Posted on 10/08/2002 11:34:37 AM PDT by SLB
I concur for a different reason. No one has gotten a good ID on the perps yet. If you can't ID them, you ain't close enough to take them on with a handgun.
Yep, exactly like OKC. Clinton, as most of us know, had his reasons for not revealing the truth about OKC. Bush has his own reasons for attempting to convince us that not one terrorist incident committed by Islamics has happened on U.S. soil since 9/11 (when in fact dozens have).
Presidents lie, period. They always have, and most likely always will.
Going prone and using a handgun one can hit a human sized target out to 100 yards. Several of the shots have been at about 100 yards distance. Further if someone who is armed comes upon a rifleman sighting in some other direction and sees said rifleman take a shot and an innocent fall then pumps five or six rounds into the shooter that would be an instance where a handgun would do some good.
I heard last night that no shots were beyond 100 meters. An amateur piker could hit a kill zone with iron sights at that range.
A professional sniper would not choose a .223 due to its poor ballistics and mediocre wounding ability.
Most folks can reliably hit 100m targets with a .223 after a day or two of practice. It is unlikely the gunman is a "pro". An Al-Queda terrorist on a tight budget, perhaps.
Just perhaps, an armed citizen might run across this killer. Notice "ALL" of the police were well armed????
1) There isn't the slightest scrap of evidence that terrorism had anything to do with Flight 587.
2) Oil refineries are massive complexes chock-full of things that burn are explode. Sometimes they burn or explode, and this has happened since the first refinery was built. No one has presented any evidence that there are more oil refineries exploding or burning in the last year than usual. And it IS the responsibility of someone claiming these are terrorist incidents to search for and present such evidence, NOT the responsibility of those claiming they aren't.
And believe me, I've had to put up with this garbage before, from the Y2K loons on the old Timebomb 2000 board. You couldn't have a fire in a trashcan started by a cigarette butt at an oil refinery in early 2000 without somebody claiming it was the beginning of the Y2K meltdown.
3) There has been NO increase in train accidents or train derailments in the last year. This WAS researchable and the data was posted on several of the train derailment threads on FR.
4) None of the Greyhound bus attackers were "Middle Eastern", Muslim, or were found to have the slightest connection to any terrorist network.
5) Malaria USED to be endemic in the Continental US and it's not particularly surprising to have it return, particularly with restrictions on spraying and insecticides.
6) New diseases, old diseases arriving from a different area of the world so they're new to the US, or new forms of diseases, pop up. Legionnaire's disease, the 1918 Flu Pandemic, etc. It doesn't require human intervention.
Nobody thinks the 1918 flu was biowarfare. If it popped up this winter, (or something like it, and that could happen ANY year) I think it's a safe assumption that every single person on FR would assume it was bioterrorism, and be violently hostile to anyone suggesting that it wasn't.
Let's face it...the author, like many FR posters, is upset about the relative absence of terror attacks in the US in the last year. We've had a grand total of ONE Middle Eastern Male actually commit an act of terror in the entire US in the last year, and a grand total of TWO Muslims (including Richard Reid, who was at least on an aircraft headed towards the US, though he wasn't actually here when he tried to set off his shoe) committ acts of terror in the US in the last year.
The above aren't spin, they aren't deceptively worded statements; they're simple statements of fact.
And I'm talking about ACTS OF TERROR. Whatever dreams Padilla or those wannabe kooks in Oregon had don't count in ACTS OF TERROR because they didn't actually do anything. Could they have done something if they hadn't been caught? Sure. But we'll never know.
And this is a dilemma for the "ALL Muslims are Evil Terrorists/We're in WWIII" crowd; it's the same dilemma that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton face every day they wake up and some dumb white redneck hasn't dragged a black man to his death behind a truck the day before...and that's pretty much every day, because the supply of violent white racists is far lower than Jackson's and Sharpton's political agendas demand, just as the supply of violent Islamic terrorists in the US is far lower than the political agendas of a lot of people who post on FR, and who are popular writers of articles that get posted on FR, demand.
What about a hangun in the hands of a guy who hears gunfire coming from a van as he strolls past it 50 feet away?
Its a moot point, D.C and Maryland have suspended the Bill of Rights.
In that case, the selection of .223 is idiotic and the guy is not a "pro". Wind drift on .223 starts getting sketchy around 300m. No sniper with military training *chooses* .223.
The interesting thing is that if you're claiming Concealed Carry would deter this sniper you're pretty much arguing this isn't a fanatical Muslim terrorist....and I suspect everyone claiming that CCW would matter against this guy also ASSUMES it's a fanatical Muslim terrorist.
Remember, these are supposedly fanatical suicidal terrorists? How does the fear of citizens with concealed handgun affect an Al Queda sniper?
Let's face it...this particular perp is the WORST possible example to use to argue in favor of concealed carry, and all it does is serve to make Concealed Carry advocates look like idiots when it is used.
Concealed Carry WOULD deter muggings, rapes, carjackings, etc. But in the case of this particular sniper, it's blatantly obvious that citizens with handguns wouldn't have stopped ANY of the attacks so far, or would be likely to prevent any in the future. And this is either a terrorist, or a particularly rare type of highly rational psychopath...."deterrence" of civilians with handguns is unlikely to work on either. Such deterrence WOULD work on a common criminal out for some money or a SUV to take to a chop shop.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.