--- Bill Bartlett <billbartlett at aapt.net.au> wrote:
>
> It is sloppy thinking to imagine that armed
> civilians are the answer.
> You just need to think about that scenario a bit,
> imagine that a
> large number of students in a crowd are armed at the
> time that
> someone starts shooting. They all hear shots and
> pull out their guns,
> most of them don't know who actually fired the first
> shots but
> suddenly there are several people with guns in their
> hands and some
> wounded victims.
[WS:] This is getting really silly - attacking straw men, really. I think that Joseph, Jordan, and others including myself made it pretty clear that we are talking about self-defense that includes some serious training. I also made it rather clear that by self-defense I understand incapacitating the perp by a variety of means, not necessarily fire arms, although I am by no means agains including fire arms on this list. In many situations, a properly trained individual can be more effective with bare hands than with a fire arm.
Again, effective self defense means application of any available means that best suit a particular situation.
It is rather silly to apriori exclude fire arms from that repertoire, although it is equally naive to think that only fire arms can pull the trick (albeit I do not think that anyone here advocated the latter position.)
But as I said before, this focus on allowing or banning guns is really a diversion from a very uncomfortable realization that there is not much we as society can do to avoid this kind of random violence. We do not like feeling powerless, so we engage in rituals that make us feel safe and think that somehting can be done even if nothing can. Banning or allowing gusn is one such ritual. I also recall that when the DC sniper was on the loose there was some talk about using military surveillance aircrfat to "protect" the public. That is a typical example of ritualistic fetishism in the face of impotence and powerlessness.
Another thought: the argument about "vigilantism" is a load of crap that would not pass even as a high school term paper. This is a prime example of soft-on-crime liberalism going waaaay into the left field. I could not help but to score that point.
Wojtek
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