Gun control advocates do their best to ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the gun rights room: armed self-defense. How in the world do you counter the idea that Americans shouldn’t be defenseless against violent crime? The usual “answer” . . .
Never mind that! Disarm the attacker! Disarm all attackers! Disarm potential attackers! Disarm all potential attackers!
If you think about it — and gun control advocates strongly suggest you don’t — that’s a really stupid “argument.” What happens when someone slips through the disarmament net, as they do every single day of the year, sometimes in shockingly spectacular fashion?
People die.
Generally speaking people don’t want to die. So they do things to forestall the inevitable. Like . . . buy a gun.
The only way to convince someone that buying a gun is a bad way to defend themselves: tell them owning a gun is more dangerous — lethal! — than not owning a gun.
Never mind the millions of Americans who own and OMG carry guns without shooting themselves or any other innocent person. Or the millions of Americans — yes millions — who manage to use a gun to defend themselves without shooting themselves or other innocent life.
Yup the stupid “arguments” against armed self-defense start to pile-up, as stupid arguments are wont to do. But things get really dumb when antis try to show people they’re better off without a gun when attacked.
Ladies and gentlemen, Adam Ross of washingtonpost.com presents I’ve had guns pointed at me. I’m glad I didn’t have one.
“Get on your knees,” said the one with the TEC-9. I obeyed, and both put their guns to my head. At that point, I was subject to a psychological phenomenon I’d never believed was real: I had an out-of-body experience. I was suddenly a good 10 feet away, watching this strangely quiet scene. And in a state of otherworldly calm, I thought, “You’re going to hear two pops and then you’re dead.”
They demanded my wallet, which I handed over before they trotted off.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Ross is about to say “if I’d had a gun I would have escalated the situation, been shot and killed.” Which may well have been true.
On the other hand, these armed muggers could have shot Mr. Ross even after he complied.
A possibility which may account for the general lack of “Whew! Thank goodness I didn’t have a gun when I was mugged” articles. Not to mention “Thank goodness I didn’t have a gun when I was raped” articles.
The fact that Mr. Ross doesn’t go all “What could I have done?” may betray the author/victim’s unspoken understanding that anyone with half a brain — or a set of balls — would prefer to have a gun on their person when facing grievous bodily harm or death (e.g., summary execution) rather than not.
Oh wait. Did I say Mr. Ross doesn’t play the “a gun would have made things worse” card? He does! After chronicling his second close encounter with an armed thug. And it goes a little something like this . . .
Halfway through our meal, two men wearing pantyhose to cover their faces entered the restaurant. The first approached the bank of tables where we sat, pointed a sawed-off shotgun at my wife’s face, and ordered everyone to get on the ground.
You might argue that I was trained by now because, as I lay on my back staring at the ceiling, I’d laced my hands behind my head, as if reconciled to my fate. My friend nearest me, meanwhile, had gone into a fetal position, holding all his cash in the air — and he’d had five years of jujitsu training. The assailants split up, the more efficiently to rob the place. Soon the one carrying the shotgun was back at our table.
We looked directly at each other. He then lowered his weapon and took, of all things, my Blackberry. When he turned to walk away, I remember thinking, “If I had a gun now, I could shoot him.”
But then what? His partner could be heard across the floor, pistol-whipping the kitchen staff. Who knew what would happen after I squeezed off a round? Who might kill whom, or get caught in the crossfire? And when the police did finally arrive, a couple of minutes after the pair fled, what was even more obvious was that the delay probably saved lives. Two minutes earlier and it might have been a bloodbath.
And there you have it. Be a good little victim and don’t make things worse. See? You did the right thing! Although the pistol whipped kitchen staff may have had a different perspective.
As would the victims of brutal attacks that didn’t end so tidily. And their families, friends and colleagues. And those who can’t speak on the subject because they’re dead.
Just because a teacher is armed doesn’t mean he or she is a deterrent to an attacker, any more than a vicious-looking dog is. The only thing that arming our nation’s teachers would do is further escalate an insane situation, one where educators with Glocks, say, are asked, in active-shooter situations, to take aim at assailants with AR-15s. It’s not just adding exponentially more lethal contingencies to an already deadly situation. It’s like bringing a lacrosse stick to a gunfight.
That’s the latest wrinkle in the “you don’t want to own a gun” canon: a handgun is useless against an AR-15. (Hence the picture of someone buying an AR at the top of the Post’s post.) I reckon that’s a good argument for giving teachers access to AR-15s, but what do I know?
Only this: people who don’t want to carry a gun to defend innocent life are OK in my book. That’s their choice. I have a hard time accepting hoplohobia from teachers, but it’s not my job to force anyone to tool-up.
That said, unarmed disarmists — gun-free gun control advocates who want to stop other people from being able to use a gun to defend themselves from grievous bodily harm or death — deserve nothing but contempt.
They are a direct threat to our safety, both individually and as a society. Same goes for the news organizations that give gun control advocates the oxygen of publicity.