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When mass killers meet armed resistance.

Thanks for the vote of confidence Loachman, I feel that in an attempt to get through it, and get back to other pursuits, some of my language may not have been entirely clear. I do not mean to say that I support licensing and registration. It would be far more acceptable to me to return to the old FAC (a system that, unfortunately, I am too young to have seen the benefit of).

I was specifically attempting to keep the term 'gun control' out of my post, but it is quite difficult when every conversation on the subject inevitably turns to it.

What you say about C-68 being wholly indecipherable is absolutely true. I have attempted a few times to sort through it, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss it further with you, as you seem that you have been in the position I now find myself in, and might provide some guidance.

Nic
 
ToRN said:
Thanks for the vote of confidence Loachman,

You're welcome, but I don't give it if it isn't earned, and it was.

ToRN said:
I feel that in an attempt to get through it, and get back to other pursuits, some of my language may not have been entirely clear. I do not mean to say that I support licensing and registration. It would be far more acceptable to me to return to the old FAC (a system that, unfortunately, I am too young to have seen the benefit of).

I was specifically attempting to keep the term 'gun control' out of my post, but it is quite difficult when every conversation on the subject inevitably turns to it.

Seen, and understood.
 
ToRan
The problem with your approach is that the anti-firearm people are not interested in a reasonable compromise, they have one goal and that is the eventual ban on almost every gun. No matter what you offer them it won't be enough, the gun owners went down that route previous and are still trying to sew our butthole back together.
 
Speaking as a resident of the Toronto area I see a great rural urban split across the country on this issue.
Very strong feelings generated in the Greater Toronto Area by the near daily gun deaths.
Every evening news cast starts with coverage of the days violence, shooting, stabbings (couldn't afford a gun) and other forms of violence.
 
Yet Toronto has one of the lowest rates of legal firearms ownership in the country...

And that pattern is constant everywhere: High rate of legal firearms ownership, and few artificial restrictions = low violent crime rate, low rate of legal firearms ownership = high violent crime rate, all other things being equal.

Banning drug gangs helps, too.
 
- A lot of the gang violence in our urban centres involves youth who have not been properly inculcated into our Canadian culture, but yet are no longer under the influence of their traditional homeland cultures either.  Unfortunate, as we all need one or the other.  Without the moral compass passed on along our 'tribal' lines, we start looking for acceptance, approval and security from non-traditional sources.  Gangs will seek out those off course and weak individuals looking for an anchor point in their lives.
 
And an armed citizenry is a deterrent to this as well:

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=1002827

A landmark attack in the annals of modern terrorism

John C. Thompson, National Post  Published: Friday, November 28, 2008
Related Topics

The Mumbai attacks represent a scenario that few Western police and security forces have dared envision. Fewer still have prepared for it.

The basic strategy: use a large number of attackers to overwhelm a target city's ability to respond, and then suddenly switch focus to high value targets and seize hostages.

The terrorists first diverted the attention of security forces through a range of incidents involving gunmen all over the city; then, as police attempted to react, they were themselves ambushed. The death of the commander of the Mumbai Counter-Terror Team and two of his principal lieutenants was no accident. To heighten the confusion, at least one group of gunmen ranged around the city in either a stolen or counterfeit police van.

The attack on a Mumbai hospital was also a disturbing detail. Terrorists love to create mass-casualty events -- but to attack a hospital? Jihadist chat rooms have often entertained the idea of a hospital attack, but we've never seen it used yet. This tactic will probably become a new standard practice for terrorists.

Authorities in the United States have long been anxious about al-Qaeda discussions focused on acquiring surplus emergency vehicles and using them for attacks on hospitals -- a scenario that came up in their Internet chats in 2003-04, and which prompted some attempts to buy old ambulances in several U. S. cities

Another nightmare situation involves a further refinement to the strategy behind the 2004 seizure of a school in Beslan, North Ossetia-Alania, and the 2002 attack on a Moscow theatre, both by Chechen terrorists. In these two notorious attacks, a large force of gunmen seized large groups of hostages (including many children) in public buildings.

The Chechens' intentions were not to negotiate for some advantage, but to prepare a murderous deathtrap for any rescue force, while rigging explosives to guarantee the deaths of all hostages. A premature assault in Beslan (in which hundreds of anxious parents joined) saved many hostages, while the Bolshoi Theatre incident was addressed by the over-use of a disabling chemical agent -- which served to subdue the terrorists, but also killed many of the hostages.

Hotels, office towers and apartment buildings represent large concentrations of people with few access points. They have all been favourite targets for truck bombs for many years, but some counter-terror officers have often wondered how long it would be before some group of gunmen tried to control these buildings rather than destroy them. This is the future face of terrorism.

Ask any infantryman or SWAT-trooper about how much they would like to hunt through a high rise for terrorists who are holding hostages: not much. Buildings soak up manpower (and munitions); and every confrontation tends to be at point-blank ranges. Clearing and securing such sites cannot be quick, easy or risk-free; and the terrorists have the time to do what they want with their captives.

When "red-teaming" potential attacks inside Western Europe and North America, counter-terror officials have often refused to even contemplate attacks like this. Mumbai-type attacks are seen as too complicated to war-game in training exercises. Moreover, the idea of a hostage situation with a gang of gunmen in a high-rise has been seen as too "Hollywood" ( Die Hard, to be more specific) to be tackled seriously.

This week's Mumbai attacks should change this thinking. Our police and emergency responders have new standards that they will have to learn to meet -- or else the same kind of tragedy could unfold here.

-John C. Thompson is director of the Mackenzie Institute, a Canadian think-tank concerned with organized violence and political instability.
 
With only approx. 10 gunmen, if 3 of them had met up with CCW holders and at least 2 terrorist were killed, wounded or stopped, it would mean approx 40 lives would have been saved on average. The problem in the US is that most of the target rich areas are also "gun free zones" which reduces the chances of bumping into a CCW holder considerable. On the other hand the average US cop is likely far better trained the average Indian Police Officer and likely has more firearms training and experience.
 
Colin P said:
With only approx. 10 gunmen, if 3 of them had met up with CCW holders and at least 2 terrorist were killed, wounded or stopped, it would mean approx 40 lives would have been saved on average. The problem in the US is that most of the target rich areas are also "gun free zones" which reduces the chances of bumping into a CCW holder considerable. On the other hand the average US cop is likely far better trained the average Indian Police Officer and likely has more firearms training and experience.

Hey, if it discouraged Yamamoto.....
 
Colin P said:
... On the other hand the average US cop is likely far better trained the average Indian Police Officer and likely has more firearms training and experience.

- I would not be too sure about that.
 
Considering the strict laws in India re gun ownership I would say it is a safe bet that most Indian cops have limited exposure to firearm before joining and that their departments budget per officer is much less. There will be exceptions to this on both sides, but I am confident that my statement is true.

thoughts on the subject
http://www.abhijeetsingh.com/arms/india/
 
A view of gun ownership and the right to self defense:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/129992.html

Four Decades of Defending Self-Defense

Brian Doherty | December 2008 Print Edition

Reason has been on the gun beat since the very first issue of the magazine appeared 40 years ago. In “Violence in the U.S.—the Reversal of Cause and Effect,” founding editor Lanny Friedlander described the political reaction to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy: “Gun laws, we find them screeching, from every radio received, gun laws, gun laws, gun laws! Make it illegal for anyone to own a gun and enforce that law at the point of a gun. Forget that a murderer does not stop for stop signs and would not obey a gun law either. Forget that it leaves the victim unarmed, but leaves the victimizer free to operate. Forget that it makes self-protection a crime, but leaves the criminal better off than he was before. Forget that an assassin can make a gun or steal a gun or even use another type of weapon. Forget all that.”

Since then the defense of Americans’ Second Amendment rights has been a staple of the magazine. In a May 1977 cover story, for example, the maverick liberal Don B. Kates Jr. made a more comprehensive case that gun control doesn’t work. (In the same issue, the libertarian feminist Beverly Combs argued that “If You Liked Gun Control, You’ll Love the Antiabortion Amendment.”) In December 1985, the sociologist William R. Tonso listed the ways gun laws had been used to oppress black people in another cover story, “Gun Control: White Man’s Law.” In October 1993, The Orange County Register’s Alan Bock looked at one particular abuse of gun laws—when the survivalist Randy Weaver was set up on weapons charges, was confronted by federal agents at his Idaho home, and saw his wife felled by a government sniper’s bullet—in “Ambush at Ruby Ridge.”

And in May 2001, the anthropologist Abigail Kohn told reason readers what she found when she explored America’s subculture of shooting enthusiasts. “Contrary to my initial expectations of the ‘gun nuts’ who presumably constitute what critics disparagingly refer to as ‘the cult of the gun in America,’ ” she wrote, “most members of ‘the gun culture’ I’ve talked with are typical citizens. They live normal American lives, insofar as any of us is ‘normal.’ They have complex and sophisticated ideas about what guns do, what guns are for, and why guns are an important part of American history, society, and culture.” They offer, in short, a perfect counterpoint to the anti-gun know-it-alls whom Friedlander lampooned in our debut issue.
 
It wasn't so long ago that any respectable gentleman went out armed (in a much more peaceful time):

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article5299010.ece

Think tank: If each of us carried a gun . . .. . . we could help to combat terrorism
Richard Munday

The firearms massacres that have periodically caused shock and horror around the world have been dwarfed by the Mumbai shootings, in which a handful of gunmen left some 500 people killed or wounded.

For anybody who still believed in it, the Mumbai shootings exposed the myth of “gun control”. India had some of the strictest firearms laws in the world, going back to the Indian Arms Act of 1878, by which Britain had sought to prevent a recurrence of the Indian Mutiny.

The guns used in last week’s Bombay massacre were all “prohibited weapons” under Indian law, just as they are in Britain. In this country we have seen the irrelevance of such bans (handgun crime, for instance, doubled here within five years of the prohibition of legal pistol ownership), but the largely drug-related nature of most extreme violence here has left most of us with a sheltered awareness of the threat. We have not yet faced a determined and broad-based attack.

The Mumbai massacre also exposed the myth that arming the police force guarantees security. Sebastian D’Souza, a picture editor on the Mumbai Mirror who took some of the dramatic pictures of the assault on the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, was angered to find India’s armed police taking cover and apparently failing to engage the gunmen.
 
In Britain we might recall the prolonged failure of armed police to contain the Hungerford killer, whose rampage lasted more than four hours, and who in the end shot himself. In Dunblane, too, it was the killer who ended his own life: even at best, police response is almost always belated when gunmen are on the loose. One might think, too, of the McDonald’s massacre in San Ysidro, California, in 1984, where the Swat team waited for their leader (who was held up in a traffic jam) while 21 unarmed diners were murdered.

Rhetoric about standing firm against terrorists aside, in Britain we have no more legal deterrent to prevent an armed assault than did the people of Mumbai, and individually we would be just as helpless as victims. The Mumbai massacre could happen in London tomorrow; but probably it could not have happened to Londoners 100 years ago.

In January 1909 two such anarchists, lately come from an attempt to blow up the president of France, tried to commit a robbery in north London, armed with automatic pistols. Edwardian Londoners, however, shot back – and the anarchists were pursued through the streets by a spontaneous hue-and-cry. The police, who could not find the key to their own gun cupboard, borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by, while other citizens armed with revolvers and shotguns preferred to use their weapons themselves to bring the assailants down.

Today we are probably more shocked at the idea of so many ordinary Londoners carrying guns in the street than we are at the idea of an armed robbery. But the world of Conan Doyle’s Dr Watson, pocketing his revolver before he walked the London streets, was real. The arming of the populace guaranteed rather than disturbed the peace.

That armed England existed within living memory; but it is now so alien to our expectations that it has become a foreign country. Our image of an armed society is conditioned instead by America: or by what we imagine we know about America. It is a skewed image, because (despite the Second Amendment) until recently in much of the US it has been illegal to bear arms outside the home or workplace; and therefore only people willing to defy the law have carried weapons.

In the past two decades the enactment of “right to carry” legislation in the majority of states, and the issue of permits for the carrying of concealed firearms to citizens of good repute, has brought a radical change. Opponents of the right to bear arms predicted that right to carry would cause blood to flow in the streets, but the reverse has been true: violent crime in America has plummeted.

There are exceptions: Virginia Tech, the site of the 2007 massacre of 32 people, was one local “gun-free zone” that forbade the bearing of arms even to those with a licence to carry.

In Britain we are not yet ready to recall the final liberty of the subject listed by William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England as underpinning all others: “The right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence.” We would still not be ready to do so were the Mumbai massacre to happen in London tomorrow.

“Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India,” Mahatma Gandhi said, “history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.” The Mumbai massacre is a bitter postscript to Gandhi’s comment. D’Souza now laments his own helplessness in the face of the killers: “I only wish I had had a gun rather than a camera.”

Richard Munday is the co-author and editor of Guns & Violence: The Debate Before Lord Cullen
 
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