Thinking to Hard
Apr. 22nd, 2008 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
affrecaLJWorld has an article up about allowing concealed carry on campus. I made the mistake of reading the comment thread (actually, I want to get better about reading comment thread. I am to uncomfortable reading differing viewpoints. I should not let myself get blinkered. Still makes me feel weird. But that's the point).
I don't like guns. I don't like the mystical aura they have. Maybe it is because I was raised liberal. Maybe it is because Dad's were kept hidden after I was shot in the head (ob disclaimer, accident, didn't break skull, and with a freaking .22. But I remember it, and how scared my parents were). But I'm not scared of guns, because I survived once already. And I made Dad sit down with me, and show me how to see if they were loaded or unloaded, and how they worked. I didn't ask to shoot them.
Navy did that. I've shot a 9mm four different times, all for qualification. I've a M14 once, and that didn't work well. I've shot bigger mounted guns. And I was in charge of force protection. Most of the mindset didn't stick, but some bits do (One of the reasons I don't try to do security at Naka is I'm afraid I think of defense, not security. Not convinced I would deescalate a situation).
I believe that if you need a gun on campus for self defense, you're blind. The shooter may have a gun, but you have a voice to talk to the shooter (if he's talking to you, he's not shooting. If he's shooting you, he's not shooting the students. Or, you can be like my high school bio teacher, who talked down a shooter so nobody was hurt). You have a phone to call for help. You have classmates get your back. You have plenty of shit to throw at him, and mess up his aim.
What you need to use all of these is courage. And a gun doesn't magically give you that. Thinking through the situations before they happen does (and insanity). Now, you can't run drills in class they way you could in the Navy (and shouldn't), but you can train yourself. And realize it isn't going to be how you expected.
Oh, and you're still more likely to be hit by a car than shot on campus.
I don't like guns. I don't like the mystical aura they have. Maybe it is because I was raised liberal. Maybe it is because Dad's were kept hidden after I was shot in the head (ob disclaimer, accident, didn't break skull, and with a freaking .22. But I remember it, and how scared my parents were). But I'm not scared of guns, because I survived once already. And I made Dad sit down with me, and show me how to see if they were loaded or unloaded, and how they worked. I didn't ask to shoot them.
Navy did that. I've shot a 9mm four different times, all for qualification. I've a M14 once, and that didn't work well. I've shot bigger mounted guns. And I was in charge of force protection. Most of the mindset didn't stick, but some bits do (One of the reasons I don't try to do security at Naka is I'm afraid I think of defense, not security. Not convinced I would deescalate a situation).
I believe that if you need a gun on campus for self defense, you're blind. The shooter may have a gun, but you have a voice to talk to the shooter (if he's talking to you, he's not shooting. If he's shooting you, he's not shooting the students. Or, you can be like my high school bio teacher, who talked down a shooter so nobody was hurt). You have a phone to call for help. You have classmates get your back. You have plenty of shit to throw at him, and mess up his aim.
What you need to use all of these is courage. And a gun doesn't magically give you that. Thinking through the situations before they happen does (and insanity). Now, you can't run drills in class they way you could in the Navy (and shouldn't), but you can train yourself. And realize it isn't going to be how you expected.
Oh, and you're still more likely to be hit by a car than shot on campus.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 07:15 pm (UTC)I was raised around guns. My dad was a police officer for 25 years. He never locked up his work gun; he'd leave it sitting on the kitchen floor, or in the living room by the computer, or sometimes on the dinner table.
He probably did that to irritate my mom. But it had the result of having my first lesson about guns be "NEVER touch daddy's guns". When I was about 3, dad started teaching me archery and when I was 6, he taught me how to use a bb gun. By 13, I was winning turkeys at church turkey shoots with a shotgun. I like target practice and hunting (venison, yum!- though I prefer bow hunting because it's quieter). I've never felt the need to carry a small firearm concealed on my person. Now... swords and large knives, I'd love to carry!
I went to KU for two-ish years and in that time I never felt threatened or in danger, even walking home from the lab alone late at night. But then, I also learned from my mom how not to walk like a victim (she had several years of karate before I was born). I don't need a handgun hidden in my jacket/purse/pants to walk like that. It's in my head. No one ever approached me, much less attacked.
All in all, I agree with you. There are always things to throw to ruin a shooter's aim, and if he (or she) is talking, then they're not shooting. And what it does take is courage. Being able to carry concealed on a college campus would not make anyone safer because it's the people who don't care about the gun laws who are the ones shooting people on campus.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-26 05:08 pm (UTC)The popularity of handguns in the U.S. is one of the primary reasons that I have been seriously thinking about living in a country that has super-tight gun control - like Japan which only has roughly 3 shooting deaths a year (though I just found somewhere saying that their average gun-related death rate to be 0.05 people per year) - especially when I have children. For any psycho in the U.S. to be able to get hold of gun is scary.