Funny thing is in trying to find his pic I came across another Gene Lyons who was an ardent communist, and wrote many articles on the subject, born in 1898. Wonder if it's a case of the rotten apple not falling far from the tree?
Posted on 01/27/2011 7:30:05 AM PST by DCBryan1
Cultists now in charge
Gene Lyons
Some years ago, I reported on a self-defense/gun-safety class mainly for women at Rice University.
There had been several forcible rapes on the Houston, Texas, campus. Students had armed themselves. The instructor was an Army ROTC officer. A Vietnam combat veteran, he found the prospect of undergraduates packing heat unsettling, but reasoned that if they were arming themselves anyway, some training was better than none. Unlike many entrepreneurs teaching concealed-carry classes from sea to shining sea, he urged students to leave their guns at home. He stressed that he couldn’t turn them into infantry soldiers with a few sessions in a gym basement. Even most armed assailants, he explained, aren’t hell-bent upon murder. They use weapons to control their victims.
Anybody pulling a gun must shoot to kill without hesitation. The soldier reasoned that most Rice students simply weren’t prepared to do that; hence, the likeliest outcome was that criminals would end up murdering them with their own guns. Heightened awareness, avoiding lonely places at night and pepper spray or Mace would afford more safety than the illusion of power conveyed by a 9 mm semi-automatic.
Our instructor further advised that shotguns are the weapon of choice for home defense. Unlike a heavycaliber handgun, a shotgun will put an intruder out of business without a bullet passing through a wall and killing a sleeping child.
He emphasized that anybody suspecting a nighttime home invasion should first perform a thorough bed check—a procedure that saved me from potential catastrophe one night after my teen-age son and a friend sneaked out to howl at the moon under a maiden’s window at 2 a.m., leaving an open back door and a halfdozen beagles running through the house.
Creeping back home, the lads overheard me shucking shells from my 20-gauge pump, an unmistakably chilling sound. Fearing that burglars had taken us hostage, they were subsequently apprehended in headlong flight up the street. They’d been running for help, they explained.
Would I have shot an unknown intruder? I believe so. I’m also glad I’ve never had to face the choice. Killing a human being, almost regardless of provocation, is nothing like hunting game. Never mind legal peril. Contrary to action/adventure films, psychological fallout can be severe.
Anyway, we students next proceeded to the firing range for lessons in loading, unloading and blasting paper targets.
“If you can point your finger,” I wrote, “you can learn to kill,” an observation that annoyed almost as many gun fanciers as this column will. Maybe I should have said that I was already fairly good with a shotgun and had spent half my life aiming balls at things.
Anyway, here’s the thing: In the wake of the Tucson tragedy, handgun advocates argue that a well-armed private citizen could have saved lives by putting a decisive end to a gunman’s mad act. Never mind that Arizona has the most permissive gun laws in the country. Indeed, no laws had been broken until U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head at pointblank range.
Ah, but there was an armed bystander. His name is Joe Zamudio, and he bravely helped subdue Jared Loughner without firing a shot. But Zamudio has admitted how close he came to shooting the heroic retired Army colonel who reportedly wrested the pistol from the alleged shooter’s hands when he paused to reload. Thanks to a 30-round ammo clip, he had gotten off 31 shots in 15 seconds. Fifteen seconds! Everything was chaos and terror.
In Hollywood films, shoot-outs are carefully choreographed. Villains can’t shoot; heroes rarely miss. Nobody panics. Melodramatic violence metes out justice and redeems the world.
In reality, as Americans seem fated to experience again and again without learning anything:
A gunman walks into a Detroit police station and shoots four cops before himself being killed.
Two cops serving a warrant in St. Petersburg, Fla., are killed and a U.S. marshal wounded by a suspect who escapes.
Two sheriff’s deputies are shot at a Wal-Mart near Seattle before a third officer kills their assailant, whose motives remain unknown.
A policeman in Waldport, Ore., is shot by an unknown assailant during a routine traffic stop. He remains in critical condition.
At another routine stop, an Indianapolis cop is shot four times, twice in the face. He’s in critical condition, too.
All of these events occurred within 24 hours between Jan. 23 and 24.
It’s worth emphasizing that the 11 victims were trained, experienced law enforcement officers. But their assailants, who’d found semi-automatic weapons easier to acquire than whiskey, gave them no chance.
Meanwhile, National Rifle Association fundamentalists pretend that America will be a freer, safer place if more poorly trained, inexperienced, unfit, would-be Bruce Willis heroes were waddling around shopping malls carrying pistols.
There’s a word for people who cling to absurd beliefs against massive evidence. They’re called cultists, and they’re currently in charge.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.
A bumper stocker I saw couldn’t have said it any better:
“If guns kill people... do pencils misspell words?”
s/b sticker see people not keyboards norp encils misspell words LOL
You don't have to turn everyone into a killing machine, you just need to keep the bad guys guessing which ones are.
When the bad guys know a 75 yo grandmother that normally would be safe to attack has the potential of being a trained killing machine, they call that deterrent.
Deterrent is a good thing.
“Even most armed assailants, he explained, aren’t hell-bent upon murder. They use weapons to control their victims. “
A couple of points:
- I seriously doubt any good firearms instructor, not to mention combat veteran, would have said any such thing.
- Relying on the beneficence of a predator with a weapon is the stupidest thing one could ever do.
- Once someone pulls out a weapon in the commission of a predatory act they have given up the right to complain about overly harsh treatment.
Pulling a gun out and killing another human being is hard to do even if you are well trained and prepared to do so, at close range that hesitation will get you killed faster than anything.
A gun isn't a cure-all for common sense, and for many young women a can of mace or pepper spray would be a better choice if they are not hesitant of using that like they would be about killing someone.
Logically I can see his point if 50% of the people who do resist with a weapon are killed, he is simply playing the odds, in which case the criminals will win hands down every time but I would still not use his way of thinking myself.
This is my local paper now.
Just about tore what’s left of my hair out reading that editorial this morning.
Arrrgh!
These Liberal Fundamentalists such as eugenelyons2@yahoo.com, would rather the criminals of the US have the freedom to carry and use weapons against a people kept defenseless due to gun control laws that do nothing but hinder law abiding citizens.
Don’t think old Eugene here has noticed that had Pima cops done their job, Eugene’s bud Jared Loughner probably would not have been able to blast away.
If the government could afford to hire everyone a bodyguard, then they might have a point, but seeing as that is infeasible and police response times are slow they are sooo full of it...
At least the author is right about the shotgun. There is NO more impressive, chilling, “mind-changing” sound than the racking of a 12 gauge.
Funny thing is in trying to find his pic I came across another Gene Lyons who was an ardent communist, and wrote many articles on the subject, born in 1898. Wonder if it's a case of the rotten apple not falling far from the tree?
Legally I believe that one is only permitted to "shoot to stop", not "shoot to kill". It's unfortunate for the attacker that the two concepts are nearly identical.
If a weapon existed which would accurately sever the femoral artery of an attacker, the attacker would almost certainly die. But the minute or two that it might take for the attacker to bleed out would permit him to take your life. Shooting to kill isn't enough; you must shoot to stop the attack.
I recall the story of a woman who was attacked in her bedroom. She struggled against the attacker and managed to retrieve a .22 pistol from her purse, shooting the attacker about half a dozen times. Fortunately, the attacker died. The woman was pinned under him when he died and was very fortunate to have survived.
She would have been better off with a weapon more likely to STOP the attack than just kill the attacker.
Boy, do you have that wrong! The Eugene Lyons who was born in 1898 was an ardent ANTI-Communist. His book, The Red Decade, is a devastating expose of Communist infiltration in the New Deal. He also wrote a book in teh 1950s, Our Secret Allies, which promoted revolution in the non-Russian Republics of the USSR.
They want to wait for the housing market to pick up before moving out to AR, but I'm telling them that with Moonbeam as Gov, their house will be worth close to 200k soon. FReegards!
Except maybe the sound of a safety clicking off from about two feet behind you...
I teach my students that when confronting goblins in the home uninvited, your shotgun better be loaded, and the first sound they should hear is BANG!.
"Racking" your shotgun tells the enemy 1) where you are, and 2) to possibly start shooting that direction.
Agreed. About 3 years ago I converted from a Mossberg pump to a Saiga 12 semi-auto. There is no finer close-quarters defense weapon, IMO.
They don’t tell you that the increase in deaths is the bad guys...and for them who cares...
“They use weapons to control their victims. “
When someone you wouldn’t want to surrender to pulls a gun in a violent confrontation, you should immediately run towards or away from the Gun.
Once you start to comply with the gunman it becomes increasingly harder to break out of your compliance mindset.
A guy with a .22 got a bunch of people and had them line up and wait for their bullet to the back of the head. A .22 anywhere else would hurt, but most likely wouldn’t kill. So sitting and waiting for their execution is about the dumbest thing they could have done, and yet none of them could break out of the mindset of compliance with the gunman’s demands.
Smart cops know there's no such thing.
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