Adam’s post below is very informative, and you should all go and read it. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Oh, good, you’re back.
Over the next few days, we are going to see the typical gun-humper responses to these events, all intended to stifle discussion. Indeed, we’ve already seen them start, within minutes of the first reports of the shooting in Oregon.
“Now is not the time…” “Don’t politicize this…” “What about (Chicago/New York/Baltimore)” “If only there had been more good guys with guns…” This last one is the current favorite, to my observation
I fucking hate these people. I’ve known more than a few of them in my life. Almost all of them white, most middle aged, and very very few of them having any fucking clue what they’d do in an active shooter situation, but they all have fantasies of being the guy who stands up, unholsters, takes aim, and delivers righteous justice without hesitation, mercy, or mistake.
As more than one study has shown, that is simply not what will happen. Few if any Concealed Carriers will even clear the holster before becoming casualties themselves, and in many cases, they will engage other innocents.
And given their neuroses and wishful thinking, and the general way they come off as inadequate in many respects, this is the video that comes to mind when they spew. I fucking hate these people.
Mike in NC
Your average moron with a concealed carry permit would shoot himself in the foot while trying to draw his weapon.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
So say we all.
geg6
@Mike in NC:
This. I know these people and have no doubt whatsoever that this is exactly what would happen.
Chris
Increasingly my only possible reaction to that side of the aisle. Although on this topic especially.
Chris
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
Whoa, franchise crossover.
redshirt
I would like to understand the cognitive dissonance of someone who thinks themselves a “good person” and is a gun nut.
I mean, it must be twisted. I wonder if it correlates with other mental illnesses, like American Christianity?
Major Major Major Major
Classic Dunning-Kruger types. I’ll take martial arts any day.
RK
@redshirt: You can’t be a good person and be a gun enthusiast? Seems like a silly perspective. Gonna’ watch Fury Road later which you recommended last night if memory serves. Hope it doesn’t glorify violence or anything. :)
redshirt
@RK: Mad Max doesn’t glorify violence.
A gun collector is one thing – an antique collector.
A gun sport shooter is one thing – engaging a sport or hobby.
A gun hunter is one thing – a sport or actually food for the family.
A gun nut is something else entirely, and they are the problem.
satby
So do I. Grew up with some, and worked with others. Long ago I could manage a “live and let live” attitude; but these fuckers don’t have that attitude towards me or anyone different than themselves. They’re just fine with killing us off, either actively or slowly by neglect and starvation. Now I hate them.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
It’s such a delight to see you posting again SG. I fucking hate these people too.
RK
@redshirt:
When violence is portrayed with the cinematographic splendor that I expect from Fury Road it’s glorified in my view regardless of any message or subtext to the contrary.
RaflW
To one of the OP points:
Yep, more guns make us safer.
Frankensteinbeck
@redshirt:
‘Cognitive dissonance’ is commonly misunderstood. So commonly misunderstood that the conventional myth has become the Wikipedia entry (that website’s major weakness). Humans have no trouble believing conflicting things. That is our base state. Ask any psychiatrist or therapist! Cognitive dissonance refers to the dissonance between thoughts and actions, which is almost always resolved by changing thoughts to match actions. The ‘Ben Franklin Effect.’
redshirt
@RK:
Watch it and report back.
RK
@redshirt: Will do.
Exurban Mom
Glad to see you back in the neighborhood, Sooner.
Major Major Major Major
I liked Fury Road. It’s more about collectivism vs fascism than it is about violence.
Morzer
@Mike in NC:
If they shot themselves in the balls, at least their reproduction rate would be usefully impaired. Trust the gunfuckers to screw that up as well.
redshirt
@Major Major Major Major: I’d say it’s more about the individual then the collective, if we’re using those terms.
benw
Hi, Sooner. Glad you’re back and hope you’re doing okay. But I don’t understand your problem. If I were in a active shooter situation, I’d deliver a perfect high-kick to one of the bad guys. He’d drop his gun. I’d dive and grab it, while rolling up and firing into several of the bad guys. They’d go down, but the head bad guy would have a secret gun and shoot me in the shoulder. I’d clutch it and grimace, while he told me all about his evil plan. But somehow, at the last second, before he could stop me, I’d summon inhuman amounts of bravery and courage and defeat him. But I’d be so weak from the struggle that the pretty lady from Accounting that I’ve always had a crush on would take me back to her place. One thing would lead to another…
redshirt
@benw: This Summer, one man defends the world, on his break. benw stars in ACTIVE SHOOTER…
Omnes Omnibus
@benw: Would you drive off in your Aston Martin or is that too unAmerican?
Han
@RK: So by that token, Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ glorifies violence, and specifically glorifies crucifixion. What a weird world you must live in.
Omnes Omnibus
@Han: I think it was torture porn.
benw
@redshirt: Can I get some AC/DC on the soundtrack? Thanks.
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, probably better change it to a Charger or something.
But my POINT, you guys, is that Bond is not just fantasy for too many assholes, but reality if only they got their chance… Wait, you already got that? Okay.
Morzer
@benw:
Make it a San Diego Charger and you can play Norv Turner.
burnspbesq
If i ever encounter an ammosexual in line at a supermarket, the temptation is going to be almost irresistible to get in line behind him/her and in a quiet, conversational tone, tell him/her “you know, your situational awareness sucks; if i were a threat, you’d be down.”
Betty Cracker
@benw: LOL! Perfect!
redshirt
@benw:
Thunderstruck? Back in Black? Highway to Hell? You’re the star, pick your tracks.
Linnaeus
I know that, as a friend of mine puts it, despair is counterrevolutionary, but it’s very hard for me to be optimistic about the potential for changing our nation’s culture of violence. I suppose I should take heart from the fact that violent crime has been going down over the past couple of decades, but I think we as a society could be doing so much better.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
He drives off in a Hummer. Duh.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
He drives off in a Hummer. Duh.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
FYWP. FYWP.
PaulW
on the talking point that if there were more “good guys with guns”, the media have already interviewed at least one man who was at the school who was conceal carrying – despite the lie that spread on twitter, campuses in Oregon are not gun-free zones – and who admitted that he knew if he went in gun blazing it would have made things worse (that the first responder cops would likely shoot HIM for having a gun drawn).
BruceFromOhio
@redshirt: This. I’ve never personally known a collector, but the last three are all very different types. The sport shooter and the hunter know safety, rules, and use guns as tools. The last one is just a tool of the NRA to bring nothing but misery to humans.
C.V. Danes
I don’t know which is sadder, that we live in a country that has 20-25 mass shootings a year, or that the number has been stable for basically forever.
C.V. Danes
@PaulW: Exactly. What most of your hero fetishists fail to realize is that when guns are blazing, the cops will treat all shooters as a threat.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
Think of an even less competent Paul Blart with a 9mm.
The people around him would be much safer if he did shoot himself.
Aleta
S- Thanks for writing this.
Summer
@benw: I hope you don’t mind, but with full attribution (“stolen from a blog comment”), I reposted this on my FB page this morning. Aside from the regular terrible anger and sorrow this equally regular event provokes, I have a brother who is a community college president in the Pacific Northwest and I am too upset this morning for my own words. This was a perfect encapsulation of the masculinist fantasies in situ (loved the drone corporate allusion) that drive the gun nuts.
Adam L Silverman
@PaulW: it’s not just the police response. Even if one has a clear understanding/situational awareness of the threat – who is the perpetrator, where they are in relations to others, who and what is near and behind the threat – only the best shooters would be able to get off one good shot before the situation changes and things get really messy. People are going to be moving in panic to escape the threat and the responders, so anyone who tries to intervene is most likely going to have a chance to make one shot.
I know only one person I’d actually trust to try that. He’s a good friend of mine and is an actual police sniper and is one of the anomalous few who’s skills have gotten better as he’s gotten older. Usually they start to degrade. When I go for tactical training a couple of times a year on my own dime, which is almost all the time I’ve gone for tactical training, he’s who I go to.
The chaotic reality of these situations are what Clausewitz called, though he was talking about war, fog and friction, is what makes any armed response in these situations, even by law enforcement, so difficult. This was captured in the simunitions reenactments done by TTAG that Soonergrunt referenced in his post. Moreover, the only way to really simulate response in a controlled ways would be to take actual humans out of it. You’d have to take an agent based modeling program, plug the parameters in, and then run the simulation. Parameters could be adjusted for different possible defensive responses to see if they really changed the outcome.
Rusty
@Mike in NC: Before or after they pee their pants?
The Golux
The comments on the videos that Sooner linked to are priceless. Gun fetishists in complete denial. I wonder how many used multiple computers or phones to run up the “thumbs down” counts.
Bill
When I think of the average gun owner dealing with an active shooter, this clip springs to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNuzgDrUXP0
They’re Fredo dropping his gun in the street while The Don gets shot.
LongHairedWeirdo
I can’t think of a situation less likely to cause confusion and more likely to restore order than having a half dozen people at random draw guns and start taking aim to shoot.
I don’t know why you anti-consitutional idiots are so completely DELUSIONAL in your gun-grabbing nanny state attempts.
Don’t you realize that after we draw our guns, Professor X[1] will link us all telepahtically, so we don’t shoot the wrong person, and will only target the bad guy?
[1] Sorry, I stopped following X-Men by the 90s, and I don’t think Xavier’s still around, but the point remains. *Some* mythological telepathic person is sure to come along and mind-link us so we don’t think that the other gun holding fools are bad guys, and so we can recognize who the real bad guy is. And if one of us kills someone, all it means is a series of dark panels where we must come to grips with the awesome responsibility we have. So, like I said: y’all are *DELUSIONAL*.
NotoriousJRT
@redshirt:
My brother is a good person. Kind, generous, hard working, honest, and worthy of trust. But, he likes guns, and takes what I consider to be a gun-nutty approach to them. I love him; he is a good guy. But his conservative politics get all mixed up in his gun-nuttiness. He thinks I am a crazy liberal. He is half right.
wenchacha
How do “Responsible Gun Owners” feel if they lose a friend or loved one to gun violence? How do gun nuts feel? I’m curious.
When my son’s best friend was shot and killed, I had to take a break from shoot ’em ups on tv. I’ve never been big on gun nuttery, and I got bullied/harassed by one where I worked when I was in my 20s.
I grew up in a family of hunters, saw my dad’s rifle a couple of times a year during small and large game seasons. Husband hunts, although this year he used a compound bow.
I don’t see us ridding ourselves of guns, much as I wish we could. I DO see the gun nuttery as pretty close to batshit-crazy when they start to foam at the mouth about being able to defend themselves from government troops, if necessary. Not all ammosekshuls go that far down the rabbit hole, but omgaw!