Shooting the Shooters
A Different Kind of Gun Control
© Sept. 24, 1999
By Jeff Kamen
Laws that prohibit non-felon,
non-mental-patient adults from owning and
carrying a concealed handgun are
contributing to the slaughter and fear that is
poisoning our culture.
For example, when Larry Gene Ashbrook
opened fire in a Fort Worth, Texas, church
last week, he reloaded his 9 mm
semiautomatic pistol several times. Almost at
leisure, he continued to shoot worshippers
who could not strike back.
The minister who spoke at a memorial service for the victims got it exactly
wrong when he said that they had "died for their faith." They died because
their sacred space was invaded by a psycho with a gun who knew he had
a soft target, feared no opposition and was able to kill with impunity.
But had a well-trained and properly armed member of the parish been at
the church to protect the worshippers, the body count almost certainly
would have been smaller. In the aftermath of recent shootings, it is
certainly time to consider some kind of defense against such
high-consequence, low-probability events.
What we need is a kind of gun control that
many would-be mass murderers might
actually fear -- carefully trained civilians
ready, willing and capable of shooting the
shooter.
Imagine, for a moment, how it would have
been if you had been trained and armed and
on the scene at the church in Texas or at
Columbine High School or in Atlanta or at
the Jewish Community Center in Los
Angeles. You are minding your own
business when suddenly you hear the sharp
report of a semiautomatic weapon being
fired, followed by people screaming.
Because you've been well-trained, you
quickly assess the situation, find cover,
draw your weapon and wait. Seconds later,
the shooter bursts into your room, opens
fire, hitting an unarmed woman. You take
your weapon off safety, placing the shooter
in the front sight of your pistol, and squeeze
the trigger twice, sending the bullets racing
into his skull. He falls to the ground, dead
before he can realize that his mission of
mass murder has just been stopped in its
tracks.
Combat pistol shooting
Had I been there and armed, there is very good reason to believe that I
would have been able to bring my weapon to bear with accuracy,
preventing the fullest extent of the planned massacre. And I am only one
of thousands of civilian Americans who have been schooled in the
disciplines of combat pistol shooting.
In my case, I learned as part of a magazine
assignment. My teacher was Tommy Carter,
a recently retired member of the U.S. Army's
elite counter-terrorism unit, Delta Force. The
training was tough, expensive, grueling,
sometimes frightening and, I believe,
extremely effective. One of the reasons I had
been selected to write the article was
because my level of handgun proficiency was
a joke.
3,000 rounds later
"Couldn't hit the broadside of a barn at 10
feet" was only a small exaggeration of my
embarrassing incompetence. Four days, 64 hours and more than 3,000
rounds of .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol ammunition later, I was running
down hills, throwing myself behind concrete barriers and quickly
double-tapping my targets.
By the end of the training, I was sent into a "kill house" where, after being
disoriented by an explosion near my face followed by lights so bright they
temporarily blinded me, I was still able to move rapidly from room to room,
coldly firing live .45 bullets into the heads of lifelike drawings of terrorists,
murderers and psychos armed with guns and knives. The trick wasn't just
to take out the bad guys; you had to do it without wounding or killing the
innocents who in several of the illustrations were only inches away from
the terrorist.
'Focus, clarity, lethal competence'
Carter, who now runs Strategic Security Group Inc., body-guarding foreign
heads of state, teaching police SWAT teams how to do it right and
rescuing American children from foreign countries to which they've been
kidnapped by their Middle Eastern fathers
(www.childabductionrecovery.com), taught me profound respect for what
he calls "the power to destroy" that comes with each gun. But he also
taught me to live in each dangerous moment with "focus, clarity and lethal,
life-saving competence."
Many mass murderers are actually cowards, not kamikazes; they want to
spread death and terror, but they also want to get to see the aftermath on
television. As a society, we have to take steps to make more difficult the
actualization of their murderous fantasies. Right now, the risk to a
would-be mass murderer is minimal, so long as he selects unprotected
targets.
The cops cannot begin to handle this problem by themselves. They
urgently need our help.
Researcher John Lott, PhD., at the University of Chicago reports that guns
are used five times as often to prevent crime as to commit it and he
suggests that allowing people to carry concealed weapons makes the
violent crime rate drop. Now would be a good time to put that theory to the
test.
But that does not mean vigilante justice. It means decent people looking
out for one another and being able to do more than wish the bad man goes
away. And there will be more bad men.
In our media-intensified society, it is only a matter of time before other
deranged individuals will copycat the most notorious shooters of the past
several months. If that occurs, this is the question only you can answer:
Will those gunmen have free fields of fire in the public buildings and
institutions that you and your loved ones frequent?
Jeff Kamen is an Emmy-winning police reporter and co-author of the book Final Warning:
Averting Disaster in the New Age of Terrorism.
Joe's Second Amendment Message Board
A Different Kind of Gun Control
© Sept. 24, 1999
By Jeff Kamen
Laws that prohibit non-felon,
non-mental-patient adults from owning and
carrying a concealed handgun are
contributing to the slaughter and fear that is
poisoning our culture.
For example, when Larry Gene Ashbrook
opened fire in a Fort Worth, Texas, church
last week, he reloaded his 9 mm
semiautomatic pistol several times. Almost at
leisure, he continued to shoot worshippers
who could not strike back.
The minister who spoke at a memorial service for the victims got it exactly
wrong when he said that they had "died for their faith." They died because
their sacred space was invaded by a psycho with a gun who knew he had
a soft target, feared no opposition and was able to kill with impunity.
But had a well-trained and properly armed member of the parish been at
the church to protect the worshippers, the body count almost certainly
would have been smaller. In the aftermath of recent shootings, it is
certainly time to consider some kind of defense against such
high-consequence, low-probability events.
What we need is a kind of gun control that
many would-be mass murderers might
actually fear -- carefully trained civilians
ready, willing and capable of shooting the
shooter.
Imagine, for a moment, how it would have
been if you had been trained and armed and
on the scene at the church in Texas or at
Columbine High School or in Atlanta or at
the Jewish Community Center in Los
Angeles. You are minding your own
business when suddenly you hear the sharp
report of a semiautomatic weapon being
fired, followed by people screaming.
Because you've been well-trained, you
quickly assess the situation, find cover,
draw your weapon and wait. Seconds later,
the shooter bursts into your room, opens
fire, hitting an unarmed woman. You take
your weapon off safety, placing the shooter
in the front sight of your pistol, and squeeze
the trigger twice, sending the bullets racing
into his skull. He falls to the ground, dead
before he can realize that his mission of
mass murder has just been stopped in its
tracks.
Combat pistol shooting
Had I been there and armed, there is very good reason to believe that I
would have been able to bring my weapon to bear with accuracy,
preventing the fullest extent of the planned massacre. And I am only one
of thousands of civilian Americans who have been schooled in the
disciplines of combat pistol shooting.
In my case, I learned as part of a magazine
assignment. My teacher was Tommy Carter,
a recently retired member of the U.S. Army's
elite counter-terrorism unit, Delta Force. The
training was tough, expensive, grueling,
sometimes frightening and, I believe,
extremely effective. One of the reasons I had
been selected to write the article was
because my level of handgun proficiency was
a joke.
3,000 rounds later
"Couldn't hit the broadside of a barn at 10
feet" was only a small exaggeration of my
embarrassing incompetence. Four days, 64 hours and more than 3,000
rounds of .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol ammunition later, I was running
down hills, throwing myself behind concrete barriers and quickly
double-tapping my targets.
By the end of the training, I was sent into a "kill house" where, after being
disoriented by an explosion near my face followed by lights so bright they
temporarily blinded me, I was still able to move rapidly from room to room,
coldly firing live .45 bullets into the heads of lifelike drawings of terrorists,
murderers and psychos armed with guns and knives. The trick wasn't just
to take out the bad guys; you had to do it without wounding or killing the
innocents who in several of the illustrations were only inches away from
the terrorist.
'Focus, clarity, lethal competence'
Carter, who now runs Strategic Security Group Inc., body-guarding foreign
heads of state, teaching police SWAT teams how to do it right and
rescuing American children from foreign countries to which they've been
kidnapped by their Middle Eastern fathers
(www.childabductionrecovery.com), taught me profound respect for what
he calls "the power to destroy" that comes with each gun. But he also
taught me to live in each dangerous moment with "focus, clarity and lethal,
life-saving competence."
Many mass murderers are actually cowards, not kamikazes; they want to
spread death and terror, but they also want to get to see the aftermath on
television. As a society, we have to take steps to make more difficult the
actualization of their murderous fantasies. Right now, the risk to a
would-be mass murderer is minimal, so long as he selects unprotected
targets.
The cops cannot begin to handle this problem by themselves. They
urgently need our help.
Researcher John Lott, PhD., at the University of Chicago reports that guns
are used five times as often to prevent crime as to commit it and he
suggests that allowing people to carry concealed weapons makes the
violent crime rate drop. Now would be a good time to put that theory to the
test.
But that does not mean vigilante justice. It means decent people looking
out for one another and being able to do more than wish the bad man goes
away. And there will be more bad men.
In our media-intensified society, it is only a matter of time before other
deranged individuals will copycat the most notorious shooters of the past
several months. If that occurs, this is the question only you can answer:
Will those gunmen have free fields of fire in the public buildings and
institutions that you and your loved ones frequent?
Jeff Kamen is an Emmy-winning police reporter and co-author of the book Final Warning:
Averting Disaster in the New Age of Terrorism.
Joe's Second Amendment Message Board
