Firearm Owners Deter Crime Says Detroit Police Chief
According to a March 2013 anonymous poll of 15,000 officers by the law enforcement website http://policeone.com., almost 90 percent of the respondents believed casualties would be decreased if armed citizens were present during shooting incidents, while more than 80 percent supported arming teachers who were trained with firearms.
I'm glad Jefferson and the boys back in the day didn't try to go about it that way.
There was a protest at the capitol in phx and everybody showed up armed. With AR-15's.
http://www.azfamily.com/news/Pro-Gun-act...
This year we got the parking lot bill put thru too, which simply put means that an employer cannot fire you for keeping a firearm in your car.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxAaiR9D-...
He has a youtube channel, and some interesting things to say. I'm pretty sure he's a Rand fan as well, if maybe a little rough around the edges.
http://youtu.be/-sAGGoPidEY
I like how you ended with "at this point" though. A message of "keep your hands of our guns" needs to be sent...BEFORE 'that point' comes. Again I say...empty holsters... WEAK.
(However, now that I think about it more...DC is anti gun and has laws against carrying...so there's that problem...I guess that puts us back to marching at State capitals. Clusters of lunacy all over with how we're being legally limited to express our views or voice our opinions or protest. What's happening to our Country!!!?? Where the hell is the press?)
I am wondering just how close a protest can get to DC while staying on Virginia soil. There may be something to that, but there again we need to know Virginia's reciprocity laws with permits, open carry, and rifle carry. My guess is that such a protest would still be ignored like the bikers were.
Since a lot of the people on this march would be veterans, maybe Arlington Cemetery could be the focal point.
I agree with you on Constitutional Carry, but we must operate within the restrictions set by the law while using legal proceedings to strike down unconstitutional laws and our votes to elect people who agree with us, while working to win over John Q Public. I think the public can be won over. We are already seeing signs of this. Don’t get me wrong, I do not support ANY compromise on gun control. I want it all back including the laws around Class III firearms. I do not think that we will achieve this by taking actions that will feed into the stereotype perpetrated upon us by liberal politicians and the mainstream media. This is just an opinion though.
Remember "if it bleeds, it leads"? It's also true that if you didn't see it on TV or read about it in the paper, it never happened.
ARRRG
If Detroit is a failed welfare state, if the Detroit Free Press is a lying liberal rag, then why would you give credence to just another city employee? Granted, he does have impressive credentials. So did the previous guy.
Similarly, you cited from that article a poll of 15,000 police officers. But see stargeezer's comments about his low opinion of police. And that was just one out of many here about police misconduct. It is nice that they agree with you. But your argument needs factual and theoretical support, not just an appeal to authority.
I agree with your sentiment. I only find the matter somewhat complicated. I will post a link on that later.
You'd be surprised what's happening in Detroit. It's full of Democrats, but they have to face the reality of what's happening around them. In short, they're acting like Conservatives, even though they believe all the stupid Liberal crap.
They're cutting budgets, facing down unions, and (I think) even trying to reduce taxes. It's pretty funny to see.
The right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the State shall not be questioned. Art. 1, § 21 (enacted 1790, art. IX, § 21).
Furthermore, from that same PoliceOne.com website is this poll about what a police officer would do, if, under-cover and armed, they met another LEO.
http://www.policeone.com/Officer-Safety/...
The bottom line is that there is NO WAY to prevent such tragedies.
To underscore the problem in armed civilians who over-estimate their untried ability to respond under stress, consider that in the Empire State Building shooting of August 25, 2012, EVERY ONE of the shooting victims - perpetrator, by-standers, and police - were shot by police. The perpetrator shot no one.
The police must have monthly firearms range training. They live a life of response. Yet, this case is not unique. I can find others, including a Miami, Florida case of a security guard killed by responding officers. Until and unless you are in that situation, you only assume that you will do the right thing at the right time.
I understand and appreciate the apocryphal story of the 87-year old woman who shoots an intruder. If you have a business that requires that you make cash deposits after hours, if your home has been repeatedly burglarized, yes, objective reasons exist to apply for a permit to carry a weapon. That being as it may, letting everyone who wants one have a gun is not going to make everyone else any safer
Finally, allow me to underscore that my bachelor's is in criminology; and I work as a security guard. And I am not armed. This is Texas. In any confrontation, I am the one guy guaranteed NOT to have a gun. I never felt the need for one.
Yes, the police must have monthly training - in some places. In others, they only have to qualify [that's shoot 20 rounds] every 3 months. In many, their results are not supervised nor critiqued.
My students and I have practiced beside a LOT of police officers, and they get away with shit that my students are furious about: leaving the range filthy [trash, used targets, brass],
poor safety discipline [if you consistently run the aim point of your pistol - the zone that starts 1" in front of where the muzzle stops- across someone else's body, you deserve to have the gun taken away from you;
destruction of range property, usually by shooting large calibre rounds at targets posted for small calibre;
to the really scary one: TRULY LOUSY shooting. The exception seems to be the SWAT team/TAC TEAM/ etc members who can at least shoot well.
I certainly don’t feel any safer when police are present unless I know the officer personally.
"...you only assume that you will do the right thing at the right time..."
If you make sure you have serious, competent, frequent training, FAIL.
The place where the Wizard and I are doing our CCW certification has a “black site” where they run any kind of scenario you, or they, want, using AirSoft guns. There’s a big sign that says “You WILL be hit by Air Soft pellets” as a warning. Many of us who have been in the military or have military connections of some sort will smile when I say that I think it’s going to be “good training”.
If one does not dry-fire-practice several times a week, live-fire-practice AT LEAST once a month, and participate in some sort of scenario training, all assumptions he makes are worthless. If he DOES DO the right training, he won’t be assuming. He’ll be knowing. and it doesn’t matter if he wears a uniform or not.
and I’m not sure when, or if, I can address “objective reasons…to apply for a permit to carry…”.that’s dangerous talk.
I’ll see if I can do the “..letting everyone who wants one…” question in a day or two. I will say it’s just pure silly.
You said - "despite having a population that's less than one-tenth the size of the Big Apple, the Free Press reported" I'd love to see the documentation for that, why? because like most everything in that rag, there is none.
The fact that the NY police seem to hit everything except the target they are shooting at certainly proves they need more training. I guess you are trying to make the point that had there been some trained CC person there, that they would have shot that many more innocent people??? Illogical assumption that cannot be proved since NYers are banned from owning most guns and from carrying any - honest people that is - the criminals and the police still have theirs.
You discount the "apocryphal story of the 87-year old woman who shoots an intruder", but here is what you cannot discount - when granny got done, the intruder was on the floor, not her. I'd say that to that bad guy, the apocryphal nature of the story did not matter, he was too busy bleeding.
On your last point about your bravely (I'm NOT poking fun at this - not in the least) working as an unarmed guard, There is a saying in this state about the "Chicago way", missing the first step of bringing a knife to a gun fight just makes one a civilian in a uniform.
.
For statistics on crime rates see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Stat...
You can sort the columns. Detroit's rate is three times that of NYC.
I will have more on this later. For now, see my reply to Dan8. The goal of security as a business is to prevent confrontations. Even winning one is an admission of failure.
You may be a security guard, but it doesn't sound like you've ever been through a CCW class. The message to a licensee is clear: you are not a cop, so don't act if law enforcement or uniformed security is present. Don't draw your weapon unless there is no other resort, and there is imminent danger to yourself or others around you. You are also not the Lone Ranger, so if you draw the weapon, do so with the intent to kill the person representing the threat; shooting to wound or disarm is fantasy.
As for the "apocryphal" stories about armed homeowners disabling an intruder, they are sadly hugely outnumbered by real statistics of unarmed homeowners killed by armed intruders. It only takes one violent assault to kill you, so demanding that someone has to have experienced prior assaults before they can own a gun is incredibly stupid.