Bear with me on this one…
The gun control debate, which is front and center in
America, is interesting and very important to many people, to say the
least. First, I don’t have a dog in this
fight. I’m not pro-gun nor
anti-gun. If you want to own guns,
that’s fine with me. If you don’t feel
comfortable around guns and choose to stay away from them, that is also fine
with me. I was a police officer/police
chief and for over 30 years on two large high-crime cities. I carried a handgun
on my side everyday for 30 years and I feel very comfortable around guns. In fact, for safety reasons, I prefer to have
a firearm in my home. I have seen too
many crimes committed in victim’s homes where the victim is helpless against an
armed intruder. I have seen and know
things most people don’t know. I know
what happens in cities, neighborhoods and how individuals are victimized. Knowing what I know, I choose to have
firearms in my home. Your mileage may
vary.
Second, I’m not for tinkering with the U.S.
Constitution. I think the founding
fathers did a bang up job writing it carefully the way they did for specific
reasons, based upon what their experience, persecution, taxation, etc., was
with their mother country. The meaning
of the second amendment has been a subject of debate for a lot longer than I’ve
been alive and the debate will go on after I’m long gone. Everyone argues it means something they
want it to mean. In the end, the
Supreme Court of the United States will tell us what it means because that is
the way our system works. Sometimes I
agree with U.S. Supreme Court decisions and sometimes I don’t, but I accept
them because they are the final arbiters of law in the United States. If this country goes down the road of not
accepting decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, I don’t believe the country can
survive that mentality in the long run.
Someone has to have the final say or the country is reduced to
chaos. I don’t think the meaning of the
Second Amendment to our Constitution is settled law yet. There will be more cases and more
rulings. Time will tell.
Third, I believe if you want to own a firearm, you need
to work extensively with it so its use becomes second nature to you. You shouldn’t have to think about how to take
off the safety, how to load it, how to aim it, etc. As a former police officer, my use of a
firearm has become instinctive. I have
physically and psychologically trained with firearms over the past years, that
I don’t have to think in order to use it safely and properly. (However, I would NEVER recommend not
thinking around firearms. I guess I
should better say that I don’t have to consciously act when using it. It is second nature.) If you cannot get to the point where using a
firearm is instinctive to you, then I suggest you have some other means of
protection. Don’t take chances on
someone getting hurt.
The times that firearms are used tends to be an emergency,
dangerous, frightening, highly emotional with adrenaline flowing freely in your
veins. Those types of situations don’t
necessarily lend themselves to the ability to calmly think things through. One must be able to put all one’s effort into
clearly assessing the situation and not have to divert attention to how to use
a firearm.
Fourth, I don’t have a problem with comprehensive
background checks on gun buyers. In my
career there have been a lot of crazies, unstable individuals as well as
individuals who suffer from emotional disorders who cannot control their
tempers or those who may spend most of their lives under the influence of mind
altering substances that should never be able to put their hands on a firearm
of any kind. Many of them have purchased
firearms, obviously slipping through the background check system we now have in
place. To compound that, there are very
few prosecutions against those who try to illegally purchase firearms and are
caught. A strong message needs to be
sent to law enforcement and prosecutors to demand every one of them be
prosecuted. It is not currently
happening.
Fifth, I find it is absolutely ludicrous that the United
States Congress had passed a law forbidding the U.S. Department of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from computerizing their gun owners federal
purchase database. Now, when law
enforcement needs to find out who purchased a firearm, ATF has to do a hand
search of about 500,000,000 records.
Give me a break! Congress needs
to allow them to fully automate like every other agency. There is no reasonable justification why ATF
cannot fully automate the purchase and investigatory process.
Sixth, I am saddened that politics has taken over
rational discourse in the national discussion on firearms. I was hoping that logic, intelligence, facts,
and complex problem solving would lead our way to meaningful changes. I say meaningful in the manner that leads to
a real difference in the future. But no.
There is a lot of misinformation being slung around about
these so-called assault weapons. The
rifles which are branded “assault weapons” by politicians and the media are not
assault weapons. They are assault-style
weapons. Look up the definition. They are semi-automatic rifles made to look
like military weapons. But there is no
selector switch so the weapon cannot be switched to a mode where it becomes an
automatic weapon, i.e., a machine gun. I
have heard and read comments by those who are using emotion rather than fact, that
these types of weapons are the same kind of weapon that countries send their
young men and women to war. The M1
Garand was introduced to the U.S. military in 1937. Read that again—1937. The Russian SKS was a semi-automatic rifle
introduced toward the end of WWII.
Today, no self-respecting country would ever send their young men and
women to war with a semi-automatic rifle as it put their soldiers at a huge
disadvantage which would likely result in a very high casualty rate. The only
difference between the assault-style weapons and semi-automatic rifles that are
commonly used by hunters and sport shooter is that they look different. They do the same thing. You insert a magazine of cartridges, rack
back the bolt to load the first round into the chamber, then pull the trigger
each time you want to fire a cartridge.
Curiously, no one is trying to ban semi-automatic rifles
that look like hunting rifles. That is
why I believe the debate has become political and highly emotional. In my opinion, and I believe my experience
allows me to put forth a valid opinion, banning assault-style weapons won’t
have any practical effect in stopping someone who is determined to shoot
multiple individuals. To me it is more
of a political statement and feel-good step rather than one that will make a
real difference. Logic should rule. We don’t have the luxury for emotions to rule
on this issue. Lives are at stake.
I want to address something sensitive. God forbid that we ever have another tragedy
like the one we had last November in Sandy Hook, Connecticut when Adam Lanza
took the lives of those lovely young, innocent school children and their brave teachers.
Adam Lanza is evil incarnated and a mass murderer. I watched the situation unfold live on
television and I literally cried for those families. My heart was broken. Here now is the sensitive part.
Logically thinking one’s way through the Sandy Hook
tragedy, if a man decides to carry out such an egregious act as happened in
Sandy Hook and only went into that school with two pistols and a couple of
extra loaded magazines per pistol in his pockets (and I’m talking 8 to 10 shot
magazines, not 30 round ones), he probably would have run out of bullets before
he stopped shooting. Why, because there would
be no one there to stop him. With one
handgun in each hand, he could walk around behind closed school doors firing
(semi-automatic pistols, just like the rifles mentioned above) with impunity, ejecting
a magazine out and inserting a new one in a matter of less than 5 seconds. The firing would continue and many lives would
be lost. No one is there to stop
him—assault-style weapon or handgun. Let
me say that again. There would be no one
there to stop him, make him flee or even deter him from entering the school in
the first place. Even if he had a
knife. No deterrent. Look at what happened at the community
college in Texas two weeks ago with the student cutting about 14 other students
with an Exacto knife. No one to stop
him.
Six years ago this week, Seung-Hui Cho gunned down 32
college students and wounded another 17 before killing himself on the campus of
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University.
Cho had two handguns—a Walther .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol and a
9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol. Two
points to make. First, my argument about
using handguns instead of assault weapons proves itself. He didn’t use an assault-style rifle. Second, he proceeded to kill at two
locations. There was no one there to
actively stop him. The reason he stopped
and killed himself? He heard the police
blow a chain off a door with a shotgun blast and knew they were finally
there. But how long did it take and the
school has a good campus police department.
They were in close proximity. How
far away are city police before they can arrive.
We actively protect most all of our institutions and
infrastructure in this country. We have
spent billions of dollars devising emergency plans, buying sophisticated
equipment and training our first responders to protect our infrastructure and
assets. Why are we shy to actively
protect our school children and personnel?
Schools are safe sanctuaries, some say.
No they are not, as has been proved time and again. I think the time for idyllic thoughts about
how things used to be in this country stop.
The culture of America is violent and if we don’t actively prepare,
expect and actively defend from the violent culture, then we allowed those
terrible crimes to continue.
That seems to be the point that the politicians are
missing. When the bad guy knows there is
no resistance, either at someone’s home, workplace, school or elsewhere, what is
to dissuade him from carrying out his wicked deed? Nothing.
That is why these types of incidents are repeated.
I don’t have a solution for violence. I know what I have seen in my career that
leads me to believe what is responsible for crime and violence in our American
society. I haven’t researched it, nor am
I an expert, but I know what I know.
I would ask behavioral experts, sociologists, all learned
people who have expertise in these matter lead the national discourse rather
than the politicians. Having the
politicians at the forefront does a disservice to all those who have died by
gunfire and all those whose lives could be saved in the future.
Enjoy!
Dennis Mook
No comments:
Post a Comment