{"id":2930,"date":"2002-10-03T22:17:59","date_gmt":"2002-10-03T22:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=328"},"modified":"2002-10-03T22:17:59","modified_gmt":"2002-10-03T22:17:59","slug":"all-kinds-of-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2930","title":{"rendered":"ALL KINDS OF NEWS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, it\u0092s definitely a king-hell weird day.
\nFirst, and foremost, the shootings in Maryland, well covered by a number of new sources and bloggers today. Check out Dean<\/a> at \u0091Blogs4God\u0092, for local details. There\u0092s a lot of discussion on whether this is terrorism, a spree killing, or something else, and obviously there isn\u0092t enough information to have an opinion.
\nFor now, I\u0092ll call it a \u0091mucking\u0092<\/a> and suggest again that everyone go read \u0091Stand on Zanzibar\u0092<\/a>. It looks like the bad guy used a rifle from the back of a panel van, possibly with another sick SOB driving. He most likely parked where the back of the van could cover a place where there were a number of pedestrians<\/s> targets<\/u> and waited.
\nI have a hard time imaging how you defend against this with a traditional LEO response; you can pull all the box vans in the area and hope to get lucky, or more likely, someone will get a glimpse of a plate or distinguishing feature, or someone will overhear a plan or remember seeing something odd, a gun store will be able to track the ammunition, and he\u0092ll be tracked and, hopefully, captured. I hope the arresting officers are careful\u0085
\nAnd here I\u0092ll jump in with a pro-gun point, and compare two events, one indirectly mentioned by Susannah Cornett<\/a>.
\nIn 1984, in San Ysidro, CA (near San Diego), a nut whose name I won\u0092t publicize walked into a McDonald\u0092s with three guns, and killed 21 people.
\nIn 2002, at Los Angeles International Airport, another nut whose name I won\u0092t publicize walked into a terminal concourse with two guns and killed two people.
\nThe difference?? At LAX, an armed, trained ticket supervisor (with the help of some others who declined the shooter’s offer to be victims) engaged, shot and killed the shooter as soon as he opened fire.
\nIn the event of a \u0091low-level\u0092 (and believe me, to the families involved, this isn\u0092t \u0091minor\u0092, or \u0091low-level\u0092 or anything except apocalyptic<\/u>\u0085) terrorism, or random acts like this, the police are here to investigate, cleanup the mess, investigate, and when they find the Bad Person, overwhelm and hopefully arrest. This is a good thing. It\u0092s just not too useful to the 3rd through 19th people who die, if you know what I mean.
\nLook, this is an old and tired set of arguments. Lots of folks don\u0092t like guns, are horrified that anyone would own one, and firmly believe that incrementally ratcheting down the number of people who own guns is the best way to avoid these kind of tragedies.
\nIn an ideal world, they\u0092re right.
\nIn this world, they\u0092re wrong, as Australia and the U.K. suggest:
\n<\/p>\n

The one crime [in the U.K.] that has shown a stubborn unwillingness to fall is assault, especially street robberies. Police have been recording a 20 per cent rise in muggings, yet the BCS suggests there has hardly been a rise at all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>I\u0092m not going to weigh in with moral<\/a> arguments right now. It\u0092s been a bad day, and I need to take the weekend and get out of town.
\nBut let\u0092s look at this instrumentally.
\nWe have two \u0091success\u0092 stories in dealing with terrorism this go-round. Flight 93 and LAX. I\u0092m not suggesting that we arm passengers with handguns (although I do think we\u0092re crazy not to have immediately allowed pilots to have them). I am suggesting that the only form of defense that is likely to work while there the bodies are still breathing is to involve every one of us as an thoughtful, active observer of our environment, and someone who is willing to act appropriately when it is called for.
\nIn some cases, that will involve larger numbers of people with guns.
\nThey can be officers, standing on streetcorners, costing us tax dollars, and nosing deeper and deeper into our lives, or they can be citizens. Our pilot. The ticket agent. Our neighbors.
\nSome of then will screw up. Some of them will do bad things.
\nBut the reality is that they screw up and do bad things right now. And as far as I can tell from other folks\u0092 experience, it doesn\u0092t get better as you try and take the guns away.
\nAnd it doesn\u0092t get worse as you let people have them, either.
\nThink about it. Think about San Ysidro, and think about LAX. Think about how hard it will be to have a policeman catch the Maryland shooter at just the right time in just the right place.
\nFor those of you repelled<\/a> by firearms ownership outside the agents of the state think about this: Even if you don\u0092t agree with John Lott<\/a> that crime has gone down in must-issue states (where average citizens who pass background and training requirements can get permits to carry guns), I have seen no evidence that remotely and reasonably suggests that it has gone up.
\nSo if it doesn\u0092t effect crime, and it could<\/u> effect terrorism or \u0091mucking\u0092, what\u0092s the issue?
\nThink about the 19 lives difference, and wonder whether they could have been saved before you answer.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, it\u0092s definitely a king-hell weird day. First, and foremost, the shootings in Maryland, well covered by a number of new sources and bloggers today. Check out Dean at \u0091Blogs4God\u0092, for local details. There\u0092s a lot of discussion on whether this is terrorism, a spree killing, or something else, and obviously there isn\u0092t enough information […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}