By Parson Turnbull
There’s been a lot of discussion among members of the Armed Intelligentsia lately about how Connecticut’s finest might proceed if they decide to confiscate unregistered guns from the state’s 100,000 or more newly-minted felons. The level of concern is evidenced by daily long comment threads, speculative posts by people who are not members of law enforcement, and even a couple of contributed opinions from the LEO community. The rational consensus seems to be that if the gun-grab order were given, cops would pinch a registration scofflaw at the grocery store, at work, on the road…anyplace other than his or her home where a Ruby Ridge-style tragedy might ensue. Here I propose the alternative–that LEOs might not in fact be that rational if and when the time comes . . .
You may have read or at least heard about Malcolm Gladwell’s lookback at Waco in the New Yorker last week. It’s part book review (siege survivor Clive Doyle’s memoir has just been published), part interview and part history. Gladwell reprises what most people now know–that the Branch Davidians weren’t violent and almost certainly weren’t involved in the illegal gun trade or any other criminal enterprise. He also provides a brief and interesting history of the group, which was founded some 80 years before David Koresh came along.
Gladwell’s main theme, though, is the thought process and mentality of the law enforcement officials toward the end of the two-month siege. And that should give us all pause.
The F.B.I., to justify its decision to bring about a sudden and violent end to the siege, believed that the Branch Davidians were dangerously in the thrall of Koresh; it feared a catastrophic act like the mass suicide, in 1978, in Guyana, of the cult leader Jim Jones and his followers in the People’s Temple.
Where did they get this belief? From a perfect, unbiased source–an academic:
Doyle’s memoir emerged from an oral-history project conducted by the religious-studies scholar Catherine Wessinger, who maintains that the People’s Temple was an example of the “fragile” subset of millennial groups: defensive and unstable, and willing to initiate great violence in response to an outside threat.
But, as Gladwell observes, the Branch Davidians didn’t hide or keep people locked away in their compound. They didn’t sit around waiting for the end of the world. Instead, they “engaged freely and happily with the world around them.” Members of the group came and went at will. Koresh himself went into town several times a week to take a bible study group out for beers, or to jam with local musicians.
There were guns at the compound because the group ran a legal business buying and selling them. In other words, aside from being an oddball group of religious nuts, the Branch Davidians were no worse than anyone else’s neighbors. No one was held hostage. David Koresh wasn’t Warren Jeffs.
Gladwell points out that transcripts of the negotiations are telling, and they are–even more telling than he realizes. The FBI followed its script as if they were dealing with garden variety gangsters who would trade their own mothers to save their skins. It never apparently occurred to them to treat the Branch Davidians as people who believed what they professed, let alone as normal human beings.
On another occasion, the Davidians asked the F.B.I. to bring milk for their children, and the bureau insisted that some of the children be released before the supplies were handed over:
F.B.I.: We got the milk for you . . . we’ll bring the milk down. We’ll drop it off. . . . In return, we want four of your kids to come up, and we’re going to give you the milk for the kids.
This is how negotiations are supposed to work: tit for tat. But what proposal could have been more offensive and perplexing to a Branch Davidian? The bureau wanted to separate children from their parents and extract them from the community to which they belonged in exchange for milk. “That doesn’t make any sense,” a Davidian named Kathy S. tells the negotiator. But the negotiator thinks she means that the terms of the deal aren’t good enough.
See what’s going on there? The FBI, unable to let go of its powerfully-held belief that the Davidians were a cult led by a con man, or some kind of criminal gang, tried to trade supplies for hostages. They did this over and over in the lead-up to the final attack. But because the Davidians weren’t a cult, they just saw armed men demanding hostages in exchange for supplies.
The LEOs involved in the operation refused to consider any interpretation other than the one they were handed in the beginning. And in the end, they unleashed violence at the people they couldn’t understand. So who’s really the ‘fragile’ and defensive group that initiates great violence in response to outsiders’ failure to play along with their manichean worldview?
I don’t mean to tar all LEOs with this brush. There are certainly good people in blue — I’ve met a few myself. But, they are at least as prone to groupthink and bunker mentality as any other organization, and likely moreso given the nature of their work. It’s what led Lon Horiuchi to kill someone he couldn’t even see, and what led the LAPD to shoot up a random truck and two innocent citizens during the manhunt for Micheal Dorner.
So it’s not that some cops are willing and eager jackbooted thugs. The potential danger in Connecticut is that someday soon, officers like the ones who ran the Waco siege may show up at the home of a gun owner who’s done nothing but have his name appear on a list of people whose registration forms arrived on Jan 2. They’ll be thoroughly convinced that gun owner is a violent domestic terrorist who’s holding the rest of the family hostage. They’ll demand his or her spouse or children in exchange for food or a phone call.
And if s/he says no, as almost any of us would, the negotiator will just assume they’re holding out for more. They’ll think of the gun owner as the one who’s trading on the family’s lives. And then, at some point, they’ll call it quits and send in the tanks.
Huzzah.
The darned things were invented specifically to require NO TRAINING to use with reasonable effectiveness in normal everyday life and situations.
The “you absolutely need special training” myth is promulgated by anti-gun folks and people who do for-fee training. They each use the same arguments to promote this idea.
-D
Florida senate SB1060. (Aka the Poptart bill). Has passed 2 of 3 committees. It currently is in the judiciary committee
Personally, I prefer my own version….KISS.
Public Safety being a tyrant’s ruse, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, for liberty, self defense, sport, or subsistence shall not be infringed, regulated nor otherwise interfered with.
Members of the local, state or federal governments, regardless of branch, who violate this right shall forfeit their right to trial and be immediately guilty of a capital crime. Punishment shall carried out by the nearest armed citizen and at the earliest opportunity.
It looks like the pepper gel would fit in the 37mm……
I love me some training, but I’m not the “train or die” type…
As a firearms owner just be able to operate a firearm property and safely, you’ll do fine, that’s the most important thing. So, you can have fun, or deal with Mr. Criminal late one night, if need be.
Myself, I practice and take training as often as I possibly can because…
1. “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state…” — I want to be well regulated, meaning well trained, can’t be well trained without actually training.
2. Guns. Need I say more?
As a LEO, I wish I were offended by this. I wish I could say it isn’t true… and that rational LEOs with good hearts will always be able to shake some sense into their fellow agents/officers. But I can’t. This manner of group-psychology affects a closely knit organization just as readily as a mob, if not more so. A small number of CT agencies will be socially disobedient and won’t enforce the new law. Some will come to their senses and find non-violent means for enforment. Sadly, some won’t. The latter will almost certainly lead to tragedy in CT. It breaks my heart.
Anyone who’s read the manual that came with the gun knows that it has all the information you’d ever need to handle and store the weapon safely (if you take it to heart).
Also, training is not the same thing as practice; the two can be mutually independent. Being told things you may not have thought of is not required to be safe with a gun, utilizing some actual common sense is. Practicing, in the context of training or not, is also a great idea, and can be accomplished at home and the range, without help.
So Silencer Shop, submitting all their forms early in the morning once per day, is causing this problem? That makes no sense. After Silencer Shop submits their forms and the servers undergo a reboot, there shouldn’t be any lingering problems, yet the servers require reboots several more times the same day.
The real problem is load. Load load load. The morons who cooked up eForms made no professional attempts to test for load – lots of people logging into and submitting eForms throughout the day – so their WTF-tier system is bogged down all day long. In fact, if NO ONE ELSE ever logged into eForms and only Silencer Shop submitted forms for all the transfers in the country, you can bet performance would improve overall because they’ve figured out a way to submit forms efficiently without making redundant service queries.
Sucks for those who waited to buy…..enjoy the extra wait of singular entries…..the last 2 suppressors I bought were batch loaded by SS 2 weeks ago. HA!
I got to go with the grenade launcher, it kinda makes up for the lameness of having a dog smaller than a cat.
The only ones that appear to be whining, are probably low volume, straight MSRP dealers……….
Meh – at one team I was a legit operator. Well, not legit enough to have the half beard and youtube channel but legit enough.
Then I got old(er) and fat. Oh well. I still know enough not to shoot myself or loved ones.
Glad I finished the story before running down to my local gun Shoppe.
I’m 100% in favor of mandatory familiarization and safety training. In every public school. Starting at age five, with age-appropriate information.
I’m not naive enough to think that there must be target practice with live ammunition, though it should be available at some point for those who want it. Safety education and firearms familiarization would be part of the Common Core in my version of America.
I disagree with the writer. Cops are lazy, they don’t want to go through the research and shoe leather work of figuring out your schedule, its easier to beat down your door, shoot your dog, and grind your half-asleep face into the ground while they fondle your wife and terrorize your kids. In either case, don’t go down without a fight.
I don’t know if it will make guns more accurate but cryogenics will change the metal properties. When steels are heat treated and you let them cool to ambient temperatures, that cool down process does not stop because as far as the molecular structure is concerned, room temperature is still about 530 degrees above absolute zero. Cryogenics speeds the cool down process up, otherwise the heat treatment process would take a thousand years (give or take) to fully effect the metal’s grain structure.
I’m not saying it’s worth it, just that it does indeed changed the metal.
The Davidian’s were a cult, but that is beside the point of this article or the correctness of its analysis.
What ever people want to belive, gotta let’m.
Until kristallnacht.
You know it’s a big deal when the left-wing media is trying to make it sound like it isn’t.
Weisser actually does run a gun shop in Massachusetts. The yelp reviews are not kind. http://www.yelp.com/biz/ware-gun-shop-ware
I wouldn’t be too concerned. The phrase “not of good moral character” implies the lack of “good moral character” which is pretty well defined legally. The test of “good moral character” is used in many circumstances, most often in Federal law. It is well defined and involves pretty well defined tests. Judges can’t go willy-nilly on it because the tests most often involve certain past criminal behavior.
For example, someone known to be involved in prostitution would be “not of good moral character”.
Very crappy to blame it on the sight. It’s supposed to be fitted by a trained gunsmith. A few thousands difference in the sights? If they cut the slides themselves I doubt they hold any closer tolerances than the Kensight, maybe they do like a lot of semi custom shops and order the slides pre cut for the sights. Either way they should be hand fit and the blame is on whoever didn’t fit the sight to the slide properly.
Huh, I wasn’t aware being on the no fly list could prevent somebody from purchasing a firearm. I do understand that Malaysia is hot bed for Islamist activity, however were your from should not have anything to do with it. DHS refusing to remove him could potentially mean there’s something that they are concerned about, it doesn’t even have to be about him it could be they are investigating someone he knows and they could believe he is somehow involved
“Islamist” is a reprehensible word started by NeoCons, AFIK. Just as a Christian should not be called a “Christianist” or a Jew called a “Jewist”, it is insulting and deceptive to call Muslims “Islamists”.
I wonder if this event goes down, will others from around the country decide to join in the fight and fire another shot heard around the world. Imagine one million southern and western boys riding into the liberal northeast to kick ass.
Is the “good moral character” a new provision that came with this particular bill, or has it been there for a while?
pa has a similar requirement. It’s abused extensively in Philly. There is reason for concern.
The whole reason for “shall not be infringed” was to keep bureaucratic encroachment away from the RKBA. It didn’t work for long. Then again, we even have “hate speech” laws today.
“Mike the Gun guy” on Huff post has made so many basic and objective errors on fact so many times that the is unreadable.
Extreme left and right wing media outlets both do this. They hire a “moderate” or opposing view that is the least sensible, least articulate, most factually challenged and most incompetent person imaginable and then knock him/her down as a strawman.
Dirty cops? No surprise here. Thugs with badges, or gang bangers with badges. All of this is MHO of course.
Haha! Love it. Baffles: Polished Mithril. Nothing but quality from Silencerco in my opinion
My head hurts after reading this story.
Go with the iron sights. You will be surprised how effective they are out to the 250-300 metre mark.
I almost fell for it, Nick.
Almost.
Christie is still a tool. A tool for a political system that does not, never has, and never will give a rat’s ass about anyone but its lackeys. Always was. Always will be.
As Christie reportedly said, “if the president can act without congress then I can act without the legislature.”
A republican saying something like that? Thanks, let’s not. In my 40+ years of political awareness, there have been far too many republicans who will shoot themselves in the foot during important elections.
I can’t tell you how relieved I am that this was April fools day.
I’ll take Vietnam Light for $200, Alex.
There were those who thought to go lift the siege on the Branch Dividians back then but nothing came of it. Years later Timothy McVey struck a blow on their behalf.
If the CT police become in the habit of taking down gun owners in inconvenient places it will be a message to those who remain free.
I’ve said before and will say again that fewer than 50 determined individuals, so long as they are unknown to police, can cause total havoc on a state the size of CT. A few nights of well planned and determined work would result in a state wide power outage and likely an interruption of the water supply.
Another few nights and the power outage would last for months.
The first incursion into the relevant state records office would reveal the name and address of every cop in the state.
Just a few targeted kidnappings would result in a massive sick out of state police personnel leaving the state defenseless.
At the same time the ongoing blackout would result in massive riots in the urban centers demanding most of the attention of those police who did show up for work in light of the fact that by doing so they left their families, obvious by now, targets, home alone.
With riots raging in the cities and a dearth of personnel to combat the basic crime let alone the revolutionary acts of revolutionaries the restoration of the power grid would be a years long project.
CT would devolve into a 3rd world country within a first world country or else fall under marshal law.
The declaration of marshal law would restrict all citizens of the state in such a way that they are unlikely to care for it. Many would be added to the rolls of the patriots who resist.
Given time, outside fighters would come into the state and a second either civil war or second revolution would be fought in CT.
The government of CT has the option either of backing down or of becoming the battlefield for the second American revolution.
Stand Strong CT. If you fight, there are many who will come to your aid (many more than those who oppose you).
Matt, tell your Mom I said Happy Birthday from Dodger in Florida!
Matts Moms birthday is today? I had a cousin who’s birthday was April 1. Did your mom ever live in Texas, Matt?
Aren’t they stepping on the toes of the ATF?
Kyle Cassidy published “Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes” in 2007 with the same concept. It’s available on amazon. Both pieces of work are very interesting and insightful though.
If you don’t want your little boy to play with guns, don’t let him watch My Little Pony:
http://derpy.ponychan.net/chan/files/src/138855817062.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km1YqjzIsJE
I’m wondering if by “trigger” they are meaning the catalyst that actually causes the explosives to go boom. Typically most devices will have some sort of trigger that causes the primary charge to detonate. He could have had a dead mans switch, a lot of the time their will be a handler and the bomber. If the bomber gets cold feet he still goes boom braise the handler is watching from a safe distance. Even on ieds there is typically some sort of back up so that if one trigger is done away with there’s still a chance it could detonate.
I find it hilarious that you idiots have never read the Qur’an yet claim to know what’s inside. Do you also not read books with a black cover or stop reading them upon the discovery that the cover is black? Should I point out that the “miracle” Moses claims to have performed was just low tide or that Jesus did indeed turn water into wine..by pouring wine into the water jugs to clean it. People used to get their drinking water from the same rivers they dumped their shit in. The alcohol prevented disease and illness.
Googling “terrorism Koran” is not actual research. Why don’t you do actual research instead of pretending to know something.
You have no idea of what you are talking about. Wine keeps better than water, but sanitation had nothing to do with it. Jewish sanitary rules showed insight beyond the times they came from. Muhammad on the other hand, drank urine.
Just the idea that this woman actually thought this was a valid point to be concerned about; enough that she posts it on a public forum for the entire world to see.
Words fail me.
90% of everything posted on this blog and those like it is posted by government agents. If you have advertised a pro-2nd group it will be or is already infiltrated. The government has plainly said it considers those who support the Constitution to be terrorist. To think our constitutional Republic can survive without a fight is nieve. To think that the people who are prepared to defend the Republic and actually able to do so are organizing it’s defense on the internet is stupid but that doesn’t stop thousands of loyal government agents from trolling the internet. Another case of misguided group think coalescing before our eyes.
I was at a Scheel’s in Reno a couple of years ago inent on getting a new toy. I decided not to and walked out, but those pesky drink coolers in by the cash registers always get me. So, I buy a Monster and accidently flash the inside of my wallet, full of 20s for the gun I decided not to buy. Well, I guess someone saw it and they followed me to my truck. As I was getting in my truck he tried to grab the door but I was able to shut and lock it and there we were, just looking at each other through my window. He taps a Ka Bar on the window. I tapped the muzzle of an M&P45 on my side of the window. He ran like a rabbit. I didn’t call the cops; it was dark, I had an hour to drive home, AND what good would it have done? Lessons learned: don’t flash your cash and presentation is more than half the battle.
Nathan Piers, a) not all Americans are ignorant pig dogs like you seem to
Believe, some of us have studied the Quran (as it is more commonly spelled). B) how about you go live in a middle eastern country for a while, take note, those death glares your getting aren’t because you smell bad, there because they hate you.
Well Jan,
If you don’t want to carry a gun, you don’t have to. That’s called freedom. Also, I highly recommend that when the armed robbers herd everyone into the back, you look on the bright side and go with a smile. Your about to have first hand knowledge that will settle the argument you’ve been having with your Jesus-freak cousin.
The chances are my house will not burn to the ground, but I still buy insurance in case it does.
I’d rather have training and not need it, than need it and not have it.
It is amusing that the only response finally to arguments for training come down to some on TTAG resorting to ad hominem logical fallacies.
Required training? No, there is no word about it in the Second Amendment. Period. I hope most of would agree with that point.
Is training wise, helpful, important? Yes.
What kind of training? Whatever you feel comfortable getting.
But the constant disparagement of any training that goes beyond shooting a box or two of ammo a few times out at the old range at static paper targets, standing still, is entirely wrong-headed and foolish.
If you can’t afford more, fine, do what you can.
If you can afford to get some truly professional level training, I and many others would strongly encourage it.
Get back in the kitchen and make me a sammich!
Can someone answer me what an official process would be for scraping 922r? could an executive order do it? or does congress need to act?
It’s a bit strange to me that you’re out talking smack about gun owners in the NY Times when you should be in the kitchen cooking me a damn cheeseburger.
It’s surprisingly fair, especially originating from a German publication and then being further sanitized via Slate. The photographer put the images (sans commentary) here:
http://charlesommanney.com/STORIES/Gun-Control/1/thumbs/
Its not tooo bad but what is with the weight problems? Here is a picture of my old shooting crew I’m on the left. There are a lot of lean trap and skeet shooters out there. http://xc3.xanga.com/c96d460055c3499459091/w69989412.jpg
I didn’t see any hunter or sportsman geared photos.
The author has a good start. The anti-liberty crowd doesn’t trust their neighbors, but they also don’t trust themselves. This is why, for example, they never make any distinction between criminals and law-abiding citizens in their arguments. The only difference between you (or themselves) and Charles Manson is simply a bad set of circuistances. With such a world-view, true liberty is unthinkable.
Good girl with a gun, or gal if you prefer.
Grew up in a suburb outside of Seattle. I remember a guy in my 7th and 8th grade classes would go hunting in the Fall. Since his uncle (I think) would pick him up and head out right after school, he would bring his shotgun and park it in the back of the classroom. No muss, no fuss. This was in the late 70s.
My response to this incident (WARNING: rage, vitriol and foul language ahead): https://www.facebook.com/robert.ries.90/posts/10202612782393282?stream_ref=10
Both veterans and regular citizens as well.
The true issue that is of course going to be buried is why a man who had a disagreement with other men, as we are hearing, felt the need to murder them. We see this day in and day out in our cities and towns, when so-called tough guys resort to shooting someone they have a fight with instead of just using their fists. Or better yet ignoring those people and moving on with their life. Guns have NOTHING to do with this problem in our society, but of course they will be blamed. Because again, we are not being controlled for our safety, we are being controlled for the safety of those who want power.
Q. “Question of the Night: Will Gun Control Advocates Use the Fort Hood Shooting to Deny Veterans Their Gun Rights?.”
A. Is that even a valid question anymore, Farago? Seriously? Seriously? They stand atop the huddled, bullet-ridden corpses of every shooting victim in America (the vast majority of them being criminal types but you know this by now) for their blood-soaked soap boxes, and haul their corpses up by the scruff to use them as meat shields every single time there is a tragedy.
I’ve long divorced myself of the illusion that they’re simply ignorant of the destruction of their asinine and ass-backwards policies. They damned-well know that they unequivocally own every single one of those deaths, and are fully cognizant of that incontrovertible fact. Them and every single one of their supporters, public and private. It’s beyond shameful. It’s shameless. They still and will always want what makes them feel better, regardless of the costs to themselves and everyone around them. All of them would literally rather stand by and watch as their loved ones — and especially yours — are brutalized or even murdered to even so much as lift a hand to defend them, much less ever admit to themselves or anybody else that they were ever wrong.
They want more innocent men, women, and especially children to die. That, and that alone, is the only logical explanation.
if the military cant be trusted to protect themselves how can we trust them to protect us?
I think I have heard it said here at TTAG that people should try to get trained by people from a similar background of the training they need. I person that just wants to learn the proper way to conceal carry for their daily lives doesn’t need the kind of training from an Operator to operate in operations.
I hope they know that having a firearm in their bldg is not a crime in Missouri, sign or not. jsut saying
Simply astounding that the US military would think so little of its personnel and their safety that they would permit military bases to be free fire zones for mentalists.
It has become a trait of Al Q’aida to attack the softest of targets, when they are most vulnerable. Mosques around the world are buzzing with young jihadists preparing to roll out onto US bases.
Weapons training should include retention and maintenance of weapons. How can this happen if they are in storage elsewhere? Someone has royally screwed the pooch on this one. God help America.
Next requirement – Hooking an Interlock device up to the trigger… From Half-Assed But Not Half-Bad Industries, Inc., A wholly-owned subsidiary of Friggemall Corporation.