WND reports
As the trial of the Fort Hood killer finally began this week, Michael Savage reminded listeners why all the victims were unarmed and therefore unable to defend themselves, even though they were on a military base.
“Bill Clinton disarmed our troops,” Dr. Savage explained. “One of his first acts upon taking office in 1993 was to prevent soldiers on military bases from carrying their personal firearms. … The 13 bodies in that Texas morgue are the direct result of gun-control craziness as enacted by Clinton” (FREE audio).
I'm not so sure that's true. I don't think soldiers on military bases carried weapons even before Clinton, unless of course they were MPs. Besides, as Jared Loughner proved, it doesn't matter. Armed good guys are powerless to stop a maniac in time.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
Loughner proved that? Why, because a person with a permit eventually showed up on the scene after he was taken down and helped out, but because that person was not right there, at the scene, when it happened?
ReplyDeleteThat case proves nothing. Especially when there are other cases where armed citizens have put an end to shootings. Of course, your side likes to pretend these don't exist, or even outright deny them since they don't fit your narrative.
Part of joining the armed services is that you agree to give up some of your liberties. One of those areas is privately owned weapons. You also give up first amendment rights.
ReplyDeleteI cant speak to rules regarding carry, but in the 70's, if you lived in the barracks and owned firearms, they were kept in the arms room.
When was the giving up of liberties required for joining the military supposed to happen? I have a son inlaw in the Air Force. I very recently gave him a Colt .45 pistol specially engraved with Air Force insignia and his name as a show of thanks from our family for what he has committed his life to do. He and my daughter as well as my grandkids live in Air Force barracks housing. Otherwise known as on site housing. His superiors sent the gun to the armory for approval and the armory approved it to keep in their house on the Air Force grounds. How does the equate in giving up the liberty of owning firearms?
DeleteI think the suggestion is that military personnel could carry on base not that they could have a gun in the home.
DeleteSarge, do wish to clarify?
DeleteIt's not the sarge who needs to clarify anything. It's in the report I posted.
Delete"“Bill Clinton disarmed our troops,” Dr. Savage explained. “One of his first acts upon taking office in 1993 was to prevent soldiers on military bases from carrying their personal firearms."
Sarge needs to clarify, in his post he says,
Delete"Part of joining the armed services is that you agree to give up some of your liberties. One of those areas is privately owned weapons."
He said OWNED, not carry. This is simply NOT true. And personally owned weapons can be kept on base and in on base housing. I know this as a fact because I was ON the base in Warner Robbins Air Force Base Georgia when I presented the Colt to him and was logged in at the armory and then into his personal housing, ON base. He is also allowed to carry the weapon on and off the base at will. He is also allowed to practice with that weapon in a on base training range.
So I am waiting for Sarges clarification of his statement.
Hi Texas,
DeleteSorry for the delay. I cant speak for the Air Force, but the army seems to do things similarly. Basic housing on military are barracks of some sort. These are like dorm rooms in college. You likely have a roommate. Bathroom down the hall. Though sometimes two rooms will share a bath. In these billets, your personally owned weapons are kept in the arms room.
People who are married or have dependents can either live off post, or get on post housing if its available. There are rules about what you can do to the place because it isn't really yours. Privately owned weapons are still registered, usually with the commander. But you can generally keep them at your house.
Carry permits aren't valid on government property. When you enter a military base, you'll see a sign saying no personal weapons (exceptions noted above) and everyone entering liable to be searched. This happens, especially today.
As for giving up rights, the military is a very paternalistic organization. The pluses are that you have three hots and a cot, free medical care, clothes on your back, and if you live in the barracks, the commute is pretty easy. The minuses are that you have to do what you are ordered. You quite literally "belong" to the government.
If you go out and do something stupid that gets you hurt, you get free medical care and the commander gets to explain what he had done to keep you from being so stupid. You being dumb will often reflect on his performance evaluation. The same goes for thing like DUI's and accidents.
If you start not showing up to work on time, they can and will make you live in the barracks. They can restrict you to the barracks, to post, or tell you you cant go to Joe's Bar for a drink.
While you are free to speak on issues, you cant do it in a way that suggests that you represent your service. I cant speak to on post housing, in the barracks, they can conduct "health and welfare" inspections and you are on the hook for what they find.
Some of it truly sucks, and I've been in somewhere north of thirty years.
Thank you for the reply Sarge. This I already knew, but needed that explanation from you for everyone else's benefit.
DeleteDoes your posting name ssmarkcr reflect your rank? The others call you "sarge." I thought ss meant "staff sargent," but with 30 years in that can't be.
DeleteSo my thank you reply to Sarge isn't worth posting Mike?
DeleteIt reflected my rank when I got my yahoo email address. I've moved up a bit since then. Though with peace breaking out I might be shown the door.
DeleteArmed good guys are almost always the ones who stop a spree shooter. What do you mean by "on time"?
ReplyDeleteI mean in a timely manner. I mean before the bodies start adding up.
DeleteThe incident in Tucson showed nothing of the kind. The one person who was carrying legally was too far away to intervene. And certainly, Ft. Hood demonstrates that when the only person armed is the terrorist, bad things happen. It took an armed person--in this case, a police officer--to stop the terrorist.
ReplyDeleteGreg, you really are reverting back. Arizona has Constitutional Carry. There were many people with guns at that political gathering, just like there are in any gathering in that gun-lovin' state. NOBODY stopped Loughner.
DeleteMikeb, as always, I go by evidence. We know of only one good citizen who was armed at that location, and he was distant. You can speculate at will, but when you make statements of fact, those have to be supported.
DeleteDon't lie and claim that I'm "reverting back." I never accepted your wishful thinking.
Just because Arizona is a constitutional state does not mean EVERYONE chooses to carry. That is just an assumption on your part Mike. Not that many constantly carry in Arizona or anywhere else for that matter. It just means that if you wish to carry in Arizona you don't have to beg and bribe the government to do so.
DeleteMikeb - how many people that were carrying guns were shot in the Arizona shooting?
DeleteWhat you mean, Greg, is you hide behind the lack of evidence. 6% of the population in Arizona carries. At that Giffords rally there would have been about 6% of the crowd packing but not a one of them could do anything about crazy Loughner.
DeleteMike,
DeleteTell us how many people were carrying at the rally. And while you're at it, please tell us how you think this shooting argues more strongly for your side than the church and school shootings that have been stopped by armed individuals.
As I asked before, how many of those people were shot? They are not required to defend someone else from an attack, they are trying to protect themselves and their family/loved ones. There is no duty to engage if you are not directly attacked.
DeleteWow, Mike. Words almost fail me at the simple inanity of that comment.
DeletePlease, tell us WHY you think that the crowd at the Giffords rally HAD to be a perfect representation of the statistical average for the entire state.
Did it also have the exactly statistically correct number of blacks, whites, asians, hispanics, etc.? Did it have the right religious distribution too? I'll bet it had the statistically appropriate number of people present who voted against Gabby at her last election!
Seriously, man. It's not even worth the time to explain all of the reasons that you cannot take a statewide statistic and say that, therefore, that percentage of a given crowd at a political rally Must be part of x group.
Otherwise, you just disproved yourself regarding women in the NRA and into shooting in General (and disproved us) because you just proved that women, blacks, and other minorities, and Skinny people, participate at Exactly the same rate that they do in the population as a whole!
I don't know where you got that 6% idea, but if it's true, it shows you that any group could easily have no one in it with a handgun. Let's also remember that Giffords was a Democratic representative. Her supporters belonged to a party that has a few good people in it, but the leaders by and large and many of its voters are control freaks.
DeleteGreg, you keep telling yourself that in a crowd of hundreds of people at a political rally in ARIZONA, there was only one single permit holder. No wonder you're on the wrong side of this argument, you lie to yourself with such ease and justify it because there's no proof to the contrary.
DeleteAnonymous, thanks for that extremely flattering picture of the typical concealed carry permit holder. He's there to protect himself even if it means watching people get mowed down by a lunatic, the permit holder has no obligation to engage. Right you are. Petrified with fear and self-interest, the half-dozen or so armed folks nearby Loughner did nothing.
Mikeb, we could speculate about how many of the people there were illegal immigrants, since Tucson is near the border. We could wonder how many hidden Republicans were there to spy on Giffords. The list goes on and on. But it would all be speculation in the absence of evidence.
DeleteAgain, you call me a liar since I refuse to accept things without evidence to support the conclusion. I'm not lying. I'm employing critical thinking. Do you oppose that as well?
Mike,
DeleteThey weren't petrified, they were merely following the duty to retreat--as long as they could get away safely, their shooting him would have been illegitimate and murder according to your rules.
I'll be waiting for your and Jadegold's official apologies to me and everyone else and your admission that, due to your new understanding of statistics, gun owners perfectly reflect the proportions of women and minorities present in society as a whole.
DeleteNo, Greg, I call you a liar and a hypocrite because you refuse to accept SOME things for lack of evicence but are perfectly willing to accept others.
DeleteAt the Giffords shooting there was only one permit holder present.
There are millions of legitimate DGUs a year.
1. In Tucson, we know of only one person legally carrying a gun. He was too distant to do anything about the shooter, so he acted responsibly.
DeleteMy suspicion is that you can't stand the fact that the legally armed citizen didn't just start blasting away, so you employ wishful thinking and speculate about all the scared gun carriers who just had to have been there.
2. Millions of defensive gun uses is the high end of the estimates. The low end was 800,000.
Those numbers are arrived at using the same methods that many other studies use.
Again, stop calling me a liar until you learn what the word means and can prove it about me.
Greg, by your own definitions, there is no proof or evidence that there are 800,000 DGUs a year. Yet, you have no problem advancing these wild estimates as fact. That makes you a liar and a hypocrite, sorry.
DeleteStop lying about me. A lie is a statement that the person knows to be false. I don't make those. You call me a liar for accepting the report from the National Academies of Science as a reasonable assessment? If you refuse to learn logic, you'll have to accept never seeing your desires win. Of course, since your desires are based on no logic whatsoever, if you did learn logic, you'd have to give up what you want.
DeleteYou're in something of a pickle there.
Mike,
DeleteStop talking out of your ass. Do you seriously not understand the differences here? Do you not know how statistics works? As I've said before, I hate and distrust statistics, but here's how it works in a nutshell:
Those estimates of how many DGU's there are, as well as estimates of the percentage of people who carry under Constitutional Carry regimes, are made by checking with smaller, sample groups out of the population and then extrapolating the estimated number.
There are plenty of ways to attack these calculations as being off--faulty methodology, bad procedures for picking the sample, too small of a sample, the sample doesn't represent the diversity of the whole, etc.
We can argue til we're blue in the face as to which studies come closest to the truth and had the best methodologies, but if you are going to accept some statistics, you can't attack Greg for accepting others; you can only attack the statistics he accepts.
This brings us back to what you're selling right now: that a 6% carry rate estimated for the state, overall, means that the crowd must have had half a dozen carriers at Least.
You're going from small samples, extrapolating over a state-wide population (as statistics are intended to do) and then applying that extrapolation as a predictor (and according to your claims, a nigh perfect predictor) of the composition of any sample taken from that state. Statistics are not intended to be used for purposes like this--this second layer, bouncing from the general back to the specific, introduces huge margins of error even when the new samples are completely random.
However, we aren't dealing with a random sample here--we're dealing with a political rally--a sample we would never use to extrapolate a statewide rate on anything because of the sample bias.
And so, your unproven claim has no scientific basis because you have introduced so much error to the system. That is why Greg, I, and anyone with a bit of critical thinking reject it.
As a side note, it's interesting how everyone praised the crowd for their actions in taking down Loughner, even though they weren't armed, but you prefer to spend your time slandering them and tarnishing the name of the group as a whole by stating that there are at least 6 in their number who could have ended the spree but were too cowardly to do so.
DeleteWhat the Loughner shooting shows is that concealed carry isn't the panacea you guys make it out to be. All your blah blah blah notwithstanding.
DeleteWe've never said that it's a panacea, so you are, again, arguing against a straw man. And arguing poorly with your botched use of statistics. C'mon man! That scarecrow can't even fight back and it's still kicking your ass! It's just embarassing.
DeleteRegarding our actual position, that carry enables people to fight back and that carriers have at least a chance of defending themselves if they're attacked either by robbers or a crazed shooter, why do you insist on ignoring other shootings where people with firearms have made a difference? E.g. the church shooting in Colorado, the Appalachian School of Law shooting in Virginia, etc.
I don't ignore them, it's just that they're few and far between.
DeleteBut they are the occasions when we know that there's a lawfully armed person in proximity to the shootings. Most of the rest of the shootings have happened in gun free zones where nobody could be lawfully armed. Even the Appy School of Law one happened on a gun free campus--the guys who responded had to run to their cars which were parked legally, off campus, and then run back with their guns, violating the "gun free" policy (though the obvious potential necessity defense protected them from prosecution).
DeleteWhether shooters seek out gun free zones or just happen to usually have grievances located in a gun free zone, the gun free nature reduces the chances of armed resistance. This, along with the relative rarity of concealed carriers as a percentage of the total population, explains the relative rarity of such events.
But even if you reject that logic, those events still outnumber this one occasion that you are trying to use to say that concealed carry cannot stop a mass shooting.