Enchanted Sidearms for the Police.

Let's just assume for a moment that this man did not have a weapon in his hands. Can you go with that?

Now let me address it from that standpoint. Deadly force is not authorized, by any use of force guidelines of which I'm aware, due to a suspect acting irrationally. Just because someone may want to complete a suicide by cop doesn't mean you oblige them.

There were two officers there. Were they so untrained, so unprepared with other use of force options, that their only solution to a problem such as this is to *take the subject's life*???

What kind of incompetent, uncaring, uncompassionate LEO does that? People call the police to solve problems. Sidearms are a solution to a very small subset of the variety of problems that police face every day. As soon as they become the primary solution, this is what you get.

When I was in the academy, we were in Defensive Tactics class every single day, for two hours a day, during 6 months of training. We practiced moving from one use of force option to the next, and back again, based on the situation at hand. Yes, that included holstering your sidearm to go hands on and subdue a suspect, for our own safety -- and get this -- theirs too.

Pulling your sidearm should not limit your options. It's not like some mythical sword in some fantasy novel, where it must taste blood before it can be put away.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/08/20/breaking-video-footage-of-st-louis-cops-gunning-down-kajiemi-powell/

Death to...Gun Culture.

It happened again today.  An armed gunman killed multiple people, many of them children.  He walked into a school and started shooting. Children.  He started shooting children with what appears to be a civilian version of a military semi-automatic rifle.

I've written about this before.  I wish I had not.

When the gun-nuts, yes I will use that term, spoke out that more guns were necessary.  They said that if everyone had a firearm, or at least, if more people had them, then the shooter in the movie theater could have been stopped.

In "If only someone else had a gun" I addressed the sheer lunacy of that argument for *more* guns.

In "Violence in the Movies and Gun Nuts" I explored why we, as a society, need to keep entertaining ourselves with violence and why we do so.

Then, in "If you want peace..." we got to consider the people who really, really, really like guns and how they are the impediment to peace in this country.

And it happened again today.

Here is what I will predict will happen next -- besides the next killing I mean.

Outraged people will cry, "Enough!" and demand the banning of firearms in this country.  They are perfectly in their right to make that statement.  I completely understand their outrage.

On the other hand...

People who are gun-nuts, the other end of the spectrum, the ones who really really really like their guns, the ones with the "I love Coffee and Guns" faux Starbucks stickers on their pick-em-up trucks, will become what they mostly already are; afraid.

They will be afraid of losing their guns.

Yes, they will be afraid.  They will cry about their Second Amendment rights. They will re-frame the exact words in that  amendment, ignoring the first few, in their justification for little or no effective controls on the massive distribution of firearms in this country.

Here are the two ways it appears historically:

As passed by the Congress:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  

Can you guess which four words they insist on ignoring?

Here are some reported facts that they will also choose to ignore and ignore and ignore.

They are taken from this Washington Post article.

They will do everything to ignore the fact that, since 1982, there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. In most of those cases, the killers had obtained their weapons legally  Legally.  That's Legally.

Then there is the fact that "Eleven of the 20 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States."

There are other interesting bits of data in that article that, I'm sure they will ignore, obfuscate, or dismiss with Second Amendment rights hand waving.

And there is something else they will do.  They will shake their heads, talk about personal responsibility, and how the gun laws in Washington D.C. and Chicago prove that effective controls don't work.

They will also parrot that wonderful meme, so often heard, so easy to slide off the tongue, "Guns don't kill people.  People kill people," all the while ignoring that, while a person did the killing, they were holding a readily available gun to do so.

They will argue that a killer can use a knife, a rock, a car or a club, demonstrating their intellectual dishonesty as they ignore the ease at which a firearm dispatches a human life compared to their weak examples.

And it's all to defend their abject insecurity and fear.

Now, some may be insulted by this and try to distract us.  They may cry out, "I'm not afraid! I'm exercising my rights!  You can't regulate my rights!  They are immutable!"

And they will ignore that many other rights and privileges in our society are regulated to one extent or another.


The last magnificent manipulation they will attempt is to ask us not to have this conversation now, to not 'politicize' the deaths of children by wanting to talk about what to do about this.

So, if now is not the time, just when would be good for you?  Would next week be OK?  How about in January.  Would that be a good time to talk about the ease with which someone can slaughter innocent citizens in this country?  Would that be a good time to discuss the Gun Culture (it sure does exist, yes it does) and how to change that?


But basically it comes down to a very vocal and angry/afraid subset of this population that really really really likes their guns.  They really do.  They don't want any regulation on the possession of their guns.  They see this as an infringement of their rights.  They see everything as a slippery slope to losing their guns.

And that makes them afraid. It makes them afraid enough that they forget their much vaunted "personal responsibility."  What do I mean by this?  I mean that, they are so enamored of their guns and so afraid that someone will take them away, so selfish in their desire to be armed, to have these magnificent, loud, destructive toys, that they would rather see children gunned down in schools than agree to any reasonable controls on firearms.

Does this mean I'm joining the ranks of those who, on completely understandable outrage, cry, "Enough!  Ban all firearms!  Enough!"

No, it does not. I don't think it's practical or feasible to do so.

Twenty-seven people died today.  Twenty-seven people.  Of that, at least 18 were *children*.  Children.

The only thing that needs to die is the Gun Culture in this country.

I'm calling out the gun-nuts, the NRA, the gun-lovers, the gun-rights-advocates, to step up and help do something about this problem.

I'm not expecting an answer any time soon.