Comments and Responses (Armed Liberal)

Comments and Responses

Here are some comments from the San Ysidro post below, with my comments interspersed.

My views on gun control aren't as strong as they used to be, but I just gotta point out: at the airport, we're dealing with armed f/t security prepared for the worst. (In several European airports, police patrol El Al baggage claim holding automatic weapons.) Unless we're going to have armed guards right at the entrance to McDonalds (which they have in Israel now), a suicidal shooter is going to get off more rounds there than at the airport. Maybe not 21, OK. But some.

I get kinda worried by people who think a gun permit conveys Spidey-Sense, too. They're gonna be shooting up mailmen and paperboys. Maybe even themselves.

Andrew Lazarus

Andrew: Two main responses; First that unless we are willing to live in a world where there is a policeman on every corner, with the concomitant impact on civil liberties, Ill suggest that well never get a high enough density of police/guards to effectively stop these events, as opposed to cleaning up afterwards, which is what typically happens now. Next, that I dont know anyone who thinks possession of a gun conveys spidey-sense, and while Im willing to let the implied insult roll, the simple factsthat shootings in states where CCWs are must issued havent skyrocketedmight give you some ground to reconsider.

I didn't follow your reference to Australia. Care to clarify?

-- tim Dunlop

Gun crime in OZ has declined, but not at any greater rate than it did before the buyback (see Guns And Crime: Gun Control in Australia I havent seen any data contradicting the data and conclusions there, including the INSA study in 2000.

Steve L., I think you missed my point. I think that the significant difference between the McDonalds shooting and the LAX shooting is that at El Al check-in counters worldwide, there are armed, alert security personnel whose full-time job is protection. I think it's a dangerous fantasy to believe that armed fellow passengers in line could have done a better job of stopping this suicide attack. In fact, I put that right up there with dreaming that you're Spiderman. A surprise attack where the terrorist just wants carnage and doesn't intend to survive and there isn't already someone on guard is going to be "successful", maybe not as successful as the 21 victims in the McDonalds but a lot more than the two victims at LAX.

If we really have a lot of gun-toting honest citizens who think their superhuman reflexes are going to head off unexpected, unprovoked terrorist attacks by other gun-toting malevolent citizens, I think I'll stay in the basement until the crossfire dies down.

-- Andrew Lazarus

Yeah, Ill agree. I dont think San Ysidro would have been prevented by the presence of an armed civilian. But it might have been mitigated. And how many of the 19 people who dies in San Ysidro would have had to survive before youd consider that a positive result?

Hartin's post is an example of exactly the kind of thing I object to. He believes, and would have us believe, that England and Australia are terribly dangerous places. That's false. I know that there are some statistics floating around, but I know people who have lived in both places.

He believes, and would have us believe, that armed self-defense has always been the primary source of personal safety. That's false too -- the rule of law works a lot better.

St. Onge says that someone carrying a gun is unlikely to use it in any given year. Sure, but a statistically small number of uses can be pretty awful.

If "concealed carry" is by permit, it is a form of gun control. And if carriers are screened, I don't have a big problems with that. Most second amendment guys don't want any regulation or registration at all, though.

Note that both St. Onge and Hartin are totally passive about the "causes of violence". We're just a violent country, nothing can be done about it, gun ownership isn't the cause, and since we're a violent place we should all arm ourselves. Somehow the fact gets lost that, even after arming ourselves, we're still less safe than people in a lot of other countries.

If I have a gun, I can protect myself against fists, clubs, and knives. Against guns, only maybe. The initial advantage is lost, especially because an evildoer with a gun has the initiative.

Nobody took up what I said about the third-world places where every man is armed and armed self-defense really is the only safety you have. Those are NOT safe places.

-- Zizka

Ziska: Your assumptions about England and Oz are off-base. I know people who live in Moscow right now, and they havent been mugged, so is Moscow safe today? The plural of anecdote isnt fact; you have to dig into the real numbers somewhat, and the reality is that major cities in Europe are as dangerous or more so than major cities in the U.S. right now.

And at what point in history before the foundation of modern police forces by Robert Peel in London in the 1820s was armed self-defense not the primary source of personal safety? You flatly misread history there.

Its no more true that 2nd Amendment absolutists want no regulation than that gun control advocates want no guns. The reality is that both political organizations are increasingly radicalized. Sadly, because I know that the large majority of gun owners would accept some reasonable regulation (I know Im handwaving a bit here), as long as it was tied to some irreducible right rather than being this years slice of the salami.

No, the issue isnt that were a violent country so we should do nothing; its just that we are a violent country and this piffle about gun control gets in the way of finding and fixing the problems that make us so.

Your facts about armed self-defense arent true either; the average gunfight takes place at close range, a number of shots are fired, few if any hit, and it takes ten to fifteen seconds.

Hartin: I find your analysis simplistic. There are societies that are highly armed that are relatively safe against personal crime, and ones that are terribly dangerous. There are societies that are lightly armed that are safe and I suppose there are ones that are dangerous, although, frankly, I'm having a hard time thinking of one. I've spent about 2 months in the UK over the last 5 years, and believe me I wasn't walking around scared. What bothers me the most about your argument, however, is that it appears to me to be based on symbolic or ritualistic thinking. In other words, the UK and Australia are going to have high crime because they've gotten on the wrong side of the Gun God and the right to self-defense. Sometimes you look like you're writing a statistical argument (one which I suspect is false: Australia is a safe country), sometimes you seem to believe that a philosophical/historical argument compels the desired statistical results. I don't think so.

I've decided that some gun control groups have indeed missed the target: the target is gun crime (and I suppose gun accidents), not gun ownership. But your metaphysical arguments don't sway me.

-- Andrew Lazarus

Well, were in agreement the target is gun crime. But then why does everyone focus on the one variable that is a) relatively uncontrollable there are more than enough guns in the world today to provide for criminals for the next millennium; and b) shown not to have major impacts on the gun crime we are concerned with?

This thread all got started from the comparison of the 21 dead in the San Ysidro massacre with the 2 dead at LAX, with the clear implication that more people carrying guns around McDonalds would have cut down on the death toll. And I've been saying that is only very partially true. Even people carrying guns (but who are not armed security guards looking for troublemakers) won't get the drop on a suicidal lunatic who comes in gun[s] blazing. First they'll have to put down their Big Macs.

You don't seem to accept this. Hence I am very worried that your faith in the defensive capabilities of firearms is exaggerated.

-- Andrew Lazarus

No, Andrew, I know for a fact what the defensive capabilities of firearms are; Ive done force-on-force training and studied the literature on the subject extensively. It would be useful to find people who wanted to debate this issue who had done the samething. It might get us past rhetoric, and on to problem-solving, because (unlike many in the gun world who wont admit this I believe because they feel its like giving your arm to a shark) I believe we do have a horrible problem with gun crime in this country, and Im ready, willing, and able to sit down with people who really want to solve it.

This has been a relatively civil thread on a heated and controversial topic; I want to thank everyone even you, Andrew! and look forward to more. Maybe we can find a path through this together. We certainly wont do it alone.

Posted on October 7, 2002 1:51 PM | Permalink

Comments (66)

Anonymous:

AUTHOR: Andrew Lazarus

EMAIL: drlaz@attglobal.net

IP: 64.160.53.73

URL:

DATE: 10/17/2002 09:52:45 PM

Date: 10/07/2002 00:00:00 AM
Well, I;ll try to be civil. And, Armed, if you tell me that your best guess is that 3 or 6 or 18 of the victims in San Ysidro would have died anyway, based on your experience of how long it takes to use your own gun in self-defense, I'll take your word on it. Because you are using the type of calculation that makes sense to me, and you can give an educated guess (and I can't). What I don't respect is a calculation based on a belief that wider distribution of guns will create a Zeitgeist that somehow prevents or mitigates gun crime by suicidal nutcases. This all sounds like the logic of proselytizers thinking the human nature will transform if everyone converts to their favorite religion.Interestingly enough, I live in one of those cities where (like NY), the violent crime rate dropped significantly during the 1990s, enough to help revive the downtown area. So I'm actually less worried about gun crime than I used to be. [comment continued in another post for length limits]