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Shooting the shooter!
- Thread starter bestdefense357
- Start date
I went, read the article, and took the poll. I had to vote "unsure" because I felt the question wasn't specific enough. More armed civilians won't necessarily deter mass shootings, but the knowledge that there are more armed civilians who are well-trained beyond the basic requirements of CWP's might help reduce such incidents. The requirements for CWP's in some areas are so basic, they don't really address survival issues. Anyone who has graduated Gunsite, Thunder Ranch, LFI, John Farnam, etc., is much better prepared for this situation than is someone who took only the required 8 hr (or whatever) course for a CWP.
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Shoot straight regards, Richard
The Shottist's Center forums.delphi.com/m/main.asp?sigdir=45acp45lc
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Shoot straight regards, Richard
The Shottist's Center forums.delphi.com/m/main.asp?sigdir=45acp45lc
I am impressed with the initial article, but then I clicked over to the debate. It follows:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Debate Over Guns
Jeff Kamen vs. Charlie Blek
Sept. 24, 1999
Transcript of an interview with veteran police reporter Jeff Kamen, who wrote APBnews.com's commentary Shooting the Shooters, and Charlie Blek Jr., who is a director of The Bell Campaign, an organization that is pushing for gun law reform. The interview was conducted by Allen Levine, senior producer of the APBnews.com Criminal Justice System Channel.
Levine: Charlie let's begin with you. What is it that you see in Jeff's commentary that is so wrong?
Blek: Actually, what I see Jeff saying is that an armed society is a more polite society. And the current debate is based upon a fellow in Chicago, John Lott, who told us if everybody on the street was armed, we would have an appropriate response. And there's a couple of problems I have with that. The first one is that Mr. Lott has done a couple of different studies. He found that if we take law enforcement [agents] and they happen to be minorities or women, and we put them on the street, rather than crime going down, it actually goes up. And my feeling is that African-Americans and women are part of the citizenry, so he is inconsistent with that.
More importantly, he indicates that we wouldn't have had a [shooting at] Columbine High School if there had been an armed response immediately, and he ignores the fact that there was an armed uniformed police officer on the premises and that still didn't do anything. I don't have any problem with enforcement. But I also think that we need to investigate and we need to look at intervention and we need to look at prevention. I work for responsible gun policies, and in my mind, there is no reason to tolerate 30 or 50 or 100 round magazines in civilian hands. When we do that, we're simply sanctioning the hunting of other human beings, and that's wrong.
Levine: Jeff Kamen, agree with any of that?
Kamen: Oh, absolutely. I mean, let's take the last line first. Nobody, nobody, nobody who is not in the United States military or in some state law enforcement agency has a requirement for a magazine or a clip -- whatever you want to call it -- that holds 50 or 100 rounds. This is strictly fantasy stuff that plays into the heads of people that probably shouldn't have weapons of any kind.
I am a strong advocate of the right to bear arms. But anybody who reads carefully through my commentary on APBnews.com today sees that I want all persons who wish to carry concealed weapons to pass rigid testing -- meticulous testing -- by their local law enforcement. In other words, they'd have to be carefully tested, trained and licensed.
But some of the other things that Charlie said are simply debater's techniques. He trashes the professor who does the study because he says that [the professor] did another study which he found politically and morally objectionable, so he ignores the science of the study in question.
And he also says that I said that what was required was an armed response at Columbine and I ignored the fact that there was a police officer there. There was not a police officer or any other armed and trained citizen in a location in the school where they could have done any good. It doesn't help in this very emotionally heated debate to take issues and skew them. We have to speak about them with accuracy.
Blek: In speaking with them about accuracy, what you have to understand is that in law enforcement, they have a "shoot/don't shoot" program [in which] they have it where they make the [officer's] adrenaline flow, where they have targets pop up. And your trained law enforcement who go through this, who shoot at the range every month and so on, are only able to hit their targets 20 and 30 percent of the time.
Kamen: That's because the training is so poor.
Blek: Excuse me. Now we just need to use some common sense here. If I was at a sporting event, say, in New York City, and it was an emotional game and the beer was flowing and it was the fourth quarter and there was a controversial call, all I have to do is stand back and look around and say to myself: "If everybody in this arena were armed, am I safer? Does that make me safer?" And the answer has to be, "No way."
Kamen: Well let me respond to that directly. If you're in the same arena -- and I've covered events like that all through my long career as a reporter -- and one guy stands up and freaks out and starts shooting the people next to him, you'd pray to God that there was somebody armed and sane nearby who could stop him. And that's what your argument completely ignores. And it's the only argument that I'm making.
Blek: No, it doesn't. But we can go on.
Levine: Charlie, let me try to put a little bit of a personal spin on this. You have suffered as a victim of crime. Your son was murdered in New York City by some teenagers with handguns. Now, do you believe that there might be any merit in what Jeff is proposing, in the sense that if there was someone like Jeff, well trained in the use of a firearm, that he might have been able to come to your son's aid or, for that matter, the aid of any similarly situated victim?
Blek: In my specific case, no. What really irritated me about our particular case is that the three 15-year-olds had access to and possession of a Saturday night special, of which about 80 percent are manufactured in Southern California, where we live. I understand that it was already illegal to have this particular firearm in the possession of a 15-year-old, which is my point.
There are certain laws that just simply cannot be properly enforced. We can't all walk around with a gun in our hand, loaded, ready to fire. And even if my son had had that, it would not have helped him. However, what really bothers me is that the pro-gun lobby argues against safety standards. We have a federal government that has consumer protection standards for toy guns, toasters and teddy bears. But they are actually prohibited from setting safety standards for the actual lethal product.
Kamen: I agree with Charlie.
Blek: If we had had safety standards, that gun would never have been manufactured and let onto our streets. That's part of what I object to.
Kamen: I agree with Charlie 100 percent on that point.
Blek: Good.
Levine: So we can conclude with some kind of agreement then. Anyway thank you.
Blek: Reasonable people can agree, and reasonable people can agree to disagree. It's all right.
Levine: Thank you, Jeff Kamen, and thank you, Charlie Blek.
[/quote]
How can you be a strong advocate of the 2nd Amendment when you advocate government "infringements"?
------------------
John/az
"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!
www.quixtar.com
referal #2005932
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Debate Over Guns
Jeff Kamen vs. Charlie Blek
Sept. 24, 1999
Transcript of an interview with veteran police reporter Jeff Kamen, who wrote APBnews.com's commentary Shooting the Shooters, and Charlie Blek Jr., who is a director of The Bell Campaign, an organization that is pushing for gun law reform. The interview was conducted by Allen Levine, senior producer of the APBnews.com Criminal Justice System Channel.
Levine: Charlie let's begin with you. What is it that you see in Jeff's commentary that is so wrong?
Blek: Actually, what I see Jeff saying is that an armed society is a more polite society. And the current debate is based upon a fellow in Chicago, John Lott, who told us if everybody on the street was armed, we would have an appropriate response. And there's a couple of problems I have with that. The first one is that Mr. Lott has done a couple of different studies. He found that if we take law enforcement [agents] and they happen to be minorities or women, and we put them on the street, rather than crime going down, it actually goes up. And my feeling is that African-Americans and women are part of the citizenry, so he is inconsistent with that.
More importantly, he indicates that we wouldn't have had a [shooting at] Columbine High School if there had been an armed response immediately, and he ignores the fact that there was an armed uniformed police officer on the premises and that still didn't do anything. I don't have any problem with enforcement. But I also think that we need to investigate and we need to look at intervention and we need to look at prevention. I work for responsible gun policies, and in my mind, there is no reason to tolerate 30 or 50 or 100 round magazines in civilian hands. When we do that, we're simply sanctioning the hunting of other human beings, and that's wrong.
Levine: Jeff Kamen, agree with any of that?
Kamen: Oh, absolutely. I mean, let's take the last line first. Nobody, nobody, nobody who is not in the United States military or in some state law enforcement agency has a requirement for a magazine or a clip -- whatever you want to call it -- that holds 50 or 100 rounds. This is strictly fantasy stuff that plays into the heads of people that probably shouldn't have weapons of any kind.
I am a strong advocate of the right to bear arms. But anybody who reads carefully through my commentary on APBnews.com today sees that I want all persons who wish to carry concealed weapons to pass rigid testing -- meticulous testing -- by their local law enforcement. In other words, they'd have to be carefully tested, trained and licensed.
But some of the other things that Charlie said are simply debater's techniques. He trashes the professor who does the study because he says that [the professor] did another study which he found politically and morally objectionable, so he ignores the science of the study in question.
And he also says that I said that what was required was an armed response at Columbine and I ignored the fact that there was a police officer there. There was not a police officer or any other armed and trained citizen in a location in the school where they could have done any good. It doesn't help in this very emotionally heated debate to take issues and skew them. We have to speak about them with accuracy.
Blek: In speaking with them about accuracy, what you have to understand is that in law enforcement, they have a "shoot/don't shoot" program [in which] they have it where they make the [officer's] adrenaline flow, where they have targets pop up. And your trained law enforcement who go through this, who shoot at the range every month and so on, are only able to hit their targets 20 and 30 percent of the time.
Kamen: That's because the training is so poor.
Blek: Excuse me. Now we just need to use some common sense here. If I was at a sporting event, say, in New York City, and it was an emotional game and the beer was flowing and it was the fourth quarter and there was a controversial call, all I have to do is stand back and look around and say to myself: "If everybody in this arena were armed, am I safer? Does that make me safer?" And the answer has to be, "No way."
Kamen: Well let me respond to that directly. If you're in the same arena -- and I've covered events like that all through my long career as a reporter -- and one guy stands up and freaks out and starts shooting the people next to him, you'd pray to God that there was somebody armed and sane nearby who could stop him. And that's what your argument completely ignores. And it's the only argument that I'm making.
Blek: No, it doesn't. But we can go on.
Levine: Charlie, let me try to put a little bit of a personal spin on this. You have suffered as a victim of crime. Your son was murdered in New York City by some teenagers with handguns. Now, do you believe that there might be any merit in what Jeff is proposing, in the sense that if there was someone like Jeff, well trained in the use of a firearm, that he might have been able to come to your son's aid or, for that matter, the aid of any similarly situated victim?
Blek: In my specific case, no. What really irritated me about our particular case is that the three 15-year-olds had access to and possession of a Saturday night special, of which about 80 percent are manufactured in Southern California, where we live. I understand that it was already illegal to have this particular firearm in the possession of a 15-year-old, which is my point.
There are certain laws that just simply cannot be properly enforced. We can't all walk around with a gun in our hand, loaded, ready to fire. And even if my son had had that, it would not have helped him. However, what really bothers me is that the pro-gun lobby argues against safety standards. We have a federal government that has consumer protection standards for toy guns, toasters and teddy bears. But they are actually prohibited from setting safety standards for the actual lethal product.
Kamen: I agree with Charlie.
Blek: If we had had safety standards, that gun would never have been manufactured and let onto our streets. That's part of what I object to.
Kamen: I agree with Charlie 100 percent on that point.
Blek: Good.
Levine: So we can conclude with some kind of agreement then. Anyway thank you.
Blek: Reasonable people can agree, and reasonable people can agree to disagree. It's all right.
Levine: Thank you, Jeff Kamen, and thank you, Charlie Blek.
[/quote]
How can you be a strong advocate of the 2nd Amendment when you advocate government "infringements"?
------------------
John/az
"The middle of the road between the extremes of good and evil, is evil. When freedom is at stake, your silence is not golden, it's yellow..." RKBA!
www.quixtar.com
referal #2005932
Jeff Thomas
New member
With friends like Kamen, who need enemies? I'm not sure if he is well-meaning, but ignorant, or if he is a shill for the anti-self defense movement. What sad logic.
Gwinnydapooh
Retired Screen Name
Poor guy sounds like my dad. Basically, dad's deal is that he'd like to stand up for his rights but he's convinced that he doesn't really have them--his ownership of guns caused Columbine and the rest, so how can he demand anything. So he starts every gun conversation with "Well, I think reasonable laws are OK, like background checks and things like that, and I don't think anyone should own a machine gun, but . . ."
I think he thinks his guilt is less if he agrees to the "reasonable" infringements. He doesn't realize he isn't guilty for exercising a right.
------------------
Don
"Hey you, let's fight!"
"Them's fightin' words!"
I think he thinks his guilt is less if he agrees to the "reasonable" infringements. He doesn't realize he isn't guilty for exercising a right.
------------------
Don
"Hey you, let's fight!"
"Them's fightin' words!"
This safety regulations talk is a farce. So what if they stop producing those 'unsafe' 'Sat night specials'? Will that reduce gun crime? No. Why would they even think that way?? So,instead of shooting you with a 32 caliber plinker,now they've got 40 S&W ! So take the small guns from them and let them get bigger ones,huh. So you get the gun manufacturers,who are pressed into making their small guns safer (??) by installing some sort of 'safety' device so they pass 'safety' inspections,whatever those may be. So the guns remain out there this time with a 'safety' device. This argument is sooo ridiculous,its hard to even argue it.........a freakin toaster toasts BREAD,you idiots! A gun WAS created to 'harm' someone or something! Thats its DESIGN,you numbskulls! Maybe they need to have 'safety checks' on the bullets,too,cause they've been known to 'harm' people........sheesh,dealing with idiots........