I apologize for the delay in getting the summary post from last night’s Gun Nuts Radio up – it was an excellent show with lots of great commentary from listeners both on call-ins and live in the chat. As always, here is a link to raw .mp3 file of the show for you to download.
The first part of the show, we spent discussion Plaxico Burress’ recent case in New York, with his charges of carrying illegally etc, and having a negligent discharge, etc etc. Not a lot of controversy there, as the general consensus seems to be that he’s an idiot anyway. We moved on from there to a further discussion of the ugly incident with HS Precision, and their endorsement from Lon Horiuchi. For further details on what started all that, see this link. One of the more interesting conversations that came from that is where do we draw the line for forgiveness? A caller was particularly interested in us, as a community, being able to present a united front and not give the anti-gun groups more ammo to call us “crazy” or “deranged”; and he had a valid point. I personally feel that it comes down to personal ideological choices – when you as an individual feel that they’ve done enough to be welcomed back. I know a lot of gunnies who still won’t buy from Smith & Wesson because of the deal with the Clinton administration; and there are some people who haven’t forgiven Zumbo despite his recanting. Ultimately, it is a personal issue – but I hope that people do bear in mind that one gun company failing is bad for all of us.
There was a lot more talk on HS Precision, but you should listen to the show to hear it all. After that, we moved on to talk about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, where I proceeded to take a beating on the air. I’m mostly kidding, but I did find that I was in mild disagreement with many people who believe that a few armed citizens could have made a significant difference in the outcome. While I agree that a few armed citizens could have made a difference on an individual level, I just can’t shake the feeling that in that particular situation a couple of armed citizens with handguns wouldn’t have turned the tide.
However, I’m also willing to admit that I could be wrong – as it was pointed out, Jeanne Assam stopped a determined man who was armed with a rifle with nothing but her pistol and a serious set of guts; I’m reminded that the badguys in the Mumbai situation weren’t exactly high-speed-low-drag operators…but mostly I’m reminded that thanks to India’s terribly restrictive gun laws, we’ll never know. That in and of itself is a tragedy – that men and women were not even granted the opportunity to have the best tools at their disposal to defend their lives from violence, and because of that, we’ll never know if an armed citizen would have made a difference.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can always listen to the show yourself.
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Thanks again for another excellent show!
“men and women were not even granted the opportunity to have the best tools at their disposal to defend their lives from violence, and because of that, we’ll never know if an armed citizen would have made a difference.”
Absolutely. To be honest I hardly find it relevant to argue over whether armed citizens would have stopped or mitigated the attack. You can never know these things because (as we clearly saw here) it depends not only on being armed, but on the mindset of those who are.
Would they make a difference? Maybe, maybe not. You can never know, since it depends on the situation and the people involved. Being armed at least gives them a chance, and that’s more important than arguing over “what if’s” IMO.
Here’s what bugs me about the idea that armed citizens wouldn’t have been able to stop the attack or “turn the tide.” They’re saying 10 men pulled this off, working in pairs. (Even if initial reports of 15 – 20 were accurate, I think my point will hold.) 170 killed and hundreds injured. Forget winning a running gun battle, forget surviving personally, if one citizen or security guard had fought just long enough to take down one bad guy half way through his spree, that’s 7 lives saved. Not to mention taking out one half of a fire team, making the survivor easier game. Heck, somebody reposted a news photograph showing two terrorists standing together; many Americans could have taken them both.