Contributors

Friday, December 27, 2013

The Good Guy With A Gun Lie

Great piece in last Sunday's Times on mental health and guns. It sadly shows how the system we currently have is failing.

The police seized the firearms, as well as seven high-capacity magazines, but Mr. Russo, 55, was eventually allowed to return to the trailer in Middletown where he lives alone. In an interview there recently, he denied that he had schizophrenia but said he was taking his medication now — though only “the smallest dose,” because he is forced to. His hospitalization, he explained, stemmed from a misunderstanding: Seeking a message from God on whether to dissociate himself from his family, he had stabbed a basketball and waited for it to reinflate itself. When it did, he told relatives they would not be seeing him again, prompting them to call the police. 

As for his guns, Mr. Russo is scheduled to get them back in the spring, as mandated by Connecticut law.

If our current laws worked, Mr. Russo should never be allowed to possess a gun again.

The other takeaway from this piece is this...

It was the shock of a potentially avoidable tragedy that pushed Indiana lawmakers to act. Reports of gunfire brought Officer Timothy Laird to Indianapolis’s south side one night in August 2004. Kenneth C. Anderson, a schizophrenic man who the police later learned had just killed his mother in her home, was stalking the block with an SKS assault rifle and two handguns. As Officer Laird stepped from his patrol car, he was fatally shot. Four other officers were wounded before one of them shot and killed Mr. Anderson.

Good guys with guns get shot ever year. Criminals are not deterred by them. Here are the latest statistics. That's 31 deaths last year. Recall these gun myths as well which include the statistics like this one.

Chances that a shooting at an ER involves guns taken from guards: 1 in 5

So, the notion that there are Jack Bauers and John McLanes in waiting out there to save the day is the product of the Gun Cult's hubris filled video game like fantasy. We don't need bloviating assholes in our schools with firearms. Considering they are belligerent adolescents who likely spend too much time playing their X Boxes and Play Stations, it makes perfect sense that they think we live in a fictional reality.

As Adam Lanza showed us, that's a pretty dangerous thing to believe.

5 comments:

Nikto said...

"So, the notion that there are Jack Bauers and John McLanes in waiting out there to save the day is the product of the Gun Cult's hubris filled video game like fantasy."

The thing about Jack Bauer and John McClane is that in their fictional world they actually trained long and hard to do their jobs. Like the cops who shot nine innocent bystanders at the Empire State Building, or the cops who shot two bystanders when an unarmed man pretended to draw a weapon in Times Square.

I'm not demeaning these officers: they have an impossibly difficult job. But if that happens to people with that much training and experience, your average Joe with no training under fire will be much more likely to hurt innocents, or have their weapon stolen from them.

As the statistics from the hospital show, it's extremely common for guards -- or cops -- to be shot with their own weapons. In fact, people who carry guns are five times more likely to be shot.

Juris Imprudent said...

there are Jack Bauers and John McLanes in waiting

First, both of them are fictional.

Second, both are govt agents, with guns. You know, what you always call the good guys with guns.

Third, who - other than you (and perhaps a voice or two in your head) - has ever suggested them as day-savers? I don't believe any gun owners on this blog have - just you M. Of course I know how much you like to tell us all what we think and feel because you know that so much better than the people you are talking about.

GuardDuck said...

Yeah, nice way to twist was is said into something that isn't said. Reading for comprehension, you should try it sometime....

Larry said...

What he hears from us goes in one ear and dribbles out the other. What he reads from us goes in both eyes, but dribbles out his nose as snot. His fevered imagination fill in the blacks. It's much easier that way. Fewer brain cells required.

Larry said...

Adam Lanza was most notorious for playing hours upon hours of "Dance, Dance, Revolution". If that, like Karl Pierson's outspoken socialism, isn't grounds for institutionizing some, nothing is.