The Tucson Shooting: a Reminder to Arm Yourself

When Jared Loughner opened fire in Tucson on January 8, six people were killed and fourteen injured. No matter where you were sitting, as the 24-hour news carried the details of the story, the world seemed almost to stop spinning. The raw evil of what Loughner had done was simply too great for decent, law abiding citizens to comprehend.

Sadly, it didn’t take long for various talking heads on the left to see the shooting as just another crisis that could be used to further their agenda: tightening gun control, besmearing the Tea Party, and destroying Sarah Palin. For instance, within 48 hours of the shooting, Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) promised to introduce stricter gun control legislation as soon as her staff could draw it up, the Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy affixed blame to the Tea Party, and uber-leftist Paul Krugman disgraced himself as one of the shrillest voices placing the blame on Palin.

Lost in these attempts to gain political points by placing blame on someone other than the shooter is the clearest lesson of the Tucson shooting: that we must take responsibility for our own lives — and be prepared to defend those lives with weapons we carry for protection.

Far from serving as fodder for the anti-gunners (save as they pervert the story to make it fit their template), the shooting in Tucson reminds us that when the criminal mind acts on its inclinations, its would-be victims must be prepared to take the necessary steps to stop the perpetrator in his tracks. Clearly, this is best achieved by lawfully carrying a handgun on our persons: a handgun with which we are familiar, and which we are willing to use to defend our own lives and the lives of other innocents.

If anyone thinks I go too far in positing a handgun as the best means of self-defense, consider Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s explanation for why that court famously overturned handgun bans in Washington, D.C., and Chicago: “We held that individual self defense is ‘the central component’ of the Second Amendment right [to keep and bear arms]. …[And] we found that this right applies to handguns because they are ‘the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family.’”

Alito’s words rang in my head as I was eating lunch in a restaurant with my family on the afternoon of January 8, watching the television on the wall as news of the shooting poured in. My youngest daughter, who knows I legally carry a concealed pistol everyday, looked at me and asked: “Dad, would you have stopped him?” I explained to her that while I couldn’t say for sure I would have stopped him, I certainly would have been prepared to stop him and would have had absolutely no qualms about shooting a criminal who threatened the lives of my family and/or myself.

Such is life. As long as we are on this earth, criminals will be seeking the opportunity to carry out their evil schemes. And if we respond to their schemes as Representative McCarthy wants to, by passing more and more gun control laws, we’ll inevitably be disappointed to find that criminals will ignore the new laws just as easily as they ignored the old ones. In the end, such an approach will only hamper the ability of law abiding citizens to get their hands on the weapons “most preferred” for self defense, effectively transforming more and more innocents into sitting ducks for the next Loughner whenever and wherever he decides to kill in cold blood.

Our lives are our own responsibilities. We cannot entrust their protection to agents of the state, whether those agents are legislators, police officers, or federal agents.

If we want to be safe, we need to arm ourselves as a means of making preparation for safety. Perhaps this is the most valuable lesson the Tucson shooting can teach us.

I would have been digging three holes alone.

Bo has a conscience and a big mouth.

Thank you for no longer carrying. I also want to hope you never become my friend. If it were a serious enough confrontation to defend yourself with deadly force, it is also serious enough to report to the police - not shoot, shovel, and shut-up which seems to be what you had in mind if you pulled the trigger. That takes "self defense" from just that to something else otherwise known as "murder".

The only valid reason to ccw and use the weapon is to protect yourself or those immediately around you (such as your family) from death and/or severe bodily injury. Therefore, the threat has to be present and you have to be in fear for your life and limb. In the end one might have to prove it to a jury, so you had better be positive when you start pressing the trigger.

Carrying a concealed weapon does not make one an unofficial member of the local police force (or an executioner) nor does carrying one give you that right or privilege. However, being in a situation and a crowd (like the one in Tucson) and having a madman gunning down those around you would certainly qualify for using available deadly force to stop the murderous threat to yourself and others in the immediate vicinity. After all, it took the cops 10 minutes to show up after the shooting.

Perhaps somebody present with a ccw and armed could have ended it earlier? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It was just lucky a retired army guy was there and really close and with the presence of mind to get a hand on this killer as he passed by and before he could reload and do more killing. But that is not something I would want to depend on for my survival.

I don't carry a gun because it's "convenient", nor I want to prove I'm some sort of macho guy, neither do I want to be an honorary deputy sherriff. I carry one because I'm getting too old to properly fight or run and carrying a cop around is too heavy. Therefore, my self-defense options are increasingly limited. Plus, I have zero desire to hold my wife's hand while she is on a ventilator because she isn't as big as me or able to run as fast.

You are certainly free to not carry. Again, I thank you for not doing so with your present attitude.

The problem I see is what can be termed as “The Lawlesness of the law.”
I’m using this paradoxical term quite deliberately here, let me illustrate what I mean:
My state Constitution has a section which reads:

Sec. 6. [Right to bear arms.]
No law shall abridge the right of the citizen
to keep and bear arms for security and
defense, for lawful hunting and recreational
use and for other lawful purposes, but nothing
herein shall be held to permit the carrying
of concealed weapons. No municipality
or county shall regulate, in any way, an incident
of the right to keep and bear arms.

Fairly easy to understand; according to this Constitution the State cannot legitimately make [or enforce] laws which “abridge the right of the citizen
to keep and bear arms for security.”

Now, let’s look at a State Statute:
NMSA 30-7-2.4. Unlawful carrying of a firearm on university premises; notice; penalty.
A. Unlawful carrying of a firearm on university premises consists of carrying a firearm on university premises except by:
—(1) a peace officer;
—(2) university security personnel;
—(3) a student, instructor or other university-authorized personnel who are engaged in army, navy, marine corps or air force reserve officer training corps programs or a state-authorized hunter safety training program;
—(4) a person conducting or participating in a university-approved program, class or other activity involving the carrying of a firearm; or
—(5) a person older than nineteen years of age on university premises in a private automobile or other private means of conveyance, for lawful protection of the person’s or another’s person or property.

B. A university shall conspicuously post notices on university premises that state that it is unlawful to carry a firearm on university premises.

C. As used in this section:
—(1) “university” means a baccalaureate degree-granting post-secondary educational institution, a community college, a branch community college, a technical-vocational institute and an area vocational school; and
—(2) “university premises” means:
——(a) the buildings and grounds of a university, including playing fields and parking areas of a university, in or on which university or university-related activities are conducted; or
——(b) any other public buildings or grounds, including playing fields and parking areas that are not university property, in or on which university-related and sanctioned activities are performed.

D. Whoever commits unlawful carrying of a firearm on university premises is guilty of a petty misdemeanor.

Now, a straightforward reading shows that it would be a violation of this statute for me to strap on my firearm and open-carry on campus... but if I did so would I be a law-breaker? On the one hand this statute is law, on the other it is completely invalid under the cited protion of the State’s own Constitution. {As proof, this law abridges the right to both keep and bear arms to any Citizen who resides in on-campus housing.}

Or another example would be my recent trip to the municipal courthouse. When I inquired as to why there is a big “NO WEAPONS” posting on the outside despite the clear wording of the State Constitution that “No municipality or county shall regulate, in any way, an incident of the right to keep and bear arms;” the reply from the security guard was that it was put there on the Judge’s authority.
— Is a judge, in a municipal court, above the law of the State’s Constitution? If so, why? [And, indeed, how... as the Constitution is what authorizes courts inferior to the State’s Supreme court.]

Here you see how “the law” [authorities assumed by officials and what those officials say/deem it is] has been turned against itself and is therefore nothing but lawlessness.

"Our lives are our own responsibilities. We cannot entrust their protection to agents of the state, whether those agents are legislators, police officers, or federal agents."

Exactly so. And the extension of this fundamental truth is it's converse, where, as Jeff Snyder pointed out in his seminal essay, Nation of Cowards, that anyone who will not act in their own self-defense, yet demand that the police run to their rescue is at best morally bankrupt.

Just so. Additionally, author Ken Roych has suggested that state sales taxes on retail purches should be waived for those customers who are armed, because they require no tax-supported gunmen to protect them during their commerce, and they provide additional support to the proprietor's own efforts to keep his establishment orderly.

Those customers who are not armed, however, get to support the protection they purchase from others out of their own pockets, instead of taking the money from those who provide their own protection.

Some reasonable exceptions could apply, of course: those who are blind or similarly seriously disabled, pregnant females, the very elderly and perhaps conscientious objectors.

Sounds like a pretty fair idea to me.

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