and there it was: the “NOT LEGAL IN CALIFORNIA” warning.

Always so special, Kali. They take really good care of their citizens there. From special lawnmowers to special (that is, limited) firearms–I’m sure safety has arrived and everyone enjoys an idyllic and bucolic lifestyle.  And with the recent batch of laws, folks on the internet have again turned to debating what can be done, if at all, to stop or reverse firearm legislation there. Some are sure it’s too late now and there is nothing to do; it will continue to get worse. Others say there is perhaps a glimmer of hope, given some recent court rulings, and things would get better.

One of the side effects of prohibitions is that over time you don’t just ban the object or action (or severely limit or control their use) but also eradicate the culture around it. And by culture we don’t mean the core “gun culture” as we identify it, but also all of the peripheral things that go along with it: merely a general awareness by the population at large that guns exist, that people use them, that there are businesses around them, marketers for those businesses and so on. Once that is gone, then it becomes even more difficult for the core gun culture to achieve not just legislative wins but also cultural acceptance. It becomes a bit of a vicious circle: there is no gun freedom because there is no gun freedom to be wanted and demanded. After a few generations nobody will be left to remember what it was like to have it. Granted, in today’s modern world of instant communications and cheap travel, people can see how things are elsewhere, so perhaps a possibility of change for the better. Of course, the upcoming election is likely to determine many things. But that’s another matter altogether…