{"id":32958,"date":"2012-12-27T12:20:37","date_gmt":"2012-12-27T18:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=32958"},"modified":"2013-09-06T15:25:17","modified_gmt":"2013-09-06T20:25:17","slug":"32958","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=32958","title":{"rendered":"I Had A Conversation About Guns"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a conversation with AVERY LIBRELLE. \u00a0Avery is an associate professor of Victimization Studies at Saint Thomas, and\u00a0still\u00a0<\/em>votes for Paul Wellstone every election.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: So are you gun nuts really demanding that we arm all teachers?<\/p>\n

ME: Well, no. \u00a0Some conservatives merely want to allow teachers that qualify for carry permits – pass the background checks, take the training and so on – that\u00a0wish\u00a0<\/em>to, to bring their legally-purchased firearms to school. \u00a0Concealed, anonymous, no publicity.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: That’s just madness. \u00a0That just adds more guns to the situation.<\/p>\n

ME: Well, yeah. \u00a0Guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens. \u00a0Which, the past 25 years of experience have shown, is at worst neutral and very likely a good thing, and which current police doctrine shows is the best way to deal with mass shooting situations.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: What? \u00a0That’s insane! \u00a0Teachers are trained to teach! \u00a0It’ll take years to train them to be soldiers!<\/p>\n

ME: Soldiers? \u00a0Huh? \u00a0You don’t have to be a “soldier” to defend yourself. \u00a0When a regular citizen is faced with a life-or-death situation, it’s usually pretty cut and dried; there is someone right in front of you providing an immediate threat of death or great bodily harm to you or the people around you. \u00a0You pull a gun, you point, you shoot.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0That’s so not how it works.<\/p>\n

ME: Well, yeah. \u00a0It is. \u00a0The record is full of 14 year old kids<\/a> and septuagenarians<\/a>\u00a0and elderly women<\/a> and\u00a0pregnant women<\/a>, teenage single moms<\/a>\u00a0and just plain folks<\/a> successfully defending themselves against violent – indeed, by definition, lethal – crime.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0Well, mass shooters are different. \u00a0They are white, young, male, and very, very smart. \u00a0They plan their shootings out to a “T”. \u00a0There is no way the regular citizen can stand up to them! \u00a0Only the police can deal with freaks like this.<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0Again, Avery, no. \u00a0For starters, cops have their own problems; the policeman at Columbine wasn’t able to stop Klebold and Harris, although someone should tell David Gregory that the cop likely saved quite a few lives – and the SWAT team didn’t go into the building at all until hours after everyone including Klebold and Harris were dead. \u00a0After that, cops changed their tactics, and we’ll come back to that.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, we have several instances of armed citizens stopping mass-shooters in mid-shooting, including the guy in Portland Oregon two weeks ago<\/a>, and Jeanne Assam in Colorado Springs<\/a> a few years back.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0Hah! \u00a0Now I know you’re parroting NRA talking points! \u00a0Both of those shooters killed themselves<\/em>! \u00a0 The armed civilian Rambo-wannabees didn’t kill them!<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0Now, hang on, Avery. \u00a0No need to be so bloodthirsty. \u00a0The goal isn’t necessarily to get a notch on one’s handgrip. \u00a0It’s to end the shooting.<\/p>\n

And that brings us to police tactics. \u00a0Guess what they train police to do about mass shooters these days? \u00a0Not\u00a0<\/em>wait for the SWAT team. but go in and get after the shooter as fast as they can – because since mass shooters\u00a0do\u00a0<\/em>tend to be intelligent, but narcissistic and disturbed and and to live in fantasy worlds, once you disrupt the fantasy and derail the plan, they\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0tend to stop, re-assess, panic and kill themselves. \u00a0The goal is to cause that derailing when the massacre has just started, rather than when they’re standing up to their waists in dead bodies and hearing the sirens coming, like Harris and Klebold and Seung-Hui Cho and Jeffrey Weise. \u00a0And depending on the killer, that disruption can be pretty minor; in Portland last December 11, Nick Meli didn’t have to fire so much as a shot to get the Clackamas Mall shooter to slink away into a store and polish himself off. \u00a0 These people are narcissists and cowards; once their master plan gets off the rails, they almost always either kill themselves or, like the Aurora shooter, give up.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0But\u00a0the Brady Organization says arming teachers\u00a0would only make things worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0Oh, you mean that if a teacher had shot back at Lanza, things\u00a0might have gotten bad<\/em>?<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0Well, yeah…that’s what Brady says! \u00a0Anyway – Teachers are\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>soldiers<\/a>. \u00a0They spend their careers mastering pedagogy and nurturing, not soldiers!<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0Wait – do you think the guy in Portland trained his whole life to get ready for that moment in that mall? \u00a0Don’t be absurd! You’ll labor in vain to find a single civilian who shoots, successfully, in self-defense, that spent an entire working career preparing for the moment. \u00a0But go ahead and try!<\/p>\n

But let’s just say for argument’s sake that you’re right; that by the nature of a teacher’s job, they should never, ever be armed, even if their states of residence have duly issued them carry permits for which they’re qualified. \u00a0That’s what we’re saying, right?<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0Even if they have a carry permit, which according to nationwide statistics means they’re a couple of orders of magnitude more trustworthy with firearms than the general public?<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0Of course. \u00a0No armed teachers. \u00a0It’s just not right!<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0Because being gentle-bred, lotus-eating teachers, the whole subject of killing in self-defense is beyond them?<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0No need to be so snide – but yes. \u00a0Basically.<\/p>\n

ME: So the schools then opt to follow current law-enforcement procedure, and follow President LaPierre’s idea of hiring guards to try to carry that out in our schools? \u00a0To try to disrupt the shooters’ plans, just like law enforcement advises. \u00a0Just as Israel has done for some time now against a real, constant threat.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: Oh, no. \u00a0The NEA has said that that’s insane<\/a>!<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0So let me get this straight: \u00a0a union comprised of people that you just said were incompetent to see to their own and their childrens’ defense (notwithstanding potentially having carry permits that show they\u00a0are\u00a0<\/em>competent) is nonetheless expert enough in self-defense tactics to reject current law-enforcement practice out of hand?<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0…<\/p>\n

ME: \u00a0Well?<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0Why do you hate the children? \u00a0And women?<\/p>\n

(And SCENE)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a conversation with AVERY LIBRELLE. \u00a0Avery is an associate professor of Victimization Studies at Saint Thomas, and\u00a0still\u00a0votes for Paul Wellstone every election. LIBRELLE: So are you gun nuts really demanding that we arm all teachers? ME: Well, no. \u00a0Some conservatives merely want to allow teachers that qualify for carry permits – pass the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,45,22],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-32958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-gun-free-zones","category-victim-disarmament","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32958"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32965,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32958\/revisions\/32965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}