Nom de guerre: Rivrdog

Be very afraid...

The worst has happened. You, a CCW permitee who is carrying, are shopping in a store when an emotionally damaged person (EDP) enters with arms and the determination to take many people with him in his grand finale. He fires at you. You return fire.

You have engaged the shooter in a defensive gunfight, and by moving, correctly using cover and sparingly shooting, you have cornered the EDP in an area of the store away from the exits, and shoppers and employees have taken the opportunity to flee. Your role has switched from defensive to "hold your ground" tactics to keep the shooter bottled up so that he can't escape to do more damage outside.

The police finally get there, and entering the active shooter scene, see you first and take you under fire, hitting you. Your days are done. It matters not what happened to the EDP.

Sound extreme for a scenario? It's probably as close as it's going to get to what would actually happen.

What happened here?

The cops, responding to the active shooter scenario, are all business, and their adrenalin levels are ramped up. They see a gun in your hand and they fire. You died because you were concentrating on your armed enemy who was trying to kill you at the time, and you didn't see the officer first.

How did it come to this?

It came to this because of the "ninja" or "Tommy Tactical" mindset that  police are trained to these days.

As a cop first on the street in 1973, and retiring just as "Tommy Tactical" was taking hold here five years ago, I was taught that the use of deadly force REQUIRED first the evaluation of the scene THEN steps to make sure that the legitimate felon was the only one to be taken under fire, then finally verbal warnings ("FREEZE") before the trigger was pulled. The tactical situation depicted above was possible then, but had rarely occurred. SWAT call-outs in my entire city of 400,000 probably averaged 8 per year. There are now at least that many per month, and SWAT gets called out for perfectly ordinary felony warrant service (that one detective and one patrol officer, both armed with revolvers, used to do).

In the Tommy Tactical Age of policing, the deadly-force doctrine is much closer to the military doctrine (area denial fire, taking unseen enemy behind cover under fire, etc). Now the training emphasizes "see a gun, shoot the gunner". Voice commands to gun-armed persons are NOT given, under the theory that they only serve to give advantage to an armed enemy.

This change of doctrine from civilian/police to military/police tactics is going to cost a lot of lives, and especially at the point where citizens have to resort to firearms to defend themselves in urban settings. It's all un-necessary, and I can prove it.

One year in the mid-'70s, I reported with the rest of my shift for semi-annual firearms qualifications and training. We did the quals quickly, then several old-line detectives appeared and told us that we were going to assault a bunch of heavily armed bad guys holed up in a fortified building as a training scenario. We would be employing only our patrol revolvers, and LOTS of blanks were issued. The dicks had rifles with blanks and shotgun blanks also, in addition to their revolvers. The building was the old, boarded-up jail at Kelley Butte, right next to our range there. We had smoke grenades (or our Training Sgt did, he was leading us into "battle"). On the signal, about 8 of us moved out to envelop the building's perimeter, and we were immediately taken under fire from windows, the tower, everywhere in that building. We had to move forward, but we also had to remain concealed from the 4 dicks in the building, who were keeping notes on who they had "killed".

When it was all over, we learned:

• Lightly armed deputies are at a HUGE disadvantage assaulting barricaded felons in a building, but CAN carry the day, but MUST expect to take casualties doing so.
• The barricaded felons are going to die in the building, because even if they have decent cover, we had surrounded the building and they weren't getting out.

There was a thorough debrief afterwards, and we learned that half of us had been killed and almost everyone else wounded. I was listed as winged but not confirmed killed, which took two detectives to confirm. The detectives admitted that all of them would have either been killed or wounded due to the huge volume of aimed fire directed their way. In other words, we junior gunslingers achieved our goal of ending the days of a major gun-gang, but there would have been funerals and weeping wives and kids.

Weeping wives and kids are not allowed now. As I've railed at before in these pages, today's cops believe that by aggressive moves, such at shooting on sight of a firearm without warning, they can always go home to mama at the end of the day. In my book, that promise is NEVER made when you pin on the badge.

That "Tommy Tactical" philosophy needs to change. If I could wave my magic wand, cops would find their tactical ninja suits changed back to traditional police attire, and their training altered to determine who is an enemy and who isn't before opening fire.

The mere sight of a gun should never be cause to shoot a person, but read this little tidbit linked by David at "Of Arms and the Law", and you will see what I mean about today's ninja-cops.

More Gun-Free Zone murders...UPDATED!

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UPDATED: SEE BOTTOM OF BULLET-POINT LISTS.

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I will be accused of being insensitive, but so what?

So what if your daughter or son attends a "gun-free" University, College, or for that matter, grade or high school? So what if they are (by now) OBVIOUSLY at risk daily from crazy people who want to make a lethal "statement", act out a fantasy or are just plain misbehavin' in the worst degree?

Gun Free Zones are kill zones.

Gun Free Zones are target-rich environments for these murderous predators.

Let's start with what CAN'T be done:

• You can't disarm the entire society or prevent importation of more guns if you do (see: the Second Amendment, school shooting in Scotland where no guns were allowed, etc.)
• You can't have duck-and-cover mentality. OF COURSE students will try to leave a building under attack, that's only survival instinct, but when the University puts that on paper and says it is an "action plan", who are they kidding?
• You can't rely on the Internet. NIU locked down the campus (well after the shooter had done his evil and had already killed himself) and sent out an Internet bulletin. Sorry NIU, the closed barn door is a tad late.

Now, let's look at what CAN be done:

• You CAN allow arms on the campus. It's hard to predict the actions of emotionally disturbed people (EDPs), but usually, some reality seeps through their fog of confusion. If they know that they are likely to face armed resistance to their mayhem, they will go somewhere that they won't face it. Lots of other such places in the GFW Chicago area.
• You CAN do a better job of securing buildings. This guy came into the lecture hall via a side door. Such doors should have better locks installed and used on them. Sure, it's expensive to do that to an entire campus, but the cost pales to that of the issues now present.
• You CAN do a better job of getting EVERYBODY to recognize the threat. Single male, dressed "gothic". Where have we seen this before? IN JUST ABOUT EVERY SINGLE SCHOOL SHOOTING, YOU BLITHERING IDIOTS! So, here's something that huge, nannyish Government CAN do: ban "gothic" style clothing on campus. Just tell everyone that it's insensitive to wear it, just like wearing the Swastika, then ban it. That will set back some, maybe not all, but some of the goth-boys who wouldn't dream of going out in public NOT dressed in black with those shotgun-concealing trenchcoats on. They have a uniform fetish. Use it against them.
• This is an update. There may be a technology idea here. What about a passive-defense item that isn't categorized as a weapon, but might be used as one. One that projects from a distance. Yep, the common LASER POINTER! If a third of those students in that hall had laser pointers with them, and if, instead of scattering or ducking, they pulled them out and focussed on the shooter's head, he would have had so much laser energy, from so many directions, on his eyes that he would have been at least temporarily dazzled, if not permanently blinded. YOU CAN'T SHOOT WHEN YOU CAN'T SEE! All he would have been able to do from that point on is discharge his weapon in the direction of screamers, etc. Reloading? No, not unless he was HIGHLY trained. In that condition, just about anyone would have been able to come up to him and take him out with no more difficulty that anyone might knock down any blind man.

I challenge the authorities who will want some knee-jerk reaction here to sit down and discuss, using cold logic, not hysteria or political-agenda motives, just how the threat from these copy-cat massacres can be managed. Put EVERYTHING doable on the table, people, and yes, that includes totally closing the campuses, although, when the "fortress" idea is objectively tested, I believe it will fail in that a test group WILL be able to get weapons into the fortress-University.

Spare us the "gun-nut" hype this time, Editors. I'm one of those "gun nuts", and I'm here trying to help you fix your problem.

Death of Dissent Act, S. 1959

Does anyone have any idea how testimony on this attack on the First Amendment is going?

Also, why do I have to go to Deep Blue or Paulian websites to find anything out about the bills (HR 1955, the House version, was passed back in October)? Where are the cries of outrage from the Right? The War on Terror is only an excuse for this nightmare, it will soon fade (starting 1/20/09), but the nightmare will then, not so strangely, morph into a de-facto cancellation of the First Amendment.

This bill is a super-major attack on the First Amendment far worse than McCain-Feingold. If it passes (Bush WILL sign it), all I have to do is mention that the Second Amendment was put in the Bill of Rights for the purpose of enforcing the First, by allowing citizens to arm themselves as Militias and force a tyrannical Government out of power, and I'm toast (I've already done that about 49 times, so I guess I need to pack a toothbrush). That's "advocacy" of "armed terrorism" against the peaceful Government (Waco, Ruby Ridge, grandma in Atlanta, etc), so I would AT LEAST be hauled before the "special panel" to explain why I wasn't a terrorist for saying go to the range and practice, practice, practice.

When you read the above link, read just how loosely the operative language is constructed. Now, I'll wager that most of the congressional Reps, all 404 of them, who signed the House version, were under the impression that they were advocating for the suppression of wannabe Jihadis, but in fact, the "special panel" gets to decide the flavor of the "homegrown radical" who they want to persecute, and I have NO DOUBT that any of us who advocate strongly for the original intent of the Second Amendment will make their list.

I happen to be writing a novel about government abusing it's power and subsequently being overthrown, which this "special panel" would likely decide is a manifesto for "homegrown radicalism". If and when I publish it, I now realize that, in the event this Bill becomes law, I will have just made myself into an outlaw. Probably a goodly number of my readers will also be on that list. All I am really doing in the novel is putting real characters and their words and actions into the Second Amendment. The novel gets quite specific, and is technologically correct, in that it shows how determined men and women, armed only with small arms, managed to disrupt and then overcome the police power of the most powerful government on the planet.

My Editor just emailed me and said that if the dot-gov was being fair, half the Hollywood writers would be outlaws right along with me. That may be true, but they wouldn't be persecuted, because the dumbed-down third of the citizenry Hollywood writes for craves the mindless violence they get from Tinsel Town, and Big Government supports that.

My depictions of violence are not mindless. Each one forces the reader to see small-unit combat for what it is: close-up Hell. It forces the reader to see that the only way one can be a master of this environment is to think past the violence and the casualties to the objectives, and look at each little victory as the one which won the war. It's really a novel about humans in conflict, what makes them and what breaks them. Unfortunately, the Government won't see it that way, they will say I have taken that fateful "substantial step" (towards Treason, towards whatever they trump up), and they will come after me.

My decision then, should this outrage become law, is whether to publish AND perish, on a field of honor, or live out my years in a garden of dishonor with the infamy of a government gone bad, a government that has just torn up the Bill of Rights.

Fairly bad choices, eh?

You gunbloggers out there heed this warning: you will be NEXT.

D-Day

D-Day.

No, not the famous amphibious landing in Normandy in 1944.

I'm talking about Dispersal Day, that day when it becomes imperative to disperse your personal weaponry away from your home to locations sufficiently remote as to be unlinkable to you by the casual Federal investigator. Multiple locations.

D-Day is right around the corner, as Kevin points out here.

There are risks associated with weapons dispersal, of course. Risks such as increased chance of theft, difficulty in maintenance, etc.

Think of it this way: Look at what weapons dispersal COULD HAVE DONE for the US Army and Navy at Pearl Harbor on 12-7-41. Look at what it's done for Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

For those of us who have said, on the Internet, repeatedly, that we are willing to fight and die for our Constitution, here in the USA, should it be sufficiently subverted by the Government, we are all on that list when these bills become one and become law, as they likely will.

When you are being watched, it's too late to do things like move guns around. You need to do that BEFORE you start being watched.

You have been warned.

Giuliani's 2A positions

Pretty grim. In tonight's Fox interview with Sean Hannity, the host asked his Rudi-ness about his position on the 2A. He said he "believes" in the 2A, then repeated "I support the right to bear arms", but then he began to waffle. He seems to think that some sort of "densely populated area" exception to the 2A is not only possible, but correct, and he defended New Yawk City's extreme attack on the possession of guns in that city, referring again to "densely populated".

Has anyone pointed out to Hizzoner that most crime in the US occurs in "densely populated" cities? One could, and I will, say that the 2A was written for "densely populated" cities as existed in the Northeast at the birth of our Nation.

Then Alan ("Commie") Combs chimed in after the interview was over and lauded Rudy's stance on "assault weapons".

There you have it. The GOP front-runner, VERY weak on the Second, and apparently wants to interpret it out of existence for all but rural-area dwellers. Supported by liberal gun-banners in the media. Lovely, just lovely.

Doesn't get MY vote.

Your turn, NRA. Hold his feet to the fire. That's what we pay you for.

PR for the 2A

A recent event brought this subject close to home. Mr. C, this is not a public criticism, just a piece of what should be VERY obvious advice.

If one of us gunbloggers ever gets the (rare) opportunity to talk about gunny things, and our talk might be on the radio or TV or a live-blog later, we must consider that opportunity to be Manna from Heaven. One short interview or one short commentary might reach thousands of people, and out of those thousands listening, maybe one to five might be in a position to greatly aid the cause of the beleagured Second Amendment.

So, using the recent case, what does one talk about when one has the opportunity?

It's easier to list what you DON'T TALK ABOUT! Here's a short list:

1. Full auto weapons
2. Full auto weapons
3. Full auto weapons

In that order.

In the Puget Sound radio market, the majority of listeners will likely be either liberals or some sort of RINO. There are damn few real conservatives up there. Discussing any preference for, or laws about possession of Class III will inflame the majority of that radio audience.

Guaranteed.

It will NOT be inflamed to support ANY loosening of Class III laws.

Guaranteed.

I wasn't there when this conference call was on, so I can't say anthing about what led to the conversation about Class III. Phil seems to say that it was just palaver between gun owners. No matter, it was a live mike. Ronald Reagan learned about live mikes the hard way.

What I would have done, had I been on a conference call that is bound to have made the airwaves, was steer the discussion around to how the Forefathers were prescient when they wrote the Second Amendment, and how the Second so beautifully expresses a human right: that of self defense and community defense, so important given the situation in Darfur or previously in Rwanda, etc, etc.

We all know, between ourselves, that discussion of the private possession of Class III is a Second Amendment question, BUT IT'S NOT THE ONLY ONE, AND CERTAINLY IT'S NOT THE BEST ONE TO TALK ABOUT in a public forum. The discussion of the Second as a human rights expression, OTOH, is a secular humanist argument, and one from the right, a rarity, but sure to stimulate some discussion around the coffee bars of oh-so-worldly Seattle or oh-so-lefty Olympia.

So, from what we had after the call, a leftist fishwrapper reporter appearing to slam Mike (and the conservative politician) for being a wannabe machinegunner from Island County, to the other possibility, a discussion starter which probably would have been on the agenda at more than one local talk show, you make the choice.

Now that you have made your choice, think about sitting down and getting some material ready in the event you have to make a short comment sometime.

Preparation: it's really the way to make the most out of your 15 minutes.

Attack on gun shows

It didn't take long for the ascendant liberals to show their hand. After assuring their constituents all during the election campaign that gun control was a dead and non-issue with them, they have sprung the trap on any of us foolish enough to have swallowed that line.

There is a full-on attack on the mythical "gun-show loophole". The loophole is supposedly about unregulated private sales that go on at gun shows. Well, duh! Such sales are still legal in all but a handful of GFW* states, not just at gun shows (but they are more convenient at such expos). If I have a gun, I can sell it to you, no questions asked. I probably have a civil duty to refuse to sell it if I know you are about to cause harm with it, but that is a simple tort, and common sense to boot.

What these "close the loophole" laws, now being debated on the Congressional and State levels would do is shut down gun shows by imposing a huge layer of regulation on all the firearms sales which take place there. If I have a rifle to sell, and I occasionally do, I usually use an auction house to sell it, because I can get a better price for it. Some want more instant action though, and those who do take their weapons to gun shows, check them in (where the cops usually check them for stolen), and walk around with a "for sale" hanging out for all to see. Others, with more guns to sell, will rent a table and sell that way. Hundreds, to thousands of guns change hands in lawful commerce this way every day.

The GFWs* will tell you that eeevil criminals are getting their guns at gun shows, but they are lying. A study done a few years back by the Feds, on federally-incarcerated felons showed that exactly seven tenths of one percent got their gun(s) at a gun show. That means 99.3% of armed criminals didn't.

The GFWs* will probably cry that they aren't outlawing any guns with these bills, so they don't count as gun control. Horseshit! They are going for the jugular with these bills, trying to make any private exchange of guns so hard as to be be impossible. If that isn't gun control, what is?

I don't live in WA, but my good buddy Phil does, and the GFW* freaks are pulling this stunt up there. He blogged all about it yesterday in this post. WA is a gun-loving state, generally (except for the GFW* local governments in the Puget Sound region), and the "gun show loophole" bill wouldn't make it there in the normal course of business, so the GFWs* got sneaky, and referred it to a committee where no one will expect it to be debated, hoping to refer it to the floor of the Legislature quietly and get a vote going on it before the population has a chance to express their opposition.

If you are a Washingtonian, a gun owner, you NEED to call your local legislator on this one. If your legislator is a GFW*, at least you will be putting him/her on notice that they aren't going to get away with their little smokescreen. If your legislator doesn't support the GFWs*, your support of him/her will encourage the right vote.

BTW, if you aren't a gun collector or owner, you should oppose this law. The United States Constitution gives it's citizens the right of free commerce, subject to reasonable regulation. When the government can take an entire section of commerce and regulate it off the face of the earth, YOUR favorite commerce could easily be next (look at Great Britain, for example, where you will soon have to have a license to buy a kitchen knife, and the possession of TVs is licensed). We have a Second Amendment to the Constitution which is expressly clear on the right of citizens to freely own weapons. These GFWs* don't like that right, because they want to eventually grab power and negate the Constitution, so they are trying, in all the ways they can, to negate the Second Amendment. They must be opposed in their attempt.

Go to Phil's site, read the post and arm yourself with sufficient detail to make your call.

*. GFW, a Kim duToit-derived term which means Gun Fearing Wussy. This is a polite codeword to describe the evil people who want to rip up the Constitution and Bill of Rights and use it for toilet paper.

Hot news on the R2KBA

Well, probably NOT news to most of us gunnies, since we've known all along that the National Guard was NOT the "well-regulated militia" mentioned in the Second Amendment, but there ARE quite a few "collective right" people who stubbornly cling to that view.

That view just had a huge, garlic-flavored silver stake pounded through it's vampire heart.

The Oregonian newspaper editorializes about it today. Of course, they miss the entire point of the news, and try to bash Bush with it, but news it is, unmistakeably.

It seems that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the general officers who are the leaders of their respective services and together lead what is legally known as the Standing Army, want to add another member to the Joint Chiefs, the Commander of the National Guard.

If this National Guard Enchancement Act, as it seems to be known as, passes the 110th Congress and the President signs it, and there's no reason that he wouldn't, then there can be no interpretation of the Second Amendment which denies individuals the right to keep and bear arms on the basis of the National Guard being the  "well-regulated militia" mentioned in the Second Amendment.

The very fact that the Joint Chiefs even asked for this clarification means that they, the "Standing Army", firmly believe that the National Guard is part of them, and not a militia. That alone should lead any court trying to interpret the Second in the right direction.

Now, if we can just get the absolutists to admit that in the last 214 years, our society has accepted the fact that women can fight and should be part of the militia, and that we live about 30 years longer than they did back then, so that the 45 year age limit for membership in the militia should be raised, probably at least to 70.

Now that the collectivist argument is deader than a dodo, let's look at fresh debate on what "well-regulated" means. I maintain that it means what it says, and the militia should and must be mustered and drilled to be well-regulated, and since no part of the military is going to be involved in that now, either the States (or lesser governments) have to come up with Militias separate from the National Guard, or citizens must be encouraged to form militias and muster and train them, without the harassment of government as is now the case.

There is NO understating the value of this military proposal, for it simply and effectively slams the door on anything but an individual right of possession of arms, at least and until State or local Militias are formalized, mustered and trained, and there is currently NO model for them, or even a proposal.

With a roomful of 4-star general officers wrapping it up and putting a pretty bow on it, I have the best Christmas present I could have imagined.

Good on her

A realtor in TX is giving away Glock pistols to people who buy homes from her. Good for her.

She is giving them only to police officers who buy homes from her.

Boo, hisss!

What are the rest of us, lady, chopped liver?

Interpreting the Second Amendment

This material is going to hurt your brain, like a good workout makes your body sore. The results will be the same, though: the workout improves your muscle tone and endurance capability, and this reading and thinking exercise will improve your mental capabilities.