Link on Gun Control

[rowyn]

This blog post by Larry Correia does not exactly reflect my reasoning on gun control, but it's well-done and I want to note it down somewhere so I can find it again later.

This part perhaps struck me most:

There were four mass killing attempts this week. [...]

• Oregon. NOT a gun free zone. Shooter confronted by permit holder. Shooter commits suicide. Only a few casualties.


• Texas. NOT a gun free zone. Shooter killed immediately by off duty cop. Only a few casualties.


• Connecticut. GUN FREE ZONE. Shooters kills until the police arrive. Suicide. 26 dead.


• China. GUN FREE COUNTRY. A guy with a KNIFE stabs 22 children.

The first two in particular, because of course you don't hear about the disasters that someone prevents. And it doesn't matter why they don't happen, whether it's because someone stopped the killer on the scene, or because the killer couldn't get the weapons he wanted, or because someone talked him out of it before he even got to the stage of action, or what. You never really know how well or badly a policy works, because the world is too huge and complex, and this isn't a laboratory experiment, and we have no control group. There's just us, doing the best we can, one day after another.

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

A small detail in the China ref -- they were stabbed, but not killed. All the kids lived.

[rowyn]

Thanks! I suspected the death toll was a lot lower or he'd've said 'killed' and not 'stabbed' -- but it's good to know they all survived. Poor kids. ;_;

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

We just need nonlethal weapons as effective and easy to use as guns. And then everyone needs to carry those.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

The TASER was supposed to do that job. But as history has proved out, you aren't going to make people give up their lethal weapons by offering them a nonlethal one, especially one that may or may not work. I have personally seen a biker get zapped with a taser -- he then picked up his harley and threw it into the windshield of the nearest cop car. At that point I turned around and drove away as the cops poured 40+ bullets into the guy before they brought him down. The word was the guy was on PCP. But damn...

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, tasers don't cut it. You want something that takes someone out for a couple hours at least.

OTOH using a PCP freak is kind of a bad example since there are plenty of stories of them shrugging off bullets, too.

[rowyn]

Cap guns solved all the problems with violence in Space Otters! }:)

[rowyn]

Not to mention that most of those weapons are more aptly termed 'less lethal', as opposed to truly 'nonlethal'. Technology is definitely not there yet.

[ketrava.livejournal.com]

PCP is a scary thing

[sebkha.livejournal.com]

The OP's article is lengthy, but not persuasive. I stop taking anyone seriously when they try to tell me how the tightened gun laws in Australia following the Port Arthur massacre made it so horrible to live here. :)

[alltoseek.livejournal.com]

The other major difference between the first two and the second two examples are CHILDREN. You are going to arm children, now? Have teachers keep guns in the classroom? Where kids can get at them?

I don't know about the China example, but in Conn the other difference is a confined and crowded space - the school. You open fire from the doorway of a classroom and where are the children going to go? A shopping mall, a street - lots of places to go to get away, and typically less crowded than a classroom with up to 40 kids in them nowadays.