I find it odd that gun control advocates demand a plan for disarmament but don’t have a plan for dealing with a lethal threat—other than preventing it from happening in the first place by stopping criminals from getting guns (assuming that guns are all that’s needed to create a lethal threat) and paying cops to protect the public (i.e. mop-up) using weapons that law-abiding citizens shouldn’t be allowed to keep and bear. Actually it’s worse than that . . .
All across America you see this: ordinary citizens with guns — good guys — regularly fighting off bad guys with guns, in ways that are truly impressive. These are rousing stories. Fiction is like that.
Welcome to the world according to Douglas Anthony Cooper [above left]. It’s a world where TTAG’s Defensive Gun Use of the Day section doesn’t exist. And journalists who enter the words “defensive gun use” at Wikipedia summon a blank screen. Where people who Google “DGU” only see Deutsche Gesellschaft für Unfallchirurgie (German Society for Trauma Surgery).
Right from the git-go, A Good Guy With a Gun. R.I.P. reveals Mr. Cooper’s willful ignorance on the subject of armed self-defense. Clearly, he wants readers to share his belief that “a good guy with a gun” is nothing more than a putz with a pistol. And therein lies the tale . . .
Let me tell you a true story. About a good guy with a gun. A guy who was more than simply good in the sense of morally admirable: he was good with a gun. He’d fought in the Gulf War. He knew what he was doing — he had been tested in battle, and was demonstrably courageous.
You won’t find a more useful best-case scenario to demonstrate the efficacy of civilian weaponry.
District Attorney Mike McLelland from Kaufman County, Texas — unlike most Americans — had an impeccable reason for carrying a sidearm. His deputy had been shot two months before, and it made sense for McLelland to assume that he was very much a target himself. This was hardly paranoia. I expect that most people, on either side of the gun debate, would respect his decision to arm himself . . .
When he discussed the threat that he faced, McLelland could legitimately say, “I’m ahead of everybody else because, basically, I’m a soldier.” He did what you’d expect a trained soldier to do: after his deputy was assassinated, “he carried a gun everywhere he went and took extra care when answering the door at his home.”
Last Saturday, in that very same home, this courageous man — along with his wife — were found shot to death.
Yes. Yes they were. And?
McLelland was a good, good man. Also — unlike your average kindergarten teacher (and Wayne LaPierre) — he was an actual soldier, deeply familiar with weaponry.
And none of this was of any use when it came to thwarting a bad guy with a gun. Not even when McLelland was in his own house, armed, and hyperalert to a very real threat.
You guessed it! Mr. Cooper reckons McLelland’s failure to protect himself and his wife with a gun (or guns) proves that personal firearms for self-defense are useless. So it’s OK to ban them. Sorry, restrict their sale and ownership.
Mr. Cooper doesn’t come out and say that, exactly. But that is his point. Just in case you missed it, he makes it again . . .
Now, you’re welcome to argue that this was a unique situation. The shooting of Mike McLelland was an anomaly, when it comes to this archetypal scenario: decent citizens, well-armed. I would agree.
What was unusual was this: in general, good guys with guns are not aware of an impending threat. A more typical situation would be that of Chris Kyle, who was shot and killed at a shooting range, without any warning . . .
Chris Kyle was one of the best shooters in the country. Perhaps the best shooter in the country. And he had lots of weapons at hand: this was a shooting range. And he did not manage to stop the bad guy.
So . . . what? So Douglas Anthony Cooper is meshuggah. I mean, seriously crazy. How else would you characterize a person who ignores tens of thousands perhaps even millions of examples of successful defensive gun use, dances in the blood of gun guys and thereby “proves” that civilian disarmament is the best way to protect people?
Sorry, but despite the sincere bleating of the NRA’s vice president, making guns effortlessly available to good guys is just not a very good idea. It does not make good guys any safer. It is of no benefit to America. What it does — and this doesn’t matter to Wayne Lapierre — is make guns effortlessly available to bad guys.
What it also does — and this matters profoundly to Wayne LaPierre — is ensure that the people who make guns and ammunition remain fat and healthy, so that they can continue to pour millions into his obscene organization.
The nation will deeply miss the likes of Mike McLelland and Chris Kyle. Real heroes are thin on the ground. And when they are gone we tend to be left with the likes of Wayne LaPierre.
NRA-bashing aside, does the hysterical HuffPo scribe really believe the government can reduce the availability of firearms for good guys and bad guys in equal measure? Does Mr. Cooper really think that gun control would create a net gain for good guys? By God I think he does.
Laboring under that delusion, Mr. Cooper is happy to sacrifice your individual God-given or natural right to armed self-defense to engineer a crime-free utopia. You don’t need me to tell you that it’s a doomed, deeply evil endeavor; a pursuit that creates the kind of unfathomable human suffering we’ve seen throughout human history.
Like I said, this guy, and his ilk, are certifiable.