Needed: Incentives to pack heat
Posted: December 7, 2007
By Andrew Longman
© 2007
Today, events are telling us that we are not exercising our rights to keep and bear arms.
Take a step back from the horrific killings in a Nebraska mall this week, and consider:
Suppose the Omaha mall held, say, 5,000 people busily shopping.
If that were so, we would know now that it is less than a one in 5,000 chance that a law- abiding American will be carrying a firearm. And for all the citizens of Nebraska that could have been saved this week, that's a pathetic performance by society.
What good is it to be free if that freedom does not result in salvation? If the free are too lazy to vigorously practice their freedom?
If one out of every 500 people were utilizing a concealed carry permit in Nebraska today, there could have been 10 guns trained on target when the adolescent evil fool began his self-indulgent terrorism. But because we do not have even one in 5,000, there are nine people dead.
Do the math. At one in 2,500, we would have fewer dead. At one in one thousand, we might have half the death toll or fewer. At one in 250, there would be an article about a dead teenager who fired three shots at the mall was stopped by a high school basketball coach.
The simple truth is that we must take steps to incentivize the carrying of firearms by the law-abiding public. If you have no felonies and no misdemeanors, you should get a tax credit for being found to carry a firearm in public, legally with permit.
How many Christmases could have been saved? How many Islamist terrorists would have decided that attacking a mall is a bad cost/benefit proposition?
Instead, we shall get only a chorus on NPR talking about the "tension" between "hunting and safety" that liberals will now feel as a moral imperative.
But the fact is mathematicians would be able to model the complete vanishing of acts like this as a function of concealed-carry density. What we are observing today, analytically, is that the cost-benefit for a suicidal idiot bent on being famous has not been decisively decided against the fools yet. By incentivizing the law abiding to pack heat, we will not only increase the density of protection, we will eventually hit a critical mass thereof where all such public massacres cease. As soon as the density of law-abiding guns reaches a certain threshold, it will become a near certainty that one or two citizens will shoot the fool to death after he fires the first three or four shots. When there is no longer possibility for mass death, the fools will turn to something else because they will no longer be able to immerse others in their depression. The attention caused by an aborted attempt would bring scorn and ridicule on the terrorist, rather than dousing him in a mantle of infamy or fearsomeness. Fame would die; people would live.
A reminder from Virginia Tech. It's evil, not tragedy; its time to be publicly analytical, not publicly weepy; it's a need for more guns, not fewer. But in case any of the weepy left wants to object, can't we all agree that we have tried your version, the "no guns" version, and it absolutely leads to massacres?
Can't we try "It's the law in Kennesaw" again because its been shown to work for centuries prior to liberalism's power?
Posted: December 7, 2007
By Andrew Longman
© 2007
Today, events are telling us that we are not exercising our rights to keep and bear arms.
Take a step back from the horrific killings in a Nebraska mall this week, and consider:
Suppose the Omaha mall held, say, 5,000 people busily shopping.
If that were so, we would know now that it is less than a one in 5,000 chance that a law- abiding American will be carrying a firearm. And for all the citizens of Nebraska that could have been saved this week, that's a pathetic performance by society.
What good is it to be free if that freedom does not result in salvation? If the free are too lazy to vigorously practice their freedom?
If one out of every 500 people were utilizing a concealed carry permit in Nebraska today, there could have been 10 guns trained on target when the adolescent evil fool began his self-indulgent terrorism. But because we do not have even one in 5,000, there are nine people dead.
Do the math. At one in 2,500, we would have fewer dead. At one in one thousand, we might have half the death toll or fewer. At one in 250, there would be an article about a dead teenager who fired three shots at the mall was stopped by a high school basketball coach.
The simple truth is that we must take steps to incentivize the carrying of firearms by the law-abiding public. If you have no felonies and no misdemeanors, you should get a tax credit for being found to carry a firearm in public, legally with permit.
How many Christmases could have been saved? How many Islamist terrorists would have decided that attacking a mall is a bad cost/benefit proposition?
Instead, we shall get only a chorus on NPR talking about the "tension" between "hunting and safety" that liberals will now feel as a moral imperative.
But the fact is mathematicians would be able to model the complete vanishing of acts like this as a function of concealed-carry density. What we are observing today, analytically, is that the cost-benefit for a suicidal idiot bent on being famous has not been decisively decided against the fools yet. By incentivizing the law abiding to pack heat, we will not only increase the density of protection, we will eventually hit a critical mass thereof where all such public massacres cease. As soon as the density of law-abiding guns reaches a certain threshold, it will become a near certainty that one or two citizens will shoot the fool to death after he fires the first three or four shots. When there is no longer possibility for mass death, the fools will turn to something else because they will no longer be able to immerse others in their depression. The attention caused by an aborted attempt would bring scorn and ridicule on the terrorist, rather than dousing him in a mantle of infamy or fearsomeness. Fame would die; people would live.
A reminder from Virginia Tech. It's evil, not tragedy; its time to be publicly analytical, not publicly weepy; it's a need for more guns, not fewer. But in case any of the weepy left wants to object, can't we all agree that we have tried your version, the "no guns" version, and it absolutely leads to massacres?
Can't we try "It's the law in Kennesaw" again because its been shown to work for centuries prior to liberalism's power?