Tex300BLK called it in our article Washington Post: “Watch what happens when regular people try to use handguns in self-defense.” “This is the straw man we have been made into,” Tex300BLK wrote. “The bumbling incompetent ‘civilian’ who went into Walmart, bought a GLOCK and a box of bullets and got a CHL without ever firing a shot from it . . . This is the new meme that the media will now go full court press on.” Just a day later, nashvillescene.com published a piece called Why Would You Want to Bring Your Gun to a Concert? A post that launches the term “Sheepdog Fife” to disscredit [sic] armed self-defense. Like this . . .
There are a lot of Barney Fifes in this country imagining themselves sheepdogs. And no matter how many times a kid accidentally shoots another kid or someone shoots a gun up in the air and a kid in East Nashville gets shot or whatever, it never causes Sheepdog Fife to look at his or her own situation and ask “Am I putting myself and my loved ones in danger? Is having a gun out and available to me necessary in this situation.” No, because so many gun owners are action heroes in their own minds . . .
Is there any likely scenario in which a regular joe with a gun in a crowded venue would not add to a tragedy, should one occur? If someone, God forbid, did open fire at a concert and Sheepdog Fife opened fire in return, it’s very, very likely that Sheepdog Fife is going to hit innocent people, even if Sheepdog Fife also hits the original shooter. Are the families of the victims of the “hero” supposed to be not pissed or even grateful that Sheepdog Fife was there with a gun? It’s also very likely that, if the police swoop down on an active shooter situation in a crowd, every active shooter—hero or villain—is getting taken down, because how are the police supposed to know that Sheepdog Fife is the good guy?
Again, America is home to 55k to 2.5 million defensive gun uses (DGUs) per year. There are [literally] countless examples of armed Americans defending themselves and other innocent life with a firearm. They aren’t “action heroes in their own mind.” They are citizens successfully stopping the threat of death or grievous bodily harm though force of arms.
As others have pointed out, as NYPD stats [above] prove, the police are more likely to injure innocent life with a firearm than a non-law enforcement civilian. And yet no one on the anti-gun side argues that the police should be disarmed.
It would be lovely if we could go back to the era when gun owners weren’t weren’t so fucking afraid of being a part of the world without their guns. But at least it’d be nice if Tennessee’s gun owners showed more sense than our state legislators. Just because you can take guns everywhere—or might be able to; I’m heartened to see that Nashville isn’t changing its policy until the courts rule we have to—doesn’t mean you need to. We keep hearing all about responsible gun owners. We need to start seeing them.
Sure, let’s go back to the time when African Americans were disarmed, left defenseless against state-sanctioned discrimination, rape, torture and murder. More to the point, there are none so blind as those who will not see.