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The 11th Commandment: Thou shalt bring guns to church

January 25, 2011 | 10:22 am

The Tucson shootings inspired an informal public debate over gun control laws, as such incidents typically do, with one side decrying the availability of guns to people who appear to be deranged and the other arguing that one sick man's violent rampage shouldn't have any bearing on the public's right to keep and bear arms.

On Tuesday, the nonprofit gun-rights group Georgia Gun Owners took the debate one step further, calling for an end to Georgia's ban on firearms in places of worship.

I hadn't heard of the group before Tuesday, when it e-mailed me a press release touting a bill (Georgia House Bill 54) to eliminate the ban. But I have to say I admire the group's ambition. You would think that gun-rights groups would be content to play defense in the weeks after a federal judge was killed and a congresswoman critically wounded, allegedly by a Glock-wielding conspiracy theorist. That, however, would not be the M.O. of Georgia Gun Owners, whose website aligns it with the "real" right-to-carry policies in Alaska, Vermont and, yes, Arizona.

Here's the meat of the GGO's press release:

"Over the past decade, at least 20 instances have been documented throughout the country where a crazed thug enters a place of worship and shot, or attempted to shoot, the place up,” said Patrick Parsons, Executive Director, Georgia Gun Owners.

Once Church Carry is passed in Georgia, individuals will be able to defend themselves and their families against those that would do them harm while they are simply trying to worship peacefully.

I have trouble squaring what the priests at my church say about faith with the idea of parishioners returning fire on an attacker. But they're Irish Catholics, so perhaps they associate too easily with the notion of martyrdom. I'm guessing that the church Patrick Parsons attends has a somewhat different interpretation of turning the other cheek.

By the way, the GGO's main objective is to make it easier for law-abiding Georgians to carry guns anywhere by eliminating the government license, fees, background check, waiting period and fingerprinting. It has launched a petition drive to persuade state lawmakers to do away with such hurdles. The question implicit in the group's position is this: If people can legally buy guns and keep them in their homes, why shouldn't they be

The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Gun control in Congress: Lawmakers must shed their fear of NRA

Bills to ban high-capacity gun ammunition clips and close the 'gun show loophole' have been introduced in Congress. The Tucson shootings demand a courageous effort by lawmakers to pass this legislation.

By the Monitor's Editorial Board

posted January 27, 2011 at 4:03 pm EST

In the wake of the Tucson shootings, reasonable gun control legislation has made an appearance on Capitol Hill. It can survive and become law, but only if lawmakers find the courage to back it.

One proposal – introduced in both the House and Senate – would ban high-capacity ammunition clips that hold more than 10 bullets. Arizona shooter suspect Jared Loughner allegedly wielded a semiautomatic pistol with a clip containing 31 rounds.

Nineteen people were hit (six killed), before he was wrestled to the ground while changing magazines. The ban being proposed now existed until late 2004, when Congress – under pressure from the gun lobby – allowed it to lapse.

Another proposal, introduced this week in the Senate, would close the “gun show loophole” by requiring that people who buy firearms at gun shows also be subject to background checks, just as buyers at licensed gun dealerships are. The shooters in the 1999 Columbine High School case got around the background check by buying from an unlicensed seller at a gun show.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) opposes both of these ideas, with its backers reminding the nation that it is people – misguided or unbalanced – who commit crimes, not guns.

True. True. But the United States makes it way too easy for such people to get guns, that, in the wrong hands, kill about 30,000 people every year. Massacres like that in Tucson (that also injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords) only serve as a reminder of this yearly, unnecessary toll.

No substantial gun-control law has made it through Congress in the past 17 years. Emblazoned on the minds of Democrats – traditional supporters of gun legislation – is the 1994 electoral thumping they took from the gun lobby. That was the year the Assault Weapons Ban and the background check went into effect. Later losses only reinforced their fear of the NRA.

But advocates of sensible checks, such as the ones just proposed in Congress, suggest the gun lobby is not as almighty as presumed. In the November 2010 election, for instance, 27 House Democrats who were endorsed by the NRA still lost, while in the Senate, supporters of gun control from both parties won. Swing voters – suburban women – generally support gun restrictions.

Timing may help this legislation. The Tucson shooting has prompted high-profile Republicans such as former Vice President Dick Cheney to suggest that “maybe it’s appropriate” to reinstate the ban on high-capacity ammunition clips.

Meanwhile, Republican staffers on the House Judiciary Committee were to join Democrats today in a meeting with officials from the Obama administration to discuss the effectiveness of the background check.

Although the Arizona shooting suspect had a history of drug use and looks to have mental problems, he cleared the check. One area of compromise might be to adjust the check criteria. Even if the net is cast wider, states still need to do a better job of feeding names into the clearance system.

Let’s say, though, that the background check becomes more effective. What good is that if someone bent on killing can circumvent it at a gun show? While polling shows that Americans do not want stricter laws covering the sale of firearms, when pollsters ask about a specific measure such as requiring background checks at gun shows, they overwhelmingly support it; even a majority of gun owners.

With a Republican-controlled House and a strong gun lobby, gun-control advocates are not particularly hopeful. And yet, even the landmark 2008 Supreme Court ruling establishing the individual right to bear arms still allows for regulation.

There is no way to test the waters but to wade into them. Tucson demands that lawmakers do just that.

http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/359429

Concealed machine gun in Virginia? Not happening ... yet.

RICHMOND

Guns in the state Capitol? No problem. Guns in public libraries? Bring 'em on.
But there's one line that Virginia's famously gun-friendly legislature apparently is not ready to cross. For now, at least, it will remain impossible to get a concealed-weapon permit to carry a machine gun. That's what Del. Jackson Miller's bill, HB2386, would have allowed. It failed to advance out of a House of Delegates subcommittee Thursday and so is likely dead for this legislative session.

It was the annual meeting of the Militia, Police and Public Safety panel to deal with gun-related legislation, and, as usual, gun-rights enthusiasts and gun-control advocates faced off on every measure with no middle ground.

For the most part, as usual, the pro-gun side prevailed.

The panel made short work of Del. Patrick Hope's bill, HB1813, that would have prohibited firearms in the Capitol and the General Assembly Building, which houses lawmakers' offices and meeting rooms.

The recent shooting spree in Arizona in which a judge was killed and a congresswoman gravely injured underscores the need for such a measure, Hope, D-Arlington County, told the subcommittee.

"Passing this bill will make everyone in this building safer," he said.

The bill included an exemption for legislators and law-enforcement officers.
As Hope made his pitch, several gun-rights supporters wearing holstered pistols sat a few feet away.

"Gun-free zones, generally speaking, do not work," Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, told Hope. A "demented, committed person" like the Arizona shooter will find a way to commit mayhem with or without a ban, he said.

The measure was killed on a 3-1 vote.

Outside the room after the vote, Hope shook his head.

"I knew this would be an uphill battle," he said. "It's unfortunate that the gun lobby has such firm control over the General Assembly, but that's the world we live in right now."
Del. Mamye BaCote's bill, HB1600, met a similar fate. Introduced at the request of the Newport News City Council, it would have allowed localities to ban guns in libraries.

"Pistols and shotguns in our libraries are not necessary," BaCote, D-Newport News, pleaded with the panel.

The bill was dispatched with virtually no discussion.

BaCote has carried the same measure in past sessions with the same outcome.
The panel was unwilling, however, to expand gun rights as proposed in Miller's bill. The measure would have allowed concealed-weapon permits to be issued for any legal weapon, not just handguns as under current law.

"I love this bill," said Philip Van Cleave, president of the pro-gun Virginia Citizens Defense League.

Miller, R-Manassas, said he had in mind such weapons as bowie knives and nunchucks.

Lt. W.J. Reed Jr. of the State Police told the panel the measure would also allow permits to be issued for machine guns, which gives the State Police some heartburn.
Reed also said the measure could cause Virginia problems with neighboring states with which it has reciprocal enforcement agreements.

"I'm concerned this bill might have unintended consequences," Gilbert said. On his motion, the panel referred the measure to the State Crime Commission for further study.

"It's a way to kill a bill nicely," Miller said afterward.

Earlier Thursday, advocates for closing the so-called "gun show loophole" urged lawmakers to act favorably on the perennial proposal this year.

Del. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, is again carrying a bill to require that people purchasing guns from a private seller at a gun show undergo a criminal background check.

Under current law, those checks are required only in transactions with licensed gun dealers.

In years past, the House has defeated bills designed to require private sellers at guns shows to conduct the checks.

McClellan argued that people who otherwise would be barred from purchasing a firearm are aware they can avoid a background check if they buy from unlicensed vendors at gun shows.

"Does anybody with half a brain really believe" criminals aren't obtaining guns that way? she said. "It is a moral failure to intentionally ignore the reality of what's going on at these gun shows."

Joining McClellan at a news conference touting her bill were Lori Haas and Andrew Goddard, the parents of two students wounded in the April 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech.

McClellan's bill, HB1669, has yet to be called up for a hearing.
http://hamptonroads.com/print/586324

January 26, 2011

Utah’s Gun Appreciation Day

By GAIL COLLINS

This week in Washington, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey introduced three very modest gun regulation bills, including one making it more difficult to sell guns to people on the terror watch list.

Meanwhile, in Salt Lake City, the State Legislature is considering a bill to honor the Browning M1911 pistol by making it the official state firearm.

Guess which idea has the better chance of passage? Can I see a show of hands? Oh, you cynics, you!

Yes, a committee in the Utah House of Representatives voted 9 to 2 this week to approve a bill that would add the Browning pistol to the pantheon of official state things, along with the bird (seagull), rock (coal) and dance (square). Also, although it really has nothing to do with this discussion, I have to mention that the Utah Legislature has provided its citizens with an official state cooking pot, and it is the Dutch oven.

“This firearm is Utah,” Representative Carl Wimmer, the Browning bill’s sponsor, told The Salt Lake Tribune. He is an energetic-looking guy with a huge forehead who has only been in office four years yet has, according to one of his videos, “sponsored and passed some of the most significant pieces of legislation in Utah history.”

Capitol observers say the Browning bill has an excellent chance of becoming law. Meanwhile, Lautenberg will be lucky to get a hearing. The terror of the National Rifle Association is so pervasive that President Obama did not want to poison the mood of his State of the Union address by suggesting that when somebody on the terror watch list tries to buy a gun, maybe we should do an extra check.

“But people are now commenting on the fact that the president didn’t talk about it in his speech. That hasn’t happened for years,” said Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, whose job really does require an inordinate amount of optimism.
Lautenberg’s bills are extremely mild, and no one seems eager to argue in public against the one that would end easy access to 30-bullet magazines that allow someone with a semiautomatic pistol to mow down a parking lot full of people in a matter of seconds. Instead, they just refuse to come to the phone or toss out platitudes.

“The people that are going to commit a crime or are going to do something crazy aren’t going to pay attention to the laws in the first place. Let’s fix the real problem. Here’s a mentally deranged person who had access to a gun that should not have had access to a gun,” said Senator Tom Coburn on “Meet the Press.”

Another of Lautenberg’s bills would tighten a loophole in current law so a mentally deranged person who should not have access to guns could not go to a gun show and buy one without the regular security check. But never mind.

On Monday, the Utah State Capitol celebrated Browning Day, honoring John Moses Browning, native son and maker of the nominee for Official State Firearm. There were speeches, a proclamation, a flyover by a National Guard helicopter, and, of course, a rotunda full of guns. “We recognize his efforts to preserve the Constitution,” Gov. Gary Herbert said, in keeping with what appears to be a new Republican regulation requiring all party members to mention the Constitution at least once in every three sentences.

It is generally not a good policy to dwell on the strange behavior of state legislators since it leads to bottomless despair. If I wanted to go down that road, I’d give you Mark Madsen, a Utah state senator who tried to improve upon the Browning Day celebrations by suggesting they be scheduled to coincide with Martin Luther King Day since “both made tremendous contributions to individual freedom and individual liberty.”

But it’s a symptom of a new streak of craziness abroad in the land, which has politicians scrambling to prove not just that they are against gun regulation, but also that they are proactively in favor of introducing guns into every conceivable part of American life. National parks. Schools. Bars. Airports.

“There is abundant research suggesting in cities where more people own guns, the crime rate, especially the murder rate, goes down,” Utah’s new United States senator, Mike Lee, told CNN.

Actually, there’s a ton of debate about this, which is hard to resolve given the fact that, as Michael Luo reported in The Times, the N.R.A.’s crack lobbyists have managed to stop almost all federal financing for scientific research on gun-related questions. But Lee has definitely made the list of most creative commentators on these matters, ever since he dismissed calls for a calmer political rhetoric after the Tucson massacre by arguing that “the shooter wins if we, who’ve been elected, change what we do just because of what he did.”

Feel free to say whatever you like about the senator’s thinking. Be frank. Otherwise, the shooter wins.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/opinion/27collins.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

January 25, 2011

Bloomberg’s Gun-Limits Coalition Grows, but Finds a Hard Sell in Washington

By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS

In the spring of 2006, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and 14 other mayors from across the country stood at Gracie Mansion and announced that they would take up the fight for stricter gun regulation, vowing to raise the pressure on a volatile national issue.
“If the leadership won’t come from Congress or come from the White House,” Mr. Bloomberg said, “then it has to come from us.”

Nearly five years later, Mr. Bloomberg has used his political bully pulpit and personal wealth to promote and expand his coalition, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which now claims more than 550 members. And the issue of gun control has helped elevate his national profile.

But despite the coalition’s size, its deep pockets and its muscular public relations operation, Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign has failed to force major strengthening of federal gun control laws.

“You’ve got an alternative voice to the dominant N.R.A. voice, and that adds to the dialogue,” said Douglas Muzzio, a professor at the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College. “The question then becomes: Does the dialogue lead to effective action? And that’s more of an unknown. I have not seen a direct connection between what they’re standing for and any substantive policy change.”

In 2009, Mr. Bloomberg’s group gave the Obama administration a report listing 40 ways it could strengthen federal gun rules without any Congressional action, from increasing enforcement of existing laws to tightening background checks. Only one proposal has been taken up by the White House, a rule, not yet in force, requiring dealers to report to federal officials when they make a sale involving multiple rifles or other long guns.

Opponents of gun control have largely succeeded in blocking Congress from restricting the availability of guns, even after high-profile mass killings, from Columbine to Virginia Tech to Tucson. A national database that is supposed to prevent certain classes of people, including those with a record of mental illness or domestic violence, from having guns is woefully incomplete, gun control advocates say.

After Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts was defeated in the 2004 presidential election — in which gun control was a pivotal issue in several states that the Democrats lost — many Democratic politicians decided that pushing for gun restriction was not worth the political price.

Still, advocates for gun owners do not take Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign lightly. “We have billions of reasons to make sure we take him seriously, looking at the dollars,” said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association.

As part of its campaign, Mr. Bloomberg’s coalition lobbies Congress and pays for political advertisements. The coalition, which was co-founded by Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston, has a full-time staff of about 15 in mayors’ offices around the country and an annual budget of about $6 million in 2011. Mr. Bloomberg has given his own money to the organization and has traveled repeatedly to Washington to lobby lawmakers.

Mr. Bloomberg has also taken the fight to the public, in sometimes dramatic fashion.

On Monday, he marched 34 friends and relatives of victims of gun violence across a stage in City Hall to express their pain and anger over the easy availability of guns.

“Any mayor of a big city, and particularly the mayor of one of largest media markets in the country, can have a big influence,” said Richard M. Aborn, who led Handgun Control, a lobbying group that is now called the Brady Campaign. “He or she can be helpful in building coalitions we need to bring pressure on Washington.”

Despite the frosty climate in Washington to stricter gun regulations, the mayors’ group has had some success, and some say that even incremental change on a difficult issue is noteworthy.

“When I was a legislator, I once put in a bill 13 years before I got it passed,” said Daniel L. Feldman, an associate professor of public management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former New York State assemblyman, who supports tighter gun laws. “There is a Talmudic line this calls to mind: it is not yours to complete the task, but neither may you desist from it.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s group was part of a successful campaign to defeat an amendment that would have allowed gun owners with a valid concealed-weapon permit from one state to carry a concealed firearm in other states. And the mayors pressured Congress to change federal rules to make it easier for law enforcement agencies to obtain data that allows them to trace guns.

The killing of six people and the wounding of Representative Gabrielle Giffords outside a Tucson supermarket this month have renewed the push for stricter gun control laws, including measures that would limit the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines and that would require background checks of people who buy guns at gun shows.

Mr. Bloomberg and his mayoral allies have been at the forefront of efforts to turn the Tucson shootings into a major shift in the debate on gun control. But as Mr.
Bloomberg himself has acknowledged, his group’s power in Washington only goes so far.

“Did Gabrielle Giffords change things?” Mr. Feldman said. “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/nyregion/26arms.html?src=twrhp

Gun rights debate: It’s hard to kill a bad guy. Just ask a cop

by Mark B. Evans on Jan. 24, 2011, under Editorials
Every time some psycho goes on a shooting rampage Second Amendment proponents go on the offensive to defend their gun rights against the inevitable public backlash.

Reasonable gun rights advocates are sensitive to the situation and genuinely empathize or sympathize with the victims of the shooting, which as we’ve seen all too often in Tucson includes more people than just those hit with a bullet.

They offer reasoned arguments for why gun ownership should be protected and avoid arguments of absolutism – that all people should be able to own and carry all guns anywhere.

The Second Amendment absolutists are better described as unreasonable gun rights zealots who can’t seem to help bloviating about guns no matter the circumstances.

Gun ownership is a right. There’s no point in arguing that it isn’t. The Supreme Court says so and that’s that. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be reasonable limits on gun ownership.

Free speech and religion are rights, too, but you can’t drive through a subdivision at 3 in the morning preaching the gospel through a bullhorn. The government rightly puts so-called time, place and manner restrictions on free speech and religion.

There are some restrictions on gun ownership, depending on the state, but in the aftermath of a mass killing it’s reasonable to debate whether they are adequate.
But not for the zealots. Theirs is a world of evildoers and slippery slopes. Any curb on gun ownership is a step down the slippery slope to total gun bans (which presumes a repeal of the second amendment). For them, that’s a descent into criminal chaos in which armed bands of thugs will take over the country, invading homes, robbing people on the street, wanton killings, general mayhem.

The way to prevent that, goes the argument, is not be a nation of laws enforced by well-trained, well-staffed police forces, but by having a completely armed citizenry.
If everyone were armed, everyone would behave, so the fallacy goes.

In the past week, more than one knucklehead has opined in blogs, newspaper comment sections, cable news and elsewhere that if more people had been armed Jan. 8 outside the Safeway, Jared Loughner might have been stopped before he got off the first shot, or at least after he shot Giffords.

Hogwash.

A gun battle between untrained gun toters would have exponentialized the carnage, not limited it.

Quotes from blowhards about how if they had been there they would have shot Loughner dead is just a bunch of tough talk from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

It’s hard to shoot a bad guy who is shooting other people. Don’t think so? Just ask a cop.

Police officers go through many hours of weapons training that teach them to not only shoot accurately but also when not to shoot.

Let’s rewind the clock a little bit.

Sometime around 2000 I was reporting two stories that led to me receiving a brief bit of police weapons training that was an eye opener about why cops mostly miss when they shoot at bad guys.

One of the stories had to do with an Oro Valley police rookie who chased a bad guy whose attempted drug rip off with three accomplices had gone bad. The rookie was in a foot chase with the driver of a vehicle he pulled over and the driver ran into a neighborhood and disappeared around the corner of a house.

The rookie, who had only been on patrol by himself about a month, ran around the house and found himself facing the bad guy pointing a gun at him. The rookie pulled his weapon and fired.

He got lucky. The bad guy’s cheap .25 auto jammed before he could get a round off, even though he had the drop on the cop. The rookie fired about seven or eight times. About six or seven rounds went flying off into the desert behind the house. One hit the suspect in the neck. The suspect lived.

That’s some bad shooting, you might think.

Not really. That’s just a little worse than normal for an officer-involved shooting.
Forget most everything you see on TV or the movies about police shootings. Real shootings are stressful, terrifying encounters. Adrenaline is the enemy of police training.
According to research by the Police Policies Studies Council, most of the rounds shot by cops in the line-of-duty miss. The research showed only a 15-25 percent accuracy rate overall. More importantly, the research showed that a cop by himself had about a 50 percent accuracy rate but when you add more cops doing the shooting, the accuracy falls off a cliff. So much so that if more than two cops are shooting at the same suspect, the accuracy rate is only about 9 percent (distance from the suspect played a role in that).

And this is with highly trained police officers. Using the 50 percent accuracy number, imagine if three or four armed citizens at a shooting scene decided to draw their weapons and shoot back, firing half of the clip in a typical 9 mm semiautomatic, about 7 rounds each? That’s roughly 14 missed shots. Take into consideration that those citizen shooters would likely have less weapons training than a police officer and it’s likely the miss rate would be far greater than 50 percent. It would be a blood bath.
The other story I worked on at the same time was a feature piece on the new Citizen’s Police Academy Oro Valley had instituted and what the department was trying to get out of teaching Joe Citizen what it means to be a cop.

Part of the academy included firearms training familiarization, which included a stint in the Firearms Training Simulator. The FATS is essentially a video game that teaches officers so-called shoot/don’t shoot scenarios, among other things.

In the FATS, a police officer uses a real 9 mm with a special laser on it. Displayed on a screen are life-size videos of different scenarios an officer might face in the field. A training officer can instantly change what’s happening in the video depending on mistakes trainees might be making in their tactics during the course of the scenarios.
I tried out three scenarios. My understanding of what officers go through in the field and how hard it is to actually shoot someone was vastly improved.

The first scenario was a scene in a department store. I was faced with a suspect who appeared to be about 25-30 feet from me who was armed with a knife. He was yelling gibberish and making threats.

Remembering training from when I was in an MP company (though not an MP, see note below) I ordered the suspect to drop the knife and step back and get down on his knees and place his hands behind his head. I was trying to do what an MP training officer had told me, to use my voice and commanding presence to control a situation, not my sidearm.

I had my hand on my weapon, but had not drawn it (the training officer’s voice was in my head telling me that drawing a weapon at the wrong time can make matters escalate unnecessarily). While I was yelling at the suspect, I realized I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He started to bend over and appeared to be putting the knife down. I took my hand off my weapon. That was a mistake.

Suddenly, he started running toward me. I quickly drew my weapon and fired. I managed to get off three rounds before he reached me and killed me with the knife. All three rounds missed high and to the right even though he was getting closer (and bigger, in terms of a silhouette). It was shocking how quickly the suspect crossed the distance. Less than two seconds. My palms were sweaty and my heart was racing even though it was just a video game and I was never in any danger. That’s an intended and common reaction to the simulator, I was told.

The academy training officer running the FATS told me there were a number of ways he could have run the scenario including having the suspect take a quick step toward me, then put the knife down.

The second scenario involved an old man with a shotgun on the porch of a row house with a little garden out front and walls on either side.

He was upset and telling me to leave. I started telling him to put the gun down and step away, and again, because I was speaking loudly, I couldn’t hear what he was saying to me.

I drew my weapon but didn’t point it at him. He was holding the shotgun across his chest with the barrel pointing up.

He yelled something at me then lowered the barrel and seemed to be pointing it at me. I raised my weapon and fired five times. I hit him twice, once in the right arm, once in the neck. A kill shot.

The FATS training officer ran the scenario as it would have played out if I hadn’t shot. The old man wasn’t pointing the shotgun at me, he was moving it to put it down.
I shot too soon. An OVPD cop told me a shooting board would have cleared me, there was no way to know he was putting the gun down, not trying to kill me. Still, I was bothered. I had just been killed a few minutes before and my adrenaline level was running high. I wasn’t thinking clearly and reacted at the slightest movement of the gun rather than remaining calm and making sure I was in danger (a fine line when guns are involved, to be sure). That, too, is an intended effect of the FATS training.

The third scenario involved a traffic stop with two people in the car. I approached the car, hand on my weapon, and asked for the driver’s license and registration (I forgot to ask for the insurance). The FATS operator can usually make the people in the car do whatever the trainee is telling them to do.

The passenger started yelling about being hassled by cops while the driver was telling me he didn’t have his license. I decided to get more control of the situation and get the driver out of the car (I don’t’ know if that was right or not).

As the driver exited, the passenger opened the glove box and started digging around. I told him to stop, he didn’t. Then he got out of the car and continued yelling at me and making threats. He went to the front of the car and started to run around it coming toward me with his right hand behind his back.

I yelled for him to stop to show me his hands, he pulled up a revolver and started shooting. At some point I had drawn my weapon but still don’t remember when (the OVPD cop told me it was when the passenger got out of the car). I fired back. I fired six times, hitting the suspect twice, neither of them kill shots.

I was killed.

The total time from when I asked for the driver’s license to my death was about 30 seconds.

The FATS officer played the alternate scene for that scenario in which the passenger comes around the front of the vehicle but pulls out his wallet, instead. He said almost all trainees shoot at the passenger regardless of what’s in his hands.

In the three scenarios, I had fired 14 times but only scored four hits. What’s more, I wasn’t firing bullets so there was no recoil, which likely would have prevented me from scoring any hits. I was bothered by that because I thought I was a decent shot with a handgun (see note below).

I was also bothered because I couldn’t remember a lot of what happened. What I thought happened and what actually happened when the videos were played back to me were different.

It’s called tunnel vision and it’s caused by stress and adrenaline. I was sighting down the gun barrel or looking at the gun, or the knife. I wasn’t taking in the whole scene. Nor was I hearing what the suspects were saying. I could barely even remember what I had said.

I was never in danger. This was training in a room with a video screen. But it caused stress and a rush of adrenaline that affected my vision, my hearing and my judgment, not to mention my shooting accuracy.

I couldn’t imagine how I would have perceived and handled a real situation that endangered my life.

There are lots things cops are supposed to learn using FATS but foremost among them is that it’s not easy to shoot a bad guy. Training, and lots of it, are the key to improving the odds that an officer will only shoot when he absolutely has to.

And even then, the research shows he’s likely to miss half of his shots.
The argument that having millions of citizens packing heat every day, in schools, at the grocery story, the burger joint, the mall and elsewhere makes us all safer is false.

It’s dangerous.

Reasonable people who have no criminal history and haven’t been ajudicated mentally ill should be able to own a gun in this country. The Second Amendment says so.
But the larger society that is affected by that gun ownership should have a say about when, where and how those weapons are carried and used, a sort-of time, place, manner list of rules and prohibitions similar to the curbs on free speech.
That’s reasonable.

Arguing that society is safer if everyone carries a gun or that those carrying guns will save everyone else with their deadeye, gun-range only shooting skills are not reasonable arguments and have no place in the debate.
[Every time someone writes an article about gun laws that even hints at curbs on gun ownership the gun rights faithful jump into the comments section questioning the writer’s knowledge of guns, knowledge of gun laws, experience using weapons, and other ad hominems. So, for what it’s worth, here are my bona fides. I grew up with long guns, shotguns and rifles, no handguns. We were hunters – birds and deer – and it’s kind of hard to kill either with a handgun. When I was in the Army I was trained on the use of the M1911 .45 caliber semiautomatic and then the M9 9mm semiautomatic. I was on active duty in an MP company but not an MP (though I did go through the same annual training as the MPs in the company), and I was in a CID detachment in the reserves. For about five years, almost all my friends were cops (MPs or civilian). I was OK with a handgun. On a typical police human silhouette target at 25 yards I could put about 10 rounds of a 15-round 9 mm clip in the 9 and 10 rings taking my time, about three minutes a clip. The rest were mostly in the 8 ring with the occasional one in the 7 ring. The faster I tried to shoot, the worse it got, though. I never qualified with the weapon, it was all just fooling around with my cop friends at firing ranges and out in the boonies during hunts.]
http://tucsoncitizen.com/mark-evans/archives/409/

Gun Control Standoff Heats Up

Aaron Liu | January 25, 2011
Staff Reporter

As U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords recovers from gunshot wounds and Arizona shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner pleads not guilty in a court of law, pundits and politicians prepare their arms for a debate on a historically heated and politically polarizing issue -- gun control.

On one side of the ring, support has risen for stricter gun control laws according to a recent Gallup poll. As The Huffington Post reported:

"Using their own words, Americans cite stricter gun laws as the best way to prevent more mass shootings. Gallup asked an open-ended question about what could be done to "prevent mass shootings from occurring in the United States."

Not only was the number one response gun-related ("stricter gun laws"), but almost half (42%) responded in some way about stricter gun laws. Note this does not include "teaching children about proper use of guns" or "allowing people to carry guns for their own protection."

And hours before the State of the Union, N.Y.C. Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) pressed for President Barack Obama to “call for stricter gun legislation” in his annual address to the nation:

"We cannot wait any longer," Bloomberg said, flanked by family members of 34 victims of gun violence, who he said were there to represent the daily average of Americans killed by guns. "Every gun sale should go through a background check," he said."

Already, members of Congress plan to curb gun violence through federal policy.  In particular, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D, NJ) and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D, NY) are working on a bill that would ban high-capacity clips like the one Loughner used in Tucson:

"We’re not dealing with a gun, we’re dealing with a piece of equipment that goes with a gun," she said. "With the constitutional Supreme Court, everyone has a right to own a gun. Municipalities and certainly governments can have language that can protect their citizens, and large-capacity clips [are appropriate] certainly for the military and certainly for police officers.

"But for the average citizen, I do not believe they should be able to have large-capacity clips,” McCarthy added."

Yet on the other side of the standoff, the National Rifle Association warned lawmakers not to impede on Second Amendment rights.  They claim Lautenberg, McCarthy, and other gun control proponents are using the Tucson shooting to further their own political agenda:

"Even while our country was respecting the heartache of the people of Tucson and waiting for the full facts of the case, anti-gun activists were renewing their push for more gun control laws," said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, in a Wednesday letter to members of Congress.
"Indeed, gun control advocates were quick to push several schemes," Cox said.

The NRA isn’t alone. Other gun advocate groups are also preparing to fight firearm legislation. One such group - the gun lobby Gun Owners of America - will oppose new gun control legislation based on principle. As their director of communications Erich Pratt told the New York Times:

“These politicians need to remember that these rights aren’t given to us by them. They come from God. They are God-given rights. They can’t be infringed or limited in any way. What are they going to do: limit it two or three rounds. Having lots of ammunition is critical, especially if the police are not around and you need to be able to defend yourself against mobs.”

Republican officials are also pushing back.  On ABC News’ This Week, Sen. Mike Lee (R, UT) encouraged Congress not to bow down to pressure from Loughner and contended that immediate gun legislation would endow Loughner with a “victory” of sorts. According to the website Opposing Views:

"The shooter wins if we, who've been elected, change what we do just because of what he did," Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah said on ABC News' "This Week," during a segment about members of Congress being more sensitive about their use of inflammatory rhetoric."

With both sides staunch in their positions, gun control promises to be a contentious, significant issue -- a thorn of sorts in the midst of calls for nationwide reconciliation. During a memorial for the victims of the Tucson shooting, Obama expressed his belief that “the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.” Increasingly, gun control looks likely to test this axiom, to expose the extent that this nation is truly divided.

Reach reporter Aaron Liu here.

http://www.neontommy.com/news/2011/01/gun-control-standoff-heats