This post may diverge a bit from what we usually talk about. Let’s just say it’s in the name of self defense . . .
It’s been a while since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary school. There has been plenty of time to begin working to prevent something horrible from happening like this ever again. So what’s the average American to do? Argue about something unrelated and completely irrelevant to avoid facing the real issue!
Please pardon my sarcasm. I live in Connecticut, USA. I am a public school teacher. I am a martial arts instructor. I am husband and a father. I have a vested interest in learning how to keep myself, my loved ones, and my students safe. I hoped that people would address the underlying issues of school shootings and other senseless crimes against children head on. Instead we are drowning in a debate about gun owners and their rights.
It seems counterproductive to discuss gun rights when really we need to tackle mental health, adolescent issues, and school safety. Maybe if we dispel the myth that the Second Amendment and public safety are inextricably linked, we can finally get somewhere. So here we go!
Admittedly, I am not as intimately familiar with guns as some. I grew up in a gun-owning household. I had a high school job at a shooting range. I’m no hunter or marksman, but I’ve done some target shooting. I have a healthy respect for guns and gun owners, I support the right to bear arms, and I understand the need and desire for weapons in our culture. However, I don’t own a gun and I probably never will. Owning a gun just doesn’t seem to jibe with my chosen occupations.
The students and staff at my school were shocked by the Sandy Hook shooting. We offered support to the kids and to each other. While the massacre didn’t directly affect many of us, we discussed the issues at hand and offered reassurance that we would do all we could to keep everyone safe. As a teacher, I think we’re in a good place. We seem to have moved on; our daily routines are back to normal, and we aren’t scared to be here. I would have written about all of this sooner, but it did take a while to process something so awful happening in my own backyard.
Here’s my conclusion: The debate over gun rights has no correlation with what happened here in Connecticut.
It simply does not connect. The shooting was an act of evil–something we need to learn more about in order to prevent it from happening again. Profiling Adam Lanza and his family, exploring mental health issues, discussing how to make schools into “hard targets”–all of these things should be explored. It would be an ethical failure not to work toward better identifying and treating the mentally ill, incarcerating those beyond assistance, and protecting the innocent.
But it seems the only conversation we’ve had since Columbine, since West Virginia, since Aurora, since Newtown, is whether or not we should restrict gun ownership. Why is this?
The answers are not that complicated. America is not ready to address the underlying issues of violence because they indict out culture for what it is at times–impulsive, repressive, and inherently violent.
So it’s easier to foster argument between hippies and NRA members, Liberals and Conservatives, and Democrats and Republicans instead of figuring out why mass murder keeps happening.
Do I have the answer? No. I wish I did. I do know–especially from working with young people–that violent and self destructive actions are symptoms of inner turmoil. For students who act out in class, abuse drugs, participate in choking or cutting, or for those who express suicidal ideation, the first step is protection. The next is investigation. Every child–like every adult–has a story that must be read into before you can understand and prevent dangerous behaviors.
Are there bad kids? Yes. Can you help all of them? No. Is it important to try? It’s a moral imperative. Ask any teacher or guidance councilor. To help the kid, you help the kid. You don’t blame drugs or ropes or razor blades.
So, gun owners, I understand that guns are not the problem–people are. But people are also the solution–not guns.
With that said, I have another message for you. If you want to help prevent gun violence, stop acting paranoid and irrational. Offer real support and solutions to the problems we face in America. Don’t run screaming and foaming at the mouth, waving around the Bill of Rights in one hand and a Winchester in the other. All you’re doing is distracting us from the real problems we need to solve.
Gun owners: It’s time to get real. No one is taking away your guns. Legislators are not repealing the second amendment. All that’s proposed is adding a few new background checks. Magazine size could be shrunk to ten bullets. Assault weapons may be banned. No one is impeding your right to defend yourself. No one is revoking your pistol permits. No one is closing your gun club. The government will not be sending people to take your weapons.
They are, perhaps, limiting your right to show off.
Let me make an analogy to the auto industry. Are you allowed to drive a race car on the highway? No. They are not street legal. There are also speed limits that are meant to keep our roads safe. Do these laws work all the time? No, but they abide by common sense and they are helpful overall.
Yet you don’t see NASCAR fans picketing the Capitol for the right to drive over 200MPH in a school zone.
If you’re a gun owner and you want to show off, trick out your rifle. Get it custom fit and balanced. Order a hand carved stock. Add a laser scope if you want. Make your firearm into a Ferrari. Or a BMW. Or a Model T. (I’ve watched enough Pawn Stars to know how much gun enthusiasts love an antique!)
You don’t need to show off with a closet full of assault weapons.
For those who want to drive fast, there are speedways and closed, recreation courses. If you want to fire high-powered weapons, let the shooting range rent them to you. Spend a few hours there. Hell, make it into a weekend! There’s no harm in that. Even I think it would be fun. But the Bondurant Driving School won’t let you drive their cars home. Neither should shooting ranges let you take an assault weapon home.
It’s just so impractical.
Sure, it would be really fun to drive a stock car to work everyday. But could you afford the special racing fuel? Would you field a pit crew to change those slick tires during your lunch hour? Would you really shave time off your commute, or would you slog through traffic jams like everyone else?
No. You wouldn’t want a race car for everyday driving. Neither would you want an assault weapon for hunting or protection. Would there be any venison left after hosing a deer down with a MAC-10? Do you plan on sleeping with an AR-15 under your pillow? If you are a responsible gun owner, it will have a trigger lock installed, and it will be locked in a safe. You won’t be able to load and draw it in time to save your family from intruders. So why keep one at home?
Assault weapons are status symbols among gun owners. Pure and simple. And that’s another reason why they’re up in arms about their right to own them. The other, more outspoken proponents of assault weapons seem scared and angry of things like government run amok, deposing current and future tyrants, defending the motherland against invasion, and general anxiety about Armageddon. Paranoia and fear not not good drivers in decision making. Maybe gun rights advocates should chose their spokespeople more wisely?
To continue my automotive analogy, you don’t get to drive in a NASCAR race unless you have a flashy jumpsuit and someone pays you a lot of money. You probably don’t need an assault weapon unless you’re a soldier or a member of the SWAT team. Let’s put face the reality that unless it’s your job to fire guns at people, you don’t need assault weapons. They don’t help you defend yourself against real or perceived threats. So please stop hijacking the national conversation about school safety for selfish reasons.
If you want to argue, that’s fine, but save it for another time. There’s too much at stake to fire on the wrong target.
Moai Martial Arts 
Reblogged this on MMA, Wrestling, Comic and Gaming News.
Dylan and Eric said in their video that it wasn’t their parents fault. I think it had to do with the medication they were on.
Marilyn Manson made a song called ” Disposable Teens”, that pretty much explained how outcast teens felt before, during, and after Columbine. I was in 10th grade when that happened. I was a Korn Kid so I became “one of THOSE kids”. That never made me want to kill anybody. Hurt definitely but never kill.
Right. And like he said, wouldn’t it be nice if someone took the time to listen to kids? Wouldn’t it have been easier if someone listened to you? I went through a lot of that stuff too. One of the reasons I went in to teaching was to try to help kids like us.
Manson also noted that everyone blamed guns and the media instead of trying to get to the root causes. We have some sick aspects of our culture that we need to heal, but people would rather cuss each other out about rights and pass blame around instead of trying to do anything useful.
Long response, I hope you find this easy to read, I tend to be a bit long winded on the subject, I first address the issue of why the concern is heavier on the guns in the public eye…and that it is not really gun owners…we are simply forced to try and preserve our rights…we would all rather talk about the other issues but we are forced to battle politicians going down the wrong and frankly dangerous path.
Ok, I found this because a friend said it was well written but he didn’t agree with the comments about guns/gun owners. I am one of several administrators on a facebook page Gun Control=More Crime Connecticut. I post under the tag “Doc” as I am a former combat medic who served in the CT National Guard.
While I also enjoyed your writing it is unfortunate you are coming at this with some holes in your argument. I’m HOPING you and anyone who reads this is actually open minded and open to a little constructive criticism.
Everything you said about the real issues I and most gun owners agree with 100%. The mental health issues and making schools hard targets are absolutely what should be at the forefront of all these debates. However, you incorrectly turn the blame on the gun-control issue on to gun owners and political-rights activists (which more aptly describes those arguing in favor of the 2nd Amendment).
As you admitted yourself, it took awhile to process this tragedy. It wasn’t gun-owners that “fired the first shot” in this debate, take a look, certain politicians have been attempting this far before Sandy Hook and by their own admission are USING this tragedy “to get something done” that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do as Rahm Emanuel likes to say (President Obama’s former Chief of Staff for those that don’t know). It was less than a week after Sandy Hook in fact that CT’s own Senator Blumenthal was standing next to CA Senator Feinstein saying he would back a much stricter firearms ban. LESS THAN A WEEK!
Now, since this was obviously an emotional experience, and don’t think for a moment political-rights activists were not affected by this. I am man enough to admit I cried my eyes out for those children, thinking of the presents likely purchased and wrapped never to be open, the parents hearing of the news and trying to cope, all of the little details of what they must be going through ran through my head.
All of this was FAR before I was thinking about my gun rights at all. Most gun owners didn’t say anything even after the very quick response from politicians with bills already prepared for JUST SUCH A TRAGEDY. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that Aurora happened only months before yet neither side Democrat or Republican (I’m neither by the way I’m a Libertarian if anything…registered Democrat but have in recent years “woken up” to the realities that the two parties are just two heads on the same body) really went after firearms after THAT incident? You can say it was the difference of children involved of course. Deep down I think most of you know the real difference though, the election had passed.
So, hopefully you will accept that first part and realize that it wasn’t gun owners that really started this debate. That we indeed would rather be discussing the real issues you point out, instead of having to defend a right to REAL self-defense (I’ll get into that in a bit).
Why then if both sides of citizens actually agree that THOSE issues should be what is being discussed, is it not? Well, if we don’t stand up for the rights, they will pass these bills they are trying to…just as they have passed many bills that are HORRIBLE for our civil and political-rights when we as a people aren’t paying attention, we are too busy..you as a school teacher should know that the average person today…somehow with all of our modern conveniences and time-savers ….has LESS “free time” than we have had in hundreds of years! There are also so many bills proposed at any one time it is mind boggling, and they are so…convoluted it takes a law degree to make heads or tails of them. ON TOP of that, seemingly innocent named bills, have dangerous clauses and/or amendments tagged on to them or buried in them at the last moments before approval. Or, in the case of NY they call it an emergency and pass the bill in the middle of the night with no public discussion. Now, if you were emotional..angry, mad, upset and you were say…driving a car aren’t you SUPPOSED to pull over and not drive in that condition…and that is say after a little tiff with someone or the passing of a relative. In this case we had a horrible tragedy …yet they want to RUSH legislation. Legislation the experts agree and statistics show DOES NOT ACCOMPLISH THE GOAL. Shouldn’t the same consideration for emotional impairment and driving a car also apply to emotional impairment and steering a NATION? When you RUSH you make mistakes…I would think as a teacher and a martial-arts instructor you would agree with that, yes?
So WHY aren’t the politicians more focused on the REAL issues…ok, think about it. We agreed what the real issues are, so lets look at them. Mental Health, the reason they aren’t looking at this more is it will cost them money. In the case of CT it was 10 or so years ago they cut spending on this WAY back…closing facilities, cutting jobs, etc. (Which by the way you would THINK that creating more JOBS would also be a good reason for focusing more on this!) So you have cost and that is sadly a major one for politicians and tax payers…people say they want this and that but if taxes go up…uh-oh so that is …pretty much everyone’s fault unfortunately. More to the politicians though….it’s not very…”news-worthy” at least not so much as firearms…a Senator or a Representative standing next to a newly or re-opened facility…not as attention grabbing as if they are standing there pointing at a firearm and talking about how dangerous it is…please, it is only dangerous in TWO situations….1) Someone that mishandles it and 2) Someone who has malicious intent. That is it. I won’t even get INTO the differences between a civilian version vs. what I carried in the military because that information is all over the place for you to find. I will point out that your use of the term, “assault weapon” …it shows that you are sucking at the teat of the media and politicians. That term was MADE UP simply to classify weapons that LOOKED like military rifles and they wanted to make them sound scary.
Hardening schools as targets is the same thing…cost (bullet proof windows on the first floor alone would have prevented Adam Lanza from breaching the school…or at LEAST greatly slowed him down) and it isn’t…”flashy” for the media.
You also said that you don’t have an answer and you wish you had one. That is commendable of you and at first I was right there until I realized a real hard truth. Sometimes there IS NO PERFECT SOLUTION. It is a very hard pill to swallow. Now that doesn’t mean that we do NOTHING. We also can’t simply “DO SOMETHING” as many people chant these days…really? Take a look at the Infant Sorrow video from the movie “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and you will see that back in…oh I think 2008 how that phrase was literally a joke in the movie…what does that even mean??? “Something” …its terrifying to see people so distraught (and yes VERY understandably so) clamoring for ANYTHING to be done before really thinking it out. However, I am not “paranoid” the bills are on the table and they are indeed stripping away our right to self-defense inch by inch.
I have been to MANY hearings and every time (you will just have to take my word) I have a truly open mind for those asking for gun control….I really want to hear a valid argument just to make sense of why these people are so willing to give up a right that they don’t fully understand. I have yet to hear a SINGLE ONE. It always comes down to an EMOTIONAL plea, not one born of any REAL evidence, facts, stats….NOTHING but fear of an INANIMATE object. Emotion and fear is NOT a good source or form of government. The fact that politicians rush and in fact use and bolster that fear…SHOULD scare anyone with ANY knowledge of history.
So, now you see why the two LOGICAL and REAL problems aren’t being really discussed…I know those reason…suck…but it’s unfortunately how politicians operate. Now why the guns?
Well, clearly they make better news (publicity is a politicians friend..even bad press), it doesn’t really cost the state much to ban, and now you have something to SHOW people…crates of weapons and magazines seized (and yes if you pay attention to their interviews many of the politicians want to seize weapons…and expand the bans further than is currently discussed…they simply don’t believe they can get the votes at this time..so they will take what they can get now…and add to it later…you SHOULD be familiar with the term SLIPPERY SLOPE), they can tax and item like a firearm and make MORE money, etc. it’s all about publicity for many of them…NOT about saving kids…that is just the lever they use to get something with their name on it to pass. Again…sad but simply true.
So these are the reasons the attention is on the guns and not where it should lie. It is not the gun-owners….heck…we shouldn’t even HAVE to fight for these rights….think about the simple fact that these people….were murderers….they had made up their minds to take lives…they would have done it with something else if not a firearm…did you know that hands…bare hands…and baseball bats kill more people every year than a rifle….and that number is from the FBI Table 8 data on murder rates….but these are bad people…how does taking ANYTHING away from a GOOD person….prevent a BAD person from doing a BAD thing???
***Reasons for firearms such as the AR-15**
The reasons some own firearms like the AR-15 may surprise you, one that surprised even me was that the pistol grip feature that so many politicians have an issue with for some reason, its actually beneficial for people with certain disabilities arthritis, carpal tunnel, etc. (Something I hadn’t thought of until I met someone who chose that style simply based on a pistol grip).
They are modular (meaning I can make my AR-15 other calibers…a simple .22 up to a single shot .50 with some modifications) And yes, the .50 caliber is a very viable hunting cartridge for certain game. And no, a .50 caliber contrary to what some politicians have said…is NOT going to take an airliner out of the sky (I actually had a person try telling me that…until I explained that only around 11 people have been known to hit a target accurately over a mile or so out…and that airliners are moving at several hundred miles an hour at an altitude eh..around 5 or 6 miles….so the skill involved alone..not to mention the capabilities of the firearm…make it pretty much impossible. Even IF someone got off….the most improbable shot and HIT an airliner…then you would have to see IF it still had the penetrating power to puncture the structures surrounding the aircraft…then IF it did and still had enough velocity to harm a person….so many “if’s” it is just ….beyond me that people can seriously think that way…usually get questions like that from people who are completely against firearms…yet only know enough to know which side the bullet comes out.)
They are multi-purpose, self-defense, hunting, target shooting, defenders of freedom.
The can incorporate a variety of accessories due to the rail system (the black plastic around the barrel that looks like teeth allows items like lasers, flashlights, bi-pods, scopes, etc. to be attached much more easily than having to attach with tools and require the skills of a gunsmith).
It’s beautiful to some…you may laugh, but where some irrationally are scared of them because they have seen and heard things on tv. To me and others…they are a work of art, a culmination of human ingenuity, mechanical marvels, a symbol. If you can open your mind enough to think about it in that way, isn’t it a functional sculpture? Can it not be said that it is iconic? The AR-15 style was introduced in the first really televised war and so it linked to the American military for that. Remember AR-15 is the PLATFORM …the SHAPE the internal mechanisms are different in several styles, the civilian version only capable of 1 shot per trigger squeeze. Military versions are capable of full-auto to semi-auto or 3-round burst to semi-auto (darn I said somewhere in here I wasn’t going to go into those details as you can find them elsewhere…but I’m going back editing…ah well…if you didn’t know it …now you do). So since it was linked with the American soldiers…it can be seen as and IS seen as “the good guy gun” …sort of like a white hat represents a good guy in the old spaghetti-westerns …and the black hat…the “bad guy gun” …the Russian AK-47…..when many see it…that is what they think…Soviets..Communism ….baaaad….evil….and most of the nations we as Americans see as BAD or EVIL ….use the AK-47 or variants. BUT IT IS STILL ONLY A TOOL! No matter how WE feel toward it…the impression it gives us..it doesn’t care a lick about us….it is incapable of being good OR bad….without a person behind it.
So now I bet you are thinking…”that is why we need background checks” …we already have them! What they are talking about for background checks the bills they have drafted up allow for more than most people think. Full medical histories (not only mental health), they call for registration of firearms (something the Supreme Court ruled against in the 1980’s…think about it…slippery slope…if the government can have you register everything …over time…they will never have to actually go into your house to search it…even now with everything being bought electronically…you don’t realize it…but the government…heck…Wal-Mart..Target…your credit card company/bank….can probably draw a picture of your house with everything inside it…without ever going in.) Of course, this will sound paranoid to you, you will say, well I’m not doing anything wrong…so I don’t really care. But that isn’t the POINT…its that you have a right to PRIVACY…it goes hand in hand with LIBERTY and FREEDOM. We shouldn’t have to sacrifice any PART of that because of terrorists or other assorted nut-jobs. As for “they” and “the government” I know that screams of conspiracy types lol but it’s simply a matter of the government being so large and having so many divisions, sections, subdivisions, agencies…it’s just easier to lump it all together instead of saying which is FBI, CIA, FEMA, DHS, NSA, BIMA, DEA, BATFE, ….you get the picture…”alphabet soup.”
The reasons I own firearms are plentiful, but the most important is self-defense and that means REAL defense. Not simply from a burglar or attacker on the street, but yes, from the government. No, that isn’t paranoia, no Alex Jones isn’t our “spokesperson” he is right about some things…but he makes a profit off of things…same with Piers Morgan…except that Piers just SOUNDS right. (Of course there will be less gun deaths when there are less guns…that does not mean less murders and less violent crime! Did you know that many in places that have had their firearms banned/seized like Great Britain and Australia are trying like hell to get them back?) Look up the papers written by the founders specifically Federalist Papers 29 and 46. They CLEARLY state that the reason for the People having arms is to prevent the government from trampling other rights, and IN FACT have the ability if need be to take up those arms AGAINST the government. The reason we haven’t HAD to is BECAUSE WE CAN! Get it?? Once you CAN’T …then you will be much more likely to NEED to. It was a lesson hard learned by our forefathers and unfortunately forgotten and not passed on to future generations…the the point where it is difficult for many to really wrap their heads around the concept….an no Alex Jones’ voice shouting it doesn’t really help (strange how simply annoying can detract from valid points..meanwhile Piers is composed but full of garbage that seems valid until all put together…comes from decades of people shouting at him from being an idiot…I think that fellow from Top Gear actually decked him back in the day too…so he is pretty unflappable in the face of shouting now).
I’m not saying that the government IS tyrannical or even that it is going to become…I’m saying the potential is ALWAYS there…which is what the founders of our Nation were saying. Think about it, THEY WERE THE GOVERNMENT…but they wrote in pieces that said the people they governed…could take up arms against them if THEY got out of line…think about that for a moment….how much they must have put their egos aside…how much foresight they had. They knew that they couldn’t speak for every generation of leaders to come down the line…they couldn’t guarantee that someone or some group would come along and amass too much of the separated powers…consolidate them and wield them poorly…so they built in a last line of defense. You know the separation of powers of course, Legislative, Executive, Judicial the “three branches of government” …but what everyone seems to forget is the massive TRUNK that those branches extend from, the trunk that IS: WE THE PEOPLE. The most basic and fundamental power is that of the people as a whole. But without arms equal to that of the military (and I only mean firearms, a citizen should have the ability to own and bear whatever the current issue primary firearm of a soldier is….not tanks and missiles etc…even then the people are seriously at a disadvantage…but at least they have a little bite) the government CAN run right over the people and not even blink.
Historically by the way (until around the 1960-1980’s) civilians had the same if not better firearms than the military.
Again, not saying the government WILL become tyrannical…but do you really want to take that chance when …pretty much every form of government has ended up that way? I mean really look at history…can we really be so obtuse as to think it is IMPOSSIBLE for it to happen here one day?
Hopefully, this will at least open your eyes a bit…..or put you to sleep with the length (lol).
***Personal experience and closing***
One further thing is my own recent experience. I was recently in that lock down at MCC (Manchester Community College) you may have heard about. Now I don’t carry a pistol or rifle on campus (I do follow the schools policy…like a good little boy). So there goes my first response to danger…fight. I think even as a martial artist you would agree it would be crazy to go unarmed against a person with a firearm (unless you have closed the distance to lessen their advantage somehow…even then…iffy at best). So what is the next response…flight, right? Get the heck outta the situation. Now, at first the announcement had been that it was a drill…so I popped into a room with everyone….only to find after about a half-hour later..that there was supposedly an unauthorized person with a firearm on campus. So I said…the heck with this and made my way to the door….to me it is the most insane thing to all huddle together in a room. I was stopped and told I could not leave. WHAT??? So, now I can’t fight with equal force to the suspected bad guy…and I can’t even walk away? I have to wait to possibly be confronted by a madman??? I looked at the doors and windows around me and knew they offered no real protection…the scared faces of the people around me who unlike me had never had to fear for their lives before, and I’m sitting there saying to myself this is ridiculous after everything I have been through…am I going to get shot because I am obeying these rules made up to supposedly keep us safe? Because another person simply chose NOT to obey and decided today would be a good day to kill people and maybe themselves…that made no sense to me whatsoever…so I kept looking out the various insecure windows to see if I could at least spot the person they were reporting on the news (I was on my phone looking at the reports). I was hoping I could see him and call in a location to the police at least …if I wasn’t allowed to leave…and wasn’t allowed to fight…I was at least going to try and make myself useful (meanwhile one of the staff members had gone into a slightly smaller room alone and locked herself in…not bothering to take a few of the younger students, females, anybody else in with her..and another male staffer kept snapping his fingers and saying “shhh” to the High School students that attend that side of campus…real heroes…pfft.) So we start seeing police and SWAT moving outside…I figure I’m not going to see anything now as they secure the area…so I wait….and wait…finally hear SWAT in the next room all amped up…shouting to the people that if they are there to come out of hiding and raise hands…I tell the group I am with that we just heard what to do through the wall so be ready to go and put your hands up to show that we are not a threat (I didn’t tell them that it was due to the possibility of an overzealous officer shooting them…didn’t want to cause a panic). I raise my hands but got down to the ground first (I had been standing the entire time when all but maybe 3 others out of around 30-35 had been sitting or kneeling in the corners and along the walls. As SWAT came in I watched their rifles and was shocked as the muzzles not only passed over us..but stayed on us while fingers rode triggers (their fingers should have remained OFF the triggers and the muzzles should have been off of us when deemed not a threat)…we were quickly ushered out of the room and into a line…where I and all the rest were made to open out bags and then searched…I couldn’t believe that either…what had I done? Nothing but be present where someone else thought they saw a person with a firearm? THOUGHT they saw TUCKED IN A WAISTBAND…THAT is enough for a search and a lock down? Honestly I thought at first it may have been a rifle they were looking for because as the officer searched me and my bag, he would not likely have found a pistol on me. He asked if I had any bottles on me for some reason and not thinking I said no…forgetting for a moment that I did have a water bottle in my coat pocket…but he never touched THAT coat pocket…touched everywhere else ironically, the whole thing had me scratching my head as I walked out. I was in disbelief, I had wanted to say, why? Why are you searching me…but from what I had just seen with the police and their weapons discipline…I thought…you know what…NOT the time for civil disobedience right now.
So I walked out and looked around…my vehicle was in the rear and I was released in the front, and there was no one around to tell me if I was allowed to go around. So I figured if I walk slow..and I’m wrong someone will at least shout and tell me not to or to go another way. As I walk by the side I look into a glass wall and see an officer with is rifle pointed at a door…now, he is on the corner…his rifle down one side of the corner…with the back of his head toward me…looking down the other wall…(if you have any tactical knowledge it will help but even the average person should really know…your eyes go where your firearms is pointed…this guy had not only to turn his head but in fact clear a corner…bad tactics at the very least). Of course, later I would learn that one officer actually shot another or himself depending on the reports (the last I heard was it was a breaching shotgun on one officers back that another went to move and then shot himself in the foot)…why a breaching shotgun would have a round in the chamber before it was needed…. I do not know…again…really poor weapons discipline and/or training….and yet…since we are not supposed to carry our own firearms for defense THIS is who we are supposed to rely on? People that almost shoot us and ACTUALLY shoot themselves…or if you remember California shoot at innocent people OVER 100 rounds!….and thankfully they didn’t kill those two elderly ladies delivering newspapers…think about that 8 TRAINED officers…over 100 rounds and don’t kill their targets I think luckily again in this case only 2 rounds hit one of the women…somewhere around there….yet they want to limit people to 7, 10, 15….based on….absolutely nothing. There is not standard or extended…that is simply a term in this case created to market….the amount of rounds “needed” is whatever one feels is needed and that is a personal choice. No one is making people who don’t want guns buy them…(actually one little county DID make it “mandatory” for homes to have a gun…it isn’t enforced at all…but the crime rate in that community is next to zilch).
So that was my experience “following the rules”
Unable to defend myself on equal terms
Unable to extract myself from the situation
Put at risk by my “rescuers”
Searched and fondled by my “rescuers”
If you think I could have simply walked out….look at this video and see around…1:50 at the camera man as he opens the door…rifle leveled at him and told to “stay in the room.”
http://www.wfsb.com/story/21535446/manchester-community-college-locked-down
Left with no doubt that when it comes right down to it self-defense is an individuals responsibility and natural RIGHT. Therefore logic dictates that it is an individuals choice as to how they go about defending themselves.
If you read the whole thing I thank you, hope you enjoyed and more importantly were informed, if you have any questions regarding anything in here, you can contact me most easily at the facebook page, Gun Control=More Crime Connecticut ….I won’t link to it as I don’t want it to seem like I am fishing for “likes” on your blog or anything, simply trying to educate, especially people who are so CLOSE to the truth…not perfect answers….but there are much better ones, ones that don’t violate citizens rights, ones that actually are “common sense” and not simply professed to be common sense.
We are all in this together,
Jesse “Doc” Sweeney
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Jesse! I really appreciate it! I’ll comment back as soon as I can. Your words deserve some careful consideration.
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