Wow. What do police think about gun control? Listen to elected law enforcement, and you would think the line law enforcement officer would be convinced that restricting guns would help them. Oops. Read the link. Read the questions and answers. The biggest positive influence to reducing the tragic results of active shooters, according to those that actually are the paid professional responders, would be to have more civilians armed and carrying.
Browsing Posts published by Brian Withnell
The main reason for this post is to raise awareness of actual research on active shooters (those who commit mass murders) sited in this article in today’s WSJ.
Yes, and active shooter (someone that goes to an enclosed area and shoots at victims, some of whom are random targets) is a criminal. But there are differences between “normal” criminals that think differently than what we do–who think nothing of killing someone for some advantage or slight and the active shooter that is out to just kill as many people as they can (and possibly some “reason”, but the mass killing is not rational).
From the article:
They are predominantly weaklings and cowards who crumble easily as soon as an armed person shows up….
At the Clackamas Mall in Oregon last week, an active shooter murdered two people and then saw that a shopper, who had a handgun carry permit, had drawn a gun and was aiming at him. The murderer’s next shot was to kill himself.
If anything, to prevent active shooters from killing lots of people, the population of armed, concealed-carrying individuals needs to increase, not decrease. The article sites research, not just pontificates and conjectures. If you think we need more gun control, read the article first.
I have friends that say that having Romney lose is a good thing. Because he is so liberal, if he won, the party would just move more to the left and we would be in even worse shape.
I’m not so sure.
I am not a doom and gloom kind of guy. I’m mostly upbeat, and I tend to think we can survive almost anything. I’m not sure the country will survive four more years of Obama. But while I may hope and pray otherwise, it is a possibility I have to consider. The United States is not the New Jerusalem of the Bible. It is not God’s chosen people. So while I will pray for the POTUS, SCOTUS, congress, and the rest, I know the only hope for anyone is not found in the government. Liberals tend to think that big government is the salvation of the people; conservative tend to think small government will be the salvation of the people.
Neither is true.
A large portion of the problem of government budgets is inequality of power.
Unions arose because the workforce model shifted from a shop owner with a couple of employees that he knew, with many other employers that could hire those workers just down the street, to a business owner (or worse, a stock holder) that didn’t know their employees, with a monopoly on jobs. In order to obtain some kind of bargaining power coming anywhere near equality, workers banded together against the greed of those employers that forced them into essential slavery. The employer held all the power, the individual worker had no power. If he quit, he would be one of hundreds that held the same position, and the loss to the company would be negligible.
The unions formed to re-adjust that inequity of power. There were no other employers for workers to go to within there profession, so the employees made it that there were no workers other than unions for the employer to hire. The union gave the collective workers the same means of hurting a business owner as the individual worker had when there were shops with 2 or 3 workers. If they left, the business could not operate. Power had re-adjusted to both needing the other. At least until the unions operated among many companies, and could hold power over the companies, much like companies had held power over them.
Now we see the same thing all over again. Only we see it from our own pockets being hit by unions in the form of taxes being raised by teacher unions (who have the same monopoly tactics of the “owner” who controls all the jobs). There are people that call for anyone discontent with the pay/benefits to quit, all the while knowing that the government holds a monopoly over the education industry (they know there aren’t other schools to which those teachers can apply and obtain jobs). The teachers organize to retake equivalent power with the employer, and then the “employer” cries foul.
Greed is the evil that causes this … for everyone involved. Greed on the part of employers that want to hire people at the lowest wage they can possibly pay, greed on the part of employees that want to be paid for nothing. In small businesses, with lots of competition, the competition nullifies the leverage of both parties. If an employer wants his business to thrive, he has to hire and keep good workers in a competitive job market. If an employee wants to thrive, he has to work to provide value to his business. When a competitive job market is not present (through any kind of monopoly the equality is only balanced when both sides become monopoly powers.
Because schools do not operate as independent businesses (each one not a part of the county government) the teachers have no power unless they band together for collective bargaining. The solution may be to encourage competition … remove, and prevent monopolies from forming, and remove the unions that formed to re-adjust power. Either that, or live with the power struggle of giant entities that struggle for power over the other.
There is much discussion these days, and pontificating by politicians, that there is no reason for having high capacity magazines in pistols other than to kill a lot of people in a short time. There are lots of calls for limiting the number of rounds to 10 per magazine.
If the only reason to have large capacity magazines is to kill a lot of people in a short period of time, how many rounds do police pistols hold?
The title here is a quote of Marcello Truzzi, and it is oft sited by skeptics of any proposed theory. I would like to propose that I am a skeptic, and I would like to invoke this for origin of life by chance and time. I know, this is rather obtuse, and it will involve some rather distinct mathematical arguments, but I find it rather an extraordinary claim that life started by chance.
I’m trained in mathematics and information theory, so when I look at something, I tend to look at it from that standpoint. So looking at what it takes to get life started, is fairly straight forward. I’m not talking about evolution of species here, I’m talking about the origin of life itself … it matters not where, here or some other planet and dropped by visiting aliens … no matter where life started it had to start. Could chance alone account for the origin of life.
First, in order to have a living cell, there must be some means of carrying genetic information, and replicating that information. While viruses have genetic information, they cannot replicate without an already existent cell … viruses on their own without a host living cell are not “alive”. Viruses even if they existed without any cells, it could not reproduce, move, consume energy, create proteins or any other functions of living organisms.
Living organisms require those functions, the most basic is reproduction. If an organism cannot reproduce, it will eventually die and that is the end of it. Reproduction is a fundamental requirement of life. While other things might be required, I am going to examine just that aspect. What does it take for a cell to reproduce … though in fact, I will limit discussion even to a more simple problem which I will explain later. continue reading…
Senator Deeds:
What crazy logic do you use to say that which hurts nobody, can be done without even thinking about it, and would occur without any victim, is a VIOLENT crime? Of course I’m talking about changing what ought to be lowered to not a crime at all (carrying a firearm on school property without any other incriminating action) into a violent felony. I truly would like to know the logic (not some emotional appeal) that would cause you to go to such extremes. Honest citizens ought to be able to carry firearms nearly anywhere without mala prohibita restrictions. Having a firearm (just having one) is not, nor can it be mala in se; even our beloved Virginia has put into place a right to keep and bear arms. Our constitution knows that those that are willing to give up liberty for security deserve neither, and will lose both. Are you so devoid of knowledge of history that you do not?
Security can only be obtained by virtue and liberty.
Brian Withnell
