Tyranny and Its Fringes, Part VIII
Francis Porretto has Part VIII of his essay “Tyranny and Its Fringes” up. If you’ve not read any of it before, here are the links to the previous pieces:
Month: March 2004
Another of Those Rarities – A News Report of a DGU With No Shots Fired!
This time from Oakland, Michigan:
Woman’s gun may have saved her life
Web-posted Mar 20, 2004
By STEPHEN FRYE
Of The Daily Oakland PressFour years ago, she was helpless as a man robbed her at gunpoint. On Friday, legally armed with a handgun, she may have saved her life.
And Farmington Hills Police Chief William Dwyer, who dreaded a change in the law in 2001 to make it easier to receive a concealed weapons permit, admits that he’s changing his mind about that law.
Yes, after the predicted “blood in the streets” and “Dodge City Shootouts” that never occur, then law-enforcement begins to re-think their opposition.
Why they can’t study the other states and draw a similar conclusion prior to CCW passage is beyond me.
Dwyer said the woman could easily have been killed after she was targeted by a couple looking for an easy score. They were waiting at 6:30 a.m. outside an office building at the southeast corner of 12 Mile and Drake roads.
Angela, a married mother of two, was arriving at the office where she has worked for six years. She asked that her last name and hometown not be made public.
She saw a car in the lot that she did not recognize, with two people inside, putting her on her guard. When she left her car, a man got out of that car and walked toward her.
He passed the entrance to the building and continued toward her. The man came within 10 feet of her, and she knew she had to act.
“I didn’t get a chance to get in the office,” she said. “He had his hands in his pocket with his hood pulled up. I opened my purse and pulled my gun out.
“I felt my life was in trouble. The first instinct was to pull out my gun.”
The man turned tail and walked away, and the car pulled up to him near the roadway. He jumped in and they drove off.
No shots were fired.
And THAT’s how it’s done.
Except in some jurisdictions Angela would be charged with “Brandishing,” because they don’t allow their proles to carry in self-defense, and doing so is an affront to the State.
Good thing her workplace doesn’t have a “no guns allowed” policy, isn’t it? Or does it? Does she now face dismissal from the job she’s held for six years because she carries a firearm to work? But like Tracey Warner said, “Sometimes you do what you have to do.”
Dwyer said there was “no question” she was in trouble.
“She took the appropriate action,” Dwyer said. “She probably saved her life. She is a very fortunate young lady. (Also) she did an excellent job as far as giving a description of the vehicle and the suspect. She’s a very courageous young lady.”
Her calm demeanor and quick thinking – she called police from her cell phone immediately after the suspect drove off – led police to the man and his female accomplice within a minute of the robbery attempt, Dwyer said.
He said the couple – a 21-year-old man and a 28-year-old woman from Detroit – would be charged with conspiracy to commit armed robbery.
Police confiscated a loaded 9 mm handgun from the couple’s car. The man has several outstanding warrants and the woman was convicted for receiving stolen property.
Later Friday, Dwyer said a 28-year-old Southfield woman who knows Angela had been arrested for setting up her robbery.
Police are seeking a fourth suspect.
Dwyer, who as head of the state’s police chief’s association opposed the change in state law that made it easier for residents without criminal backgrounds to carry guns, acknowledges that the law has saved at least one person.
“I always said the CCW (Carrying a Concealed Weapon permit) legislation is somewhat controversial,” he said. “I’m certainly rethinking it.”
Perhaps because the ratio of people using guns in self-defense vs. those accidentally shooting people is so tremendously high? Remember, the argument against CCW is always that “more guns on the street” means “more wrongful injuries and death.”
He credited her for taking the appropriate training and, equally important, using common sense.
“I’m just a woman,” Angela said. “You hear about things like this. I didn’t want to be a victim again.”
Yes, Angela is “just a woman” – who didn’t have her gun taken away and used against her as we are repeatedly told will happen.
Good for you Angela.
It’s amazing, actually, that I’ve found two stories in less than a week in which handguns were used defensively and nobody got shot! Usually, unless someone bleeds it never makes print. Actually, unless someone dies it hardly ever makes print, when it comes to defensive gun useage.
UPDATE: 3/21/04 – From Clayton Cramer’s Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog comes this typical example of how defensive gun useages are covered in the local media, the same story related above as “reported” by ClickOnDetroit.com
Woman Stops Robbery With Own Gun
Farmington Hills Office Robbers Surprised
POSTED: 4:17 pm EST March 19, 2004
A woman in Farmington Hills stopped a robbery Friday with a concealed weapon she was carrying.
Police tell Local 4 the woman was entering an office building around 6:30 a.m. when two men confronted her. She reportedly pulled the gun and called 911. Police responded and arrested the two men.
The woman has a concealed weapons permit for the gun.
That’s it. No blood = no story.
I See One of These Uppers In My Future
The “26 Grendel” – a 6.5mm round for the AR-15 style rifle.
Watch the video. (Windows Media file)
Pushes a 120 grain 6.5mm round out to a realistic 1,000 yards.
Sounds interesting!
More on “Guns for Me, but Not For Thee”
Clayton Cramer reports (as did an anonymous commenter) that Ft. Wayne, Indiana Journal-Gazette editor Tracey Warner wrote an editorial on why he has a concealed-carry permit. Here are the hypocritical parts:
Position A:
On the other hand, the experience has provided insight into why people have weapons. The police are not 24-hour armed guards, and few of us can afford our own. Having a gun reduces one’s sense of vulnerability. Indiana’s constitution and state law expressly allow me to carry one for my protection. After having long rejected the idea, I have decided to at least have the option.
Position B:
Over the years, The Journal Gazette’s editorial page has long called for strict control of guns and opposed state efforts to allow citizens to carry handguns in public. I agree with gun control. Having a gun permit, by definition, is gun control.
Yet the editorial, written by Tracey Warner, that spawned all of this was against OHIO IMPLEMENTING PERMITTED CONCEALED-CARRY.
But “having a permit, by definition, is gun control.”
As I said: “Guns for me, but not for thee.”
Something Mr. Warner shares with Diane Feinstein, and others enthusiastic about “gun control.”
Another Criminal Stopped by a Citizen with a Gun
That won’t be reported on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox or any other national news outlet because no child was shot.
Sacramento radio station KTKZ reports that Roseville resident William Castle caught a burglar trying to steal his pickup truck right out of his garage. He held the man at gunpoint until the police arrived. No shots fired. The kicker:
Officers arrested 21-year-old David Cerniglia on suspicion of burglary. Allison says the supect may be tied to a number of similar crimes over the past few weeks.
But
Consider how many stories you read about an armed citizen preventing a crime – and, no doubt it happens. Compare that with the number of stories of people who accidentally shoot someone else, accidentally shoot themselves or purposely shoot someone in the heat of an argument. Common sense suggests that the more guns on the street, the more wrongful injuries and death.
So says Tracey Warner, editor of the Ft. Wayne Indiana Journal-Gazette. But how many stories like this one – where no shots were fired – get reported? And if they aren’t reported, how are we to know about them and what does that do to our “common sense?”
Another Friday Five
If you…
1. …owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?
American. You know; Lasagne, pizza, meatloaf, steak, stir-fry, hamburgers…. Oh, and breakfast anytime. With GRITS.
2. …owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell?
Guns and ammo and other associated stuff. And I would be strongly tempted to name it BloodBath and Beyond, but I might be convinced to go with Accessory After the Fact.
3. …wrote a book, what genre would it be?
I keep toying with writing a book on gun control, but it’s been done so many times before.
4. …ran a school, what would you teach?
Reading, writing, math, science, civics, world history – with special emphasis on some dead rich white guys, and philosophy – with special emphasis on some dead rich white guys.
5. …recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it?
I am personally so unmusical it’s not even funny. Any album I recorded would be somebody else’s stuff. But rock. Definitely rock.
I Hope One Day to Write This Well
Every weekday morning I have one ritual I repeat if at all possible: I sit at my computer and read first Day by Day, the excellent cartoon penned composed on computer by Chris Muir, then I read James Likeks’ Bleat, which he composes on computer Monday through Friday unless he’s overwhelmed with working on the writing he does that pays.
Todays Day by Day:
is a perfect example of Chris’s skills.
As today’s Bleat is of Lileks’. I’ve been on the road a lot the last couple of days, and when I’m doing windshield time, I try to listen to stuff that engages my brain. Pop music has a tendency to put me to sleep. Country music generally just irritates me (slide guitar and warbly voices can be like fingernails on a blackboard to me.) Music from the Spanish-language stations is annoying as well. (What is it with the accordions? Accordions annoy me.) So, unsurprisingly, I listen to talk radio.*
Yes, I’m a brainwashed toady of the far-right wing, hypnotized by the minions of the vast conspiracy: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt et al. Except for Michael Savage. I cannot stand Michael Savage. But I blame Savage on his surroundings; perhaps if I lived among the vast hoards of leftist undead of the San Francisco Bay area, I too would become as embittered and vile as Savage.
Which is just one more reason I deliberately won’t live there.
At any rate, while listening to talk radio this week, I was able to hear the majority of several speeches given by President Bush, VP Dick Cheney, and James Carville – speeches covered (if at all) with extreme brevity by the standard news media outlets. Talk radio has no such limitations. Getting back to Lileks, I find in today’s Bleat a paragraph that sums up precisely my thoughts – a summation so precise that I could not have accomplished it in less than a full essay (thus this piece):
I heard four speeches this week – one by Carville before some firefighters, screaming like cat that had been dipped in turpentine; one from Kerry about something or other (it’s hard to stick with it; he sounds like a 45 RPM record played at 33 1/3, and you keep making revolving-hand motions in the hopes you can somehow, like a butterfly that flutters its wings in Brazil and causes typhoons in Tahiti, cause him to pick up the pace a little); one from Dick Cheney, and one from Bush. Cheney’s speech was tailor-made for his speaking style, which consists of pressing the point of the sword into the opponant’s arguments and slowly pushing the entire blade in with steady force. Bush’s speech had many thick sheets of boilerplate, but it had economy and optimism.
The description of Cheney’s speaking style is so perfect, it defies improvement. As does the description of Carville’s. Damn.
*(I also listen to NPR, which – like talk radio – when filtered for bias has a surprising amount of useful information contained therein.)
“Guns for Me, But Not for Thee” – More Gun Control Hypocrisy
Via SayUncle, it seems that reporter editor Tracey Warner of the Ft. Wayne, Indiana Journal Gazette objected to Ohio’s “liberalization” of its concealed carry legislation in an piece last Sunday. At issue is this quote from the story:
Advocates on both sides will find studies to support their positions. Whom to believe? Consider how many stories you read about an armed citizen preventing a crime – and, no doubt it happens. Compare that with the number of stories of people who accidentally shoot someone else, accidentally shoot themselves or purposely shoot someone in the heat of an argument. Common sense suggests that the more guns on the street, the more wrongful injuries and death.
Except it’s obvious to everyone on our side of the argument that the news under-reports incidents of self-defense, but trumpets to the heavens any accidental shooting and every single homicide. Self-defense stories are found on page D-16 of the local newsrags at best, but a child accidentally shot? National news! Tom Brokaw leads with it!
This is known as bias – and it affects “common sense” decisionmaking.
Anyway, the very next day the competing paper in Ft. Wayne, the News-Sentinel published a story entitled Licensed to Carry that listed the names of a few high-profile Indiana residents with concealed-carry permits.
Guess who has one? Tracey Warner! Guess who else?
The Rev. Ternae Jordan Sr., pastor of Greater Progressive Baptist Church and founder of Stop the Violence, an organization devoted to reducing youth violence.
Another example of the elitist “Guns for me, but not for thee” policy.
This story originated at KeepandBearArms.com.
Buy A Gun Day
Last year Aaron the Liberal Slayer created “Buy a Gun to Piss Off Michael Moore Day” in dishonor of Moore’s Bowling for Columbine Oscar. The idea was to buy a firearm on or about April 15 with the specific intent to annoy liberals.
I’m all for that, but I jumped the gun a bit. I bought mine on March 13. (Sorry, Aaron!)
Anyway, Aaron intends to make this an annual thing, now, so he’s got an advertising campaign all fired up. The post explaining all this is at Aaron’s blog, just click on this button:
.
I like that! And there are more buttons here.
More Cartoons
Let’s start with a couple on the recent incidents in Spain. First up, Robert Arial of South Carolina’s The State:
Yup.
Next, Mike Ramirez of the LA Times hits the bullseye:
Next up, here’s my question when it comes to Martha “It’s a Good Thing” Stewart’s conviction, put in pen and ink by Chip Bok of the Akron Beacon Journal:
If I understand this correctly, they convicted her for lying about a crime they cannot prove she committed. Lesson? Don’t talk to the police. Period.
Now let’s look at some Kerry cartoons. First up, Chuck Asay of the Colorado Springs Gazette on Kerry’s “other leaders” assertion:
What did Kerry expect us to think?
Mike Ramirez (again) on Kerry’s solid political philosophy:
That’s how I see it.
And finally, Robert Arial apparently reads Steven Den Beste, because he agrees with Steven’s assessment of the Democrats 2004 chances:
