Posted on 7/9/2008, 1:30:46 PM by from occupied ga
Fertilizer for the Pansy Bed
July 8, 2008
Oh god. There is no hope.
The other day I glanced at the web site of the Lake Chapala Society, a social club of sorts for expats around Mexico’s Lake Chapala, an hour south of Guadalajara (where I live). Clicking on “Safety,” I found a long list of reasons why you should never, ever use a firearm to protect your home and family. No. See, you might miss, or be scared, or the intruders might take it away and shoot you, and they might be all mad and hurt you when all they wanted was your television. No, the best thing is to let them do what they want, and then maybe they won’t do anything bad to you.
This supposedly was written by a retired cop but, if so, he (or quite possible she, judging by the tone) doesn’t sound like any cop I have known, which is whole lots.. Anyway, his, her, or its advice, is “Leave the guns to people who are trained and prepared to use them.” Which he says he is.
Nuts. To begin with, cops usually know little about guns. They get a bit of training in the police academy, and then once or twice a year go to the range to fire a couple of magazines. Being actually good with a pistol requires putting tens of thousands of rounds downrange. Street shooting, which is what cops do in the unlikely event that they do any shooting at all, requires training of the sort offered by IPSC or, years back, Jeff Cooper and Chuck Taylor.
A few cops will learn on their own. When I went to shoot at the NRA range on Waples Mill Road in northern Virginia, I saw an occasional dedicated cop. But police departments don’t engage in real training because it costs a lot, takes a lot of time, and just isn’t worth it. The average cop never fires his weapon in line of duty. It serves chiefly as a badge of authority.
Smith (I’ll call him or her) implies further that no one who isn’t a cop knows how to use a pistol. He needs to get out more. In the small-town South of my boyhood, everybody had guns. We used them for hunting, for shooting varmints, and for plinking. My father gave me my first rifle when I was eleven in Athens, Alabama. In high school in Virginia, the first day of deer season was a school holiday because the teachers knew they boys would all be in the woods. When I was fifteen, friends and I often went to the dump in Colonial Beach at night to snap-shoot rats.
I later went to a federal fire-arms school at Parris Island in South Carolina. You may have heard of it. So did hundreds of thousands of other kids. The emphasis was on deadly force. At Camp Lejeune we did fire-and-maneuver with live ammo. (Also flamethrowers and 3.5" rocket launchers, though I do not recommend these for home defense.) If Smith were to check the number of men who have gone through the Army or Marines, he would find that very large numbers of people have had training in the use of firearms.
But what I dislike most about Smith’s advice is his advocacy of helpless passivity. It embodies a profound change in American attitudes, which once favored self-reliance. Now it’s reliance on the group. Don’t take primary responsibility for your defense. No, that would be violent, or scary, or macho, and all. No, let the criminals do whatever they want with you, rely on their merciful natures, and call 911 if you survive.
This is exactly what Smith advocates. If I were a criminal, I would love this guy.
His advice is bad. He says, correctly enough, that most intruders want chiefly to steal things. Think a little. At two a.m., you hear a noise and turn on the lights. You find two guys with knives. You can now identify them. They have knives. Focus on this point. Knives, and you can identify them. Do you see where this leads?
If they leave you alive, you will call the cops immediately after they leave. They know this. If they tie you up, well, you are tied up in the presence of two career criminals with knives. This may work for Smith, but I’ll pass. It just isn’t optimal. If they leave you conscious and tied, you will begin shrieking for the neighbors as soon as they leave. The neighbors will call the cops—and you can identify the intruders.
In the real world, criminals are not always interested only in your television. They will accept such side benefits as offer. This engenders fascinating situations. They discover your daughter of sixteen in her bedroom. “Hey, little girl, you’re real cute. Let’s get a better look. Take those pajamas off.” You get to watch. They may or may not choose to leave witnesses.
If you think these things don’t happen, regularly, you have never been a policeman in a big city. A friend of mine, a Chicago cop, tells of arriving at the scene of a break-in. The intruders had beaten the man unconscious and, among other things they did to her, bitten the woman’s nipples off. Literally.
I remember going one night to a hospital with a DC cop to interview a rape victim of fifteen. She was screaming, sobbing, choking, the doctors trying to sedate her. Messed up for life. Smith is right: Don’t have a firearm in the house. It might make them mad. They just want your TV, see.
In Virginia to get a concealed-carry permit, you attend a mandatory class on how to use a pistol. One of the instructors when I did it was a (very competent) female agent of the FBI. She talked to the class, some of whom were women, about rape. She made the obvious point that very few women have the slightest chance of fending off a two-hundred pound deviate perhaps armed with a knife. A small concealed-hammer revolver, fired maybe through a coat pocket, can easily be handled by a woman of ninety pounds. Studies show that a rapist who has been shot several times loses ardor. We’re talking way beyond Viagra.
What is true of intruders is that they don’t want a firefight. When you rack a round into the chamber of a semi-auto, the sound is unmistakable and means only one thing: Someone is preparing to fire. You have to want a television very badly to go against someone who audibly is planning to kill you and audibly has the means.
You can do as Smith wants—let them do it, whatever it is, and then call a qualified professional. Or you can shoot the sons of bitches. Your choice. I don’t care.
I love Fred, but how does he square this with living gunless in Mejico?
As a former deputy sheriff I always considered “everyone” armed during a traffic stop or encounter and yet I wish everyone was armed as that would have made my job a hell of a lot easier and safer ! Does that make sense ? It did too me ! Sort of a I’d much rather come clean up a crime scene where the good guys survived per se than the alternative !
Any cop that wants too disarm the good guys is an idiot that doesn’t realize that bad guys are folks who won’t follow the BS unconstitutional laws they enforce anyway !
As a retired serviceman and a former LEO I urge all too take responsibility for their own family and friends security or just wait in line until your life is put in jeopardy by the criminal element !
Be a sheepdog not sheep !..........Woof !
ping
Everything is available for a bribe in Mexico. Just bribe the local policia. Of course I don’t know if this is what Fred does. I enjoy his columns, but I’ve never met the man.
I do a helluva lot more shooting than the cops I know.
In the USA, you have a choice of a cellphone or a gun. Choose the cellphone to call the cops. The cops will come and take a picture of your body and then go write articles about how you did the right thing..........
I'll go for one of these:
And then this:
In that order.
Well obviously, you’d never make chief of police in Wash DC with that subversive attitude :-)
Nice starter collection, but where are your crew served weapons? Still, you’d make a good neighbor. :-)
Concur
Was speaking to a nurse the other day concerning personal safety. Noticed her diplomas were from the NE. So I mentioned that Pepper spray and firearms are legal in TX.
My follow up statement to that is normally “Get training...” but she about blew a gasket before I could get that part out. Why, she would never.... etc. etc.
She sees fit to call us for every bit of unpleasantness she experiences. She doesn’t understand that the unpleasant does not amount to criminal.
The more I work with people, the more I see that personal responsibility is too heavy a burden for them to bear.
That is why mayors APPOINT chiefs of police and citizens ELECT a Sheriff. Too keep common sense at bay in urban environs.......:o)
But the citizens elect the mayor. My take on it is that the Mayors of these urban armpits (I was going to use another anatomical analogy but thought better of it) accurately reflect the majority of the electorate - ie dumb, racist, incurably ignorant, arrogant, corrupt, and imbued with a profound sense of entitlement. Thank you LBJ for doing more to destroy the American ideal than any other president since FDR.
Yessir !
Too many idgits and too little time !
Most of these folks are products of a liberal mind washing corporation called a school !
This Nurse thought she was majoring in how to save lives and she minored in how too die politely. Cleanse the gene pool IMO. Take down the guard rail at the edge of the grand canyon and disband OSHA ! The human race should evolve .......we different in the case of liberal losers !
Stay safe !!
Another nice collection, but it’s time to upgrade that G4 to a dual-core Intel.
Yeah, my M4 inventory is embarrassing.
Crew served weapons are mounted on my BOV. ;~)
We might be neighbors. What part of GA are you in?
Atlanta suburbs thankfully and by intent NOT inside the city
I've have a 20" and a 24" iMac dual core Intel.
I keep the G4 because the company that developed the ballistic software that I use did not support the Mac into the Intel world choosing instead to focus on the PC market and suggesting that their Mac users dual boot, which I refuse to load any Winblows crap on my Intel Mac's so the old G4 was relegated to reload duties only.
Should be:
Another nice collection, but it’s time to upgrade that G4 to a dual-core Intel.
Not only I like the arms cache but also the Apple items which I have both (iPhone & G4 iMac).
We were talking LEO leadership yet I agree as too the Mayors as well !
Socialist Democrats who invented such great american nightmares like the KKK , NAACP, Ayrian Nations, LaRaza, LUCAC etc have made the lazy uneducated toe tagged minorities as well as non minorities who support the democratic party stand in line for their handouts for decades and those who want self respect, self reliance and security for their own lives versus depending on a goobermint handout pay for their ignorance and sloth like attitudes of......”” there is no hope , no future and all of their problems is someone else’s fault””... in a divserional world they keep spinning as fuel for for the socialist handlers they serve with waste created from lives they only get too experience once !
Doom on those that support or prey upon such !
The more educated people I deal with, the happier it makes me that I’m a HS Dropout :)
Not only do I have to carry a weapon so others don’t have to.
I have to carry my brain for them too.
You have no idea how much I agree with cleaning the pool. The Human race has been evolving backward for a long time-we need to begin forward progress again.
If you ever want to see a great movie that explains it-watch “Idioacracy”
Rude, crude, funny in its own way, but it drives a point home behind the sophomoric huimor
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