Many of these 34 states require a background check, and a training class to allow someone to carry a concealed handgun. But you are correct, in that the laws from state to state vary considerably. Wouldn't it be nice if each state recognized other states CCW licenses as they do for driver's licenses.
The only point I was trying to make out of the Massachusetts article was how flawed the logic was. They passed in 98 what they called the toughest gun laws in the country, but now when it looks like those laws may be relaxed in certain areas, the anti gunners yell and scream that people are worried about the recent upsurge in violence. Didn't their "toughest gun laws in the country" cause a reduction in violent crime as promised? That is my point or question.
Also, I am not aware of any states tightening up their CCW licensing laws because of trouble. As a matter of fact, most law enforcement agencies are very pleased and in some cases surprised at how law abiding the permit/license holders are as compared to the general populace of their states.
When are these firearms restrictions on the law abiding folks of these countries gonna start producing some results? These people were no doubt promised that crime rates would be reduced.
What ? I thought these places were bastions of safety with all those mean and nasty guns off the street. Hmmm, you mean only the criminals have them now ? Gee whoda thunk.
Too bad this wasn't written by the NRA so it could be debunked as political drivel by the "more gun control=less crime" advocates. I wonder what the Brady Bunch er, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence will have to say about this. Tsk. Tsk. This is not going to help to further their agenda in the least.
Hi Luv2Fly. How's the air up there? Friendly prevailing winds I hope.
The following states have "shall issue" CCW laws. This means that if a person passes a background check, and in some cases a training class, they must be given a license or permit to carry a concealed weapon. (Minnesota is a "may issue" state, where the police chief or sheriff determines who gets to carry a concealed weapon, regardless of your law abiding standing or any training you may have had).
Florida, Kentucky, Louisanna, Oklahoma, North and South Carolina, North and South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Vermont (requires no permit or training), Wyoming, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Nevada, Michigan, Washington, Colorado, New Mexico, Connecticut.
Ohio is waiting for their state supreme court ruling, but their ban against carrying a concealed weapon was struck down, making it in effect a right to carry state. New Mexico is also right now involved in a legal challenge as far as right to carry goes, and Connecticut is sometimes left off of the list as they have some particularly odd laws when it comes to CCW. So we could be at 31, or we could be at 34 depending upon how the legal challenges turn out, and how you choose to view Conn.
Lets use 31 for the arguement at this time. I'm OK with that as it is still better than a 3/5ths majority, and these states are not having the "gunfight at OK corral" problems that the anti CCW and anti gun folks claimed there would be.
We know that Minnesota is looking hard at shall issue, and Wisconsin also has started to debate it.
Hi Luv2Fly. How's the air up there? Friendly prevailing winds I hope.
Can't complain too much although I haven't had much stick time lately. How goes it with you ? Nice job with those articles by the way.
I know that stats can be made ususally to support or debunk a posistion but I have yet to see any real evidence of what the CCW opponents use as fodder either. As you correctly stated the 31 states that have CCW haven't become the wild west they want you to believe. The stats and Britain and Australia were stunning as well. Again yes i suppose they can be twisted as well but I haven't seen anything from the gun control folks that can dispute any of it. Nothing except the usual tactic of attacking the source and piling rhetoric on. They can't dispute the facts or stats so they'll try to give out misinformation and appeal to emotion rather than logic, they are generally intellectually dishonest at best.
Did there used to be wholesale streetgang shooting violence before guns became epidemic in areas where such gangs traditionally arise?
Think back.
"West Side Story" pretty accurately depicted the reality of that purer era.
It was chiefly knives, clubs, chains, with the handgun introduced as a rarity.
So, it's evident that an increased availability of guns brought with it an accompanying increase in their use.
You never heard of "drive-by shootings" as late as the early '80s.
Aw, but you're saying "that's the criminal element".
Actually, no.
Basically, what that phenomenon represents is the dsyfunction among youth in areas of high, chronic unemployment and general opportunity denial, greatly exacerbated by the mid '80s by the economic injustice of Reaganomics.
Every "bad neighborhood" had the problem, regardless of race, but always dependent on severe levels of outside-imposed impoverishment.
During the Clinton years, the American economy grew, with some of that benefit flowing even to the mean streets, where job prospects at least marginally improved.
As a result, street crime and related gun violence tended to recede. That period meshed with the time when hidden-carry began to be adopted. While gun advocates point to those concealed weapons being THE cause of that decline, logic tells us that more employment, additional police on patrol, and the SUCCESS of the Brady Bill in weeding out undesirables...were a larger, more pervasive factor.
But what about side by side comparisons between crime in concealed carry and non-concealed states? Do they actually show what the NRA and others claim? Are all the variables -- and all optional possibilities -- fairly brought into play?
It's a lot like the abortion and school voucher debates. Conflicting data exists.
Now, here's the question at the crux of the matter:
What would happen in an over-armed society if and when genuinely and massively hard economic times hit, and the existing,impoverished sector greatly expanded to include significant portions of the middle class?
Ask your older relatives about the Great Depression. A lot of formerly good and honest folks became petty thieves to survive.
There may have been a significant quantity of hunting rifles around, but not a flood of handguns, hidden or otherwise.
Imagine the mass mayhem that would have ensued if that hadn't been the case.
Crime statistics are swinging upward as capitalism wallows in another of its cyclical overproduction crises.
This time it corresponds with an escalated degree of endemic stress manifested in things like, but not limited to, road rage and sports violence.
Given a serious societal breakdown in the aftermath of a hobbled economy, it isn't irrational to envision a kind of every-man-for-himself ruthlessness, with attendant vigilantism.
Even if it were entirely or even chiefly true that concealed carry WAS the primary factor for reduced gun violence when things were still rosy in general economic terms, that status couldn't be preserved as conditions began to sharply deteriorate.
Under such a national situation, especially if it got truly bad, "armed individualism" could very definitely facilitate anarchy -- at exactly the time when a determined, coordinated, people/government response would objectively be required to get America back on its feet.
It wouldn't just be lone guys with guns, but supergangs, plus assorted militias and a latter-day equivalent of the gun-gangsterism of the '30s.
Emotionalism?
"Sky is falling" hyperbole?
Remember, unlike the rest of developed society, America has no social safety net. It's in pieces in Newt Gingrich's locker of socially irresponsible souvenirs.
Mass chaos and lots of private guns.
Pray the scenario I depict never comes to pass, for not only would the shit hit the fan -- but hot lead would be hitting tender flesh on a scale that would constitute a societal catastrophe.
Yes Dennis, you're right. I'm sure the Brady bill kept alot of guns out of the "rolling crips" gangs that afflict Minneapolis. Yes gun crimes must be all about poverty. The woman who shot and killed police officer Melissa Schmidt was living in public housing, of course she owned a house and was charging rent, but hey, it's the downtrodden.
Funny you sight the great depression and try to pass it off. thing is Dennis is that guns were ALOT easier to get and had no restrictions. Heck you could by them at the hardware store. Were their people being shot all over back then since many were unemployd ?In the days even prior to the depression. Were their school shootings, drive by's etc to the level we have today ? Nope. Oh that's right there must be more opressed and downtrodden people today than there was then right ? Pfft.
You just said that during the Reagan period, that if handguns would have been prevalent, we should have seen the crime rate rise tremendously. Sorry, it went DOWN Dennis, DOWN.
As a matter of fact, tell me one, just one state in the USA that went from giving very few people the legal permisssion to carry concealed weapon, to allowing more people to do so, where the crime rate went up for the next few years.
Hint for casual observers: this is where a normal person engaged in the debate over an obviously heated issue like gun control, would come back and address the issues I noted above. But watch as Dennis will go off on another tangent and never answer a direct question or provide any useful, factual links to the opinions he provides.
"The Clinton paradox continues. Bill Clinton's presidency was a moral disaster, but many cultural indicators improved during his two terms, according to a compilation by one of his major critics, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett.
"Bennett's latest "Index of Leading Cultural Indicators" shows that crime rates, juvenile violence, welfare rolls, child poverty and teen suicides all declined during the Clinton years..."
--Morton Kondracke's Roll Call, March 12, 2001
In contrast, crime during the Reagan years was high, and for understandable reasons.
Like the current George Bush, Ronnie was an unabashed class warrior acting in outrageous behalf of the American military-industrial elite.
He began his reign by breaking the PATCO strike, signaling private industry that it could treat its employees likewise. He massively increased Pentagon spending, gave lavish taxbreaks to the wealthy, and predictably precipitated a severe recession as he conciously followed a policy of shifting the nation's wealth from its workingclass base to special interest coffers.
I was one of countless U.S. workers who lost previous, union-scale employment as a result. Like most of them, I was jobless for many months, ultimately finding work that provided only a fraction of the pay and benefits we'd known before. By about 1988, roughly half the country "enjoyed" less real-term purchasing power than it had wielded in 1970. Reagonomics constituted the greatest, most blatant theft of labor-produced wealth in U.S. history.
Not surprisingly, its greed coincided with the beginnings of the crime-in-the-streets saturation that's now oozing out of capitalism's ugly pores. Remember the "Me Generation" and the corrupt values exemplified by Gordon Gecko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street?
As masses were thrust into poverty, street crime logically rose.
At first it was largely a phenomenon of "crimes of necessity", such as I witnessed in my steadily deteriorating neighborhood: out-of-work parents or older siblings engaging in petty theft to pay for family food, shelter, clothing. (It was a also a period when nearly all riders on our buses, at certain times of the day, were poor people going to the local blood bank to sell plasma. I was among them.)
But then something happened to dramatically change the nature of street crime for the worse.
Cocaine begin to flood the neighborhoods. It became the drug of choice for affluent yuppies, and the ghettoized poor got caught up in its trade.
We didn't know where it suddenly came from, or why.
It took disclosure of the Iran-Contra scandal's incredibly convoluted and abysmally unethical/illegal dealings before it became clear that cocaine introduction into America was a key part of the secret arms trading that supported Nicaraguan contra thugs -- who terrorized Central America innocents on a scale vastly greater than Palestinian extremists currently terrorize Israelis. (Where was your noisy indignation then, conservatives?)
So, thanks to a combination of artificially induced "extra" impoverishment and abundant cocaine from south of the border, Ronald Reagan built a solid foundation for years of worsening U.S. street crime.
The NRA will tell you that subsequent reductions came as a result of more Americans buying guns to protect themsleves. They'll also provide phoney-baloney statistics from supposedly unbiased reserachers who regularly turn out to be partisans of the gun lobby. Rightwingers are notorious for such misrepresentation; witness outlandish claims about breast cancer "epidemics" among women who get abortions, or the glowingly "positive results" of school vouchers.
So, I present this challenge to our gun-slinger friends:
Please document, based on carefully weighed claims form both sides of the issue -- and, importantly, from those who are genuinely neutral -- that concealed carry was THE key reason for reduced gun crime (as opposed to increased, lethal gun accidents!) in the post-Reagan era.
Surpassing the influence of an improved economy, more and more efficient community policing, the impact of the Brady Law, plus other contributing factors.
Begin Dennis Rant: "The NRA will tell you that subsequent reductions came as a result of more Americans buying guns to protect themsleves. They'll also provide phoney-baloney statistics from supposedly unbiased reserachers who regularly turn out to be partisans of the gun lobby. Rightwingers are notorious for such misrepresentation; witness outlandish claims about breast cancer "epidemics" among women who get abortions, or the glowingly "positive results" of school vouchers."
"So, I present this challenge to our gun-slinger friends:"
"Please document, based on carefully weighed claims form both sides of the issue -- and, importantly, from those who are genuinely neutral -- that concealed carry was THE key reason for reduced gun crime (as opposed to increased, lethal gun accidents!) in the post-Reagan era."
"Surpassing the influence of an improved economy, more and more efficient community policing, the impact of the Brady Law, plus other contributing factors."
-end of Dennis rant
In one sentence you say you want documentation of proof from us right-wingers that concealed carry brings down crime rate. In a paragraph before that you say that any right-wingers statistics are phoney baloney. Seems rather counter-productive to debate you given those rules. The only studies that count are the ones you are biased towards. We can't have a fair gun-fight if you have live rounds and we have blanks. Before you discredit sources we haven't even put on the table, try to keep an open mind. You'll be surprised to find out that once in a while the other guys views make sense. Believe it or not, Dennis, you HAVE actually made good arguments that changed peoples' opinions (including myself).
The Supreme Court is being asked to consider whether shooting at pictures of Saddam Hussein and Usama bin Laden is an expression of free speech or a dangerous drill that could lead to the killing of real people.
And if it's permitted, let's see if the precedent established will be applied to allow shooting at pictures of Bush and Cheney.
My guess is that some TIPS spy would report that turnabout to Homeland Security and the offending targeteer would wind up leg-chained to John Walker Lindh.
MINNEAPOLIS: Hapless burglar picks the wrong house BY AMY MAYRON Pioneer Press  Â
A burglar learned Monday night not to mess with a decorated World War II veteran who fought at Iwo Jima.
Harvey Keefe, who turns 80 in less than two weeks, shot a burglar in the arm as the man wiggled the doorknob to get into his locked bedroom in his North Minneapolis home directly across the street from Theodore Wirth Park.
The retired boilermaker saw a lot more action than that while serving as a young Marine fighting the Japanese at Iwo Jima and Guam. He received two Purple Hearts for his service.
Keefe didn't think twice Monday when he was awakened by the loud slam of his back door being kicked in. He listened for maybe a minute as someone shuffled through his bungalow home after 11 p.m. on the 2600 block of Vincent Avenue North. He grabbed his .38-special handgun that he has had since the 1950s and keeps on his bedside table for protection.
As the burglar fumbled with the doorknob to his bedroom door, which was locked with a chain, Keefe walked to the door, lifted the muzzle up — almost touching it — and fired. The bullet went straight through. Police told him later that he hit the man in the arm.
"There was blood on the walls, in the bathroom and a trail leading out the back of the house," he said Tuesday as insurance company workers were installing a new back door and fixing his porch screen door. They had steam-cleaned his carpeting and wiped the walls earlier that day.
Minneapolis police followed the trail of blood for a few blocks and took Jimmie Lee Emerson, 48, into custody. He was recovering Tuesday at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale from the gunshot wound, but was also under arrest on suspicion of burglary.
Police took Keefe's weapon as evidence, but they are not investigating him for any wrongdoing, said police spokeswoman Cyndi Barrington.
Keefe has lived in the Willard-Hay neighborhood since the 1960s. The area has struggled with burglaries, he said. His home was broken into 10 years ago, and items were taken from a safe he had in his bedroom.
The positioning of the homes across from the park could make them more vulnerable, as burglars can disappear quickly and there are no neighbors across the street to keep an eye out for suspicious activity, he said.
Keefe, who seemed fairly nonchalant Tuesday about the incident, has two children, one in Eden Prairie and another in Backus, Minn.
Gee what do you know, another crime stopped by a lawful citizen with a gun. You know if we just had tougher laws on people like that 80 year old WW2 Marine Corp vet, things would be much better. Gun control is such a great idea, I am sure that all those gun laws helped stop the woman in Minneaplis from killing officer Schmidt. especially considering how tough their gun control laws are in Minneapolis . If we only had more laws i'm sure crime would go away. And conceal carry, forget it, you can see what happens when an honest law abiding citizen has a weapon. Crime is stopped and we wouldn't want that now would we. Although I'm sure this guy couldn't be trusted and I'm sure girl scouts and the pizza delivry guy were in grave danger when they came to his door. It's the knock, knock, blam blam theory that's proven so usefull. Well let's just hope they make more gun laws after all we wouldn't want to see criminals apprehended.
We've yet to pass a law banning stuffing a gun up your ass.
She had plenty of room to hide it :) Too bad she didn't pull the trigger when it was still jammed up there. Gee if we only had one more law I'm sure she wouldn't have hid it in her crack and murdered a police officer.
We've yet to pass a law banning stuffing a gun up your ass.
It's amazing that the BATF didn't show up when it was found out that the perpetrator had guns up the a$$. You know they don't like citizens with "arsenals".
Don't you mean..."Another crime, stopped for once, by a guy with a handgun"?
There are plenty of stats that show that to be more common than you think. I don't blame anyone for not knowing about it. Sadly the media doesn't report it as much. The Strib didn't runb the story at all. Soucheray was wondering the same thing on his show and he called the Strib and they said they didn't feel it was newsworthy. HuH ? Yea I guess talking about all the intriquacies of macaroni and cheese on a stick at the fair is more relevant. 2 of the other main local news channels didn't run it either.
he called the Strib and they said they didn't feel it was newsworthy.
If the homeowner was the one shot in the arm, I wonder if the Star Trib would deem that as newsworthy. I don't know for sure, but I bet it would have been covered.
There may be a hidden message here from the Star Trib. The occurance of a good citizen defending himself at home with a handgun, is so common, that it isn't even covered because it is not really newsworthy.
Do you think that message was purposeful or sublimimnalal.
I don't know Joel if it was intentional, I think it's editorializing the news by simply not reporting it. The Strib, and 2 other major news outlets didn't seem to think it was, I think it was newsworthy considering macaroni and cheese on a stick seems to pass the litmus tests. Was it front page or even broacast news leading, no, probably not but it definately was a good story. Here was a an 80 year old vet who had a thug break into his house and he stopped the attack and shot the guy in the arm. It was definately news worthy. They didn't think so, oh yea, I forgot there's no media bias.
banning guns would leave us femmes at the mercy of bigger, badder, and more skillful males. There's a reason why guns are called equalizers. I like mine thank you very much although my attitude puts sooo many guys off that I haven't had to shoot anyone yet except in the way of biz, you understand. A nice 45 cal auto is just perfect for most femmes. Like that ads say, just point and 'click'.
Just don't ever let a newbie to shooting ever start with a .45.
Or do what I did when I was at the range for the first time with my Grandfather. He was teaching me how to shoot and after I got used to the single shot 22 and become proficient I asked him to try his deer rifle. After carefull instruction from my Grandfather and a few shots down range I had gotten over the kickback from the old 32 Winchester special. I let him know I had everything under control. He decided I was doing fine so he decided to sight his other rifle that I would inherit one day. ( a 35 Remington open sights)
I was definately getting better with it. It was hard for me to get used to the scope and I kept losing my sight line so being a 12 year old kid I decided I could see much better if I put the scope right up against my eye. Yep, you guessed it. When I pulled the trigger the kickback slammed the scope into my eye and cut me in a semi circular pattern just above my eye. It felt like someone hit me in the eye with a hammer, blood gushed as it does from any head wound and I thought a round ricoched or something, I thought I was going to die until my Grandfather told me I was going to be o.k, he knew right away what I had done. My Mom was beside herself when i got home of course and I looked like the dog from the little rascals for about 3 weeks as I had a bruise around my eye in a circular pattern. God did that hurt. But it taught me to respect the power that a weapon has. And to this day I shoot open sights....Not for that reason but it's what i'm used to and did in the Marines so you get used to it. The eyes are getting worse and it's time to put a scope on. I think I'll ask for a padded one at the store :)
Edit. If I remember correctly it's the first time I used the F-word in front of an adult.
I remember thinking I was going to be in trouble but my Gramps let it slide and didn't say a word. I suppose he figured after having that happen that it was justified :)
Having been poor I do not desire to even remember let alone explore how others would deal with it. It does NOT build character it merely gives you every reason to show the character you already have.
that they are poor? I tell mine that all of the time. Of course, that does get kinda discredited when I then go out and buy a $600 lawnmower but hey! the last one worked for more than 20 years! I include them in the budgeting sessions, the shopping tours, the financial planning - everything although they don't get to vote. They can speak and they have some good ideas. But since they are there and they see and live with 'up close and personal money management', they are not inclined to waste the ready. They see us fixing our own cars, repairing rather than buying new, wearing old clothes to the point of disintegration, doing the work ourselves rather than hiring out - all of that and sometimes they get to play too. Mine know damn well how good they have it.
Popverty EXPOSES your character. Consider those who become rich through CRIME. As you now see, simply becoming rich or better off is NOT ENOUGH. It HOW this feat is accomplished that is the test of a person's character. Poverty itself does nothing beyond making one desperate enough to try almost anything - and it is that ALMOST that makes the difference.
Last week, a Townsend spokeswoman told The Washington Post that Mr. Ehrlich's idea of insisting that gun-control laws should curb crime "defies common sense."
Townsend is Katherine Kennedy Townsend, daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy and the Lt. Governor of Maryland, who is running for Governor of same.
Ehrlich is Robert Ehrlich, who is the Republican challenger for Governor of Maryland.
It seems that Ehrlich has opened up a huge debate by saying that he will look at several gun control laws that are expensive to administer, yet seem to have little effect on preventing or solving crimes.
I think the quote of the Townsend spokesperson is very illustrative of how some people view gun control. To them, all gun control is reasonable, and necessary, regardless of its effect on crime. When they sell gun control, however, they typically use crime control as the main issue that the gun control law will address. Not always, but often.
Townsend is Katherine Kennedy Townsend, daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy and the Lt. Governor of Maryland, who is running for Governor of same.
This should read: Townsend is Katherine Kennedy Townsend, daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy. She is the current Lt. Governor of Maryland, and is running for Governor.
It looked from my original statement that one of her parents was the Lt. Gov. of Maryland. I just wanted to clarify.
ISn't Townsend a Democrat and Erhlich a Republican? Gun control laws do nothing to control crime since the guns THEY use are stolen. Hey ho! Which is why one takes precautions when one has weapons criminals may want. Since they have to ditch used guns that could link them with a crime, they need a constant stream of new guns - any calibre will do, of course.
I had posted this last night in another forum but LUV2FLY thought I should repost it here.
Let me apologize in advance for the long post but I just had the funkiest experience.
I was out getting one of our cats, as I'm walking toward the back door (The door I had gone out) this guy comes up in our neighbors driveway on the other side of our picket fence.
He says nervously, "I need help, there's some guys after me".
I said "What's the problem"? because I didn't understand at first.
He says "There's some guys after me, they've been following me".
I said "What do you want me to do"?
He says, "Can I come in and call a cab or call the police"?
I said, "No, but I can call you a cab or call the police".
He continues rambling and I get this "Something's wrong here" feeling and I say I have to put the cat in the house because he's going to get loose.
He's on the other side of the fence which is good so I quickly go to the back door, get inside and lock it and turn the alarm on.
I grab the phone and start going to the front door, I'm almost there and I hear a knock at the back door. I got back there and the guy wants me to let him in to use the phone.
I say "I won't let you in but I'll call a cab or the police for you".
He then says "Yeah, call me a cab", and he's acting all weird like someone is back there.
I say to myself that this just isn't right, so I call 911 and get that squared away... the police are on their way.
Right after I hang up, he trys opening the door and acting like he's in danger or something... Like they're about to attack him.
Well, that was enough. When he trys to open the door I run upstairs and grab the Glock. I come back down, go to the back door and make sure he sees the gun. He says something like "OH, Ok, that's cool".
He starts saying "Stay here and talk to me", I say "Ok, what do you want to talk about"? He says he doesn't care and keeps looking in the distance like someone is there. So I ask him, "Where are they, I don't see anybody".
Then when he's talking I can't hear him. Like he's faking talking. I swear he was faking it.
So then I ask him where he lives and he says down the block, which for all I know means Chicago. I ask him his name and he says "John". I think to myself, "Yeah right, John, sure it is".
Well, all the while he's turning the knob on the door, trying to get in but not really trying. It's like he's doing it out of nervousness.
I see him reaching into his pocket of his jacket and I think "Shit, I'm gonna have to shoot this guy" and I back off from the door quickly so I'm out of his line of fire if you know what I mean. I got my Glock up, pointing right at him and I see him flashing a drivers license.
So I cautiously go back to the door and have a quick look at it and sure as shit, his name is John Edward Peters.
Well, after that stunt I'm a bit nervous and stay back a bit. He keeps wanting me to come closer and talk to him but no way, I don't trust the guy.
I just keep telling him that I called 911 and the police are on their way. About a minute goes by and I hear "FREEZE! PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!".
The guy starts saying "I'm the one who had him call you". The cop of course don't care and keeps telling him, "PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR".
I see the guy with his hand in the air and see him walk down the steps by the back door. The cop has him back up to him and he cuffs him, brings him to the squad and puts him in.
I go talk to one of the cops, tell him what happened, he says "This just doesn't sound right". We go in the back yard and he's looking for any dropped weapons or drugs or anything.
The cop asks to see my ID, which I go get, he takes my info down and says "I'll be back after I figure out what's going on".
Well, two more squads come up and they talk for about 15 minutes, then they leave.
I would guess that you were a little bit nervous. I would guess most of us would be. Hindsight is always 20/20, but you may have retrieved your protective tools first, then called 911. But overall, I believe that you handled this very well.
Of course, this blows a hole in some of the anti gunners theories. In their world, you would have blown this guy away and then called the police, only to learn that he was really a Wellstone campaign aid, sent out to put up lawn signs, when a bunch of rich, white teenagers, who's parents are Coleman supporters chased the guy down the block threatening to beat him up.
I'm sorry. I'm in a fiesty mood this morning.
It is a bit strange that the police never followed up with you. Have you called them to see what this guy was all about?
Yes, this happened to me, sorry I didn't make that clear here.
...but you may have retrieved your protective tools first, then called 911.
Yeah, in hindsight......... I wasn't too afraid of the guy until he tried to get in the door. Then I was like "Screw this, I'm getting my gun in case he tries breaking the window or something".
But overall, I believe that you handled this very well.
Thanks, I was surprised how clear thinking I was. I was nervous but I was in control.
I'm sorry. I'm in a fiesty mood this morning.
LOL! I see that. :-)
It is a bit strange that the police never followed up with you. Have you called them to see what this guy was all about?
I'm going to try and call them today, see if I can find anything out.
Many of these 34 states require a background check, and a training class to allow someone to carry a concealed handgun. But you are correct, in that the laws from state to state vary considerably. Wouldn't it be nice if each state recognized other states CCW licenses as they do for driver's licenses.
The only point I was trying to make out of the Massachusetts article was how flawed the logic was. They passed in 98 what they called the toughest gun laws in the country, but now when it looks like those laws may be relaxed in certain areas, the anti gunners yell and scream that people are worried about the recent upsurge in violence. Didn't their "toughest gun laws in the country" cause a reduction in violent crime as promised? That is my point or question.
Also, I am not aware of any states tightening up their CCW licensing laws because of trouble. As a matter of fact, most law enforcement agencies are very pleased and in some cases surprised at how law abiding the permit/license holders are as compared to the general populace of their states.
More Bad Crime News for The UK and Australia.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=314832
When are these firearms restrictions on the law abiding folks of these countries gonna start producing some results? These people were no doubt promised that crime rates would be reduced.
What ? I thought these places were bastions of safety with all those mean and nasty guns off the street. Hmmm, you mean only the criminals have them now ? Gee whoda thunk.
But Wait, There's More!
http://www.stats.org/statswork/britgun.htm
Too bad this wasn't written by the NRA so it could be debunked as political drivel by the "more gun control=less crime" advocates. I wonder what the Brady Bunch er, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence will have to say about this. Tsk. Tsk. This is not going to help to further their agenda in the least.
Hi Luv2Fly. How's the air up there? Friendly prevailing winds I hope.
Right to Carry States.
The following states have "shall issue" CCW laws. This means that if a person passes a background check, and in some cases a training class, they must be given a license or permit to carry a concealed weapon. (Minnesota is a "may issue" state, where the police chief or sheriff determines who gets to carry a concealed weapon, regardless of your law abiding standing or any training you may have had).
Florida, Kentucky, Louisanna, Oklahoma, North and South Carolina, North and South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Vermont (requires no permit or training), Wyoming, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Nevada, Michigan, Washington, Colorado, New Mexico, Connecticut.
Ohio is waiting for their state supreme court ruling, but their ban against carrying a concealed weapon was struck down, making it in effect a right to carry state. New Mexico is also right now involved in a legal challenge as far as right to carry goes, and Connecticut is sometimes left off of the list as they have some particularly odd laws when it comes to CCW. So we could be at 31, or we could be at 34 depending upon how the legal challenges turn out, and how you choose to view Conn.
Lets use 31 for the arguement at this time. I'm OK with that as it is still better than a 3/5ths majority, and these states are not having the "gunfight at OK corral" problems that the anti CCW and anti gun folks claimed there would be.
We know that Minnesota is looking hard at shall issue, and Wisconsin also has started to debate it.
Joel,
Can't complain too much although I haven't had much stick time lately. How goes it with you ? Nice job with those articles by the way.
I know that stats can be made ususally to support or debunk a posistion but I have yet to see any real evidence of what the CCW opponents use as fodder either. As you correctly stated the 31 states that have CCW haven't become the wild west they want you to believe. The stats and Britain and Australia were stunning as well. Again yes i suppose they can be twisted as well but I haven't seen anything from the gun control folks that can dispute any of it. Nothing except the usual tactic of attacking the source and piling rhetoric on. They can't dispute the facts or stats so they'll try to give out misinformation and appeal to emotion rather than logic, they are generally intellectually dishonest at best.
Did there used to be wholesale streetgang shooting violence before
guns became epidemic in areas where such gangs traditionally
arise?
Think back.
"West Side Story" pretty accurately depicted the reality of that purer era.
It was chiefly knives, clubs, chains, with the handgun introduced as a rarity.
So, it's evident that an increased availability of guns brought with it an accompanying increase in their use.
You never heard of "drive-by shootings" as late as the early '80s.
Aw, but you're saying "that's the criminal element".
Actually, no.
Basically, what that phenomenon represents is the dsyfunction among
youth in areas of high, chronic unemployment and general opportunity denial, greatly exacerbated by the mid '80s by the economic injustice of Reaganomics.
Every "bad neighborhood" had the problem, regardless of race, but
always dependent on severe levels of outside-imposed impoverishment.
During the Clinton years, the American economy grew, with some of that benefit flowing even to the mean streets, where job prospects
at least marginally improved.
As a result, street crime and
related gun violence tended to recede.
That period meshed with the time when hidden-carry began to be adopted. While gun advocates point to those concealed weapons
being THE cause of that decline, logic tells us that more
employment, additional police on patrol, and the SUCCESS of the Brady Bill in weeding out undesirables...were a larger, more pervasive factor.
But what about side by side comparisons between crime
in concealed carry and non-concealed states? Do they actually show what the NRA and others claim? Are all the variables -- and all optional possibilities -- fairly brought into play?
It's a lot like the abortion and school voucher debates. Conflicting data exists.
Now, here's the question at the crux of the matter:
What would happen in an over-armed society if and when genuinely and massively hard economic times hit, and the existing,impoverished sector greatly expanded to include significant portions of the middle class?
Ask your older relatives about the Great Depression. A lot of
formerly good and honest folks became petty thieves to survive.
There may have been a significant quantity of hunting rifles around, but not a flood of handguns, hidden or otherwise.
Imagine the mass mayhem that would have ensued if that hadn't been the case.
Crime statistics are swinging upward as capitalism wallows in another of its cyclical overproduction crises.
This time it corresponds with an escalated degree of endemic stress manifested in things like, but not limited to, road rage and sports violence.
Given a serious societal breakdown in the aftermath of a hobbled economy, it isn't irrational to envision a kind of every-man-for-himself ruthlessness, with attendant vigilantism.
Even if it were entirely or even chiefly true that concealed carry WAS
the primary factor for reduced gun violence when things were still
rosy in general economic terms, that status couldn't be preserved
as conditions began to sharply deteriorate.
Under such a national situation, especially
if it got truly bad, "armed individualism" could very definitely facilitate anarchy -- at exactly the time when a determined, coordinated, people/government response would objectively be required to get America back on its feet.
It wouldn't just be lone guys with guns, but supergangs, plus assorted militias and a latter-day equivalent of the gun-gangsterism of the '30s.
Emotionalism?
"Sky is falling" hyperbole?
Remember, unlike the rest of developed society, America has no social safety net. It's in pieces in Newt Gingrich's locker of socially irresponsible souvenirs.
Mass chaos and lots of private guns.
Pray the scenario I depict never comes to pass, for not only would
the shit hit the fan -- but hot lead would be hitting tender flesh on a scale that would constitute a societal catastrophe.
Yes Dennis, you're right. I'm sure the Brady bill kept alot of guns out of the "rolling crips" gangs that afflict Minneapolis. Yes gun crimes must be all about poverty. The woman who shot and killed police officer Melissa Schmidt was living in public housing, of course she owned a house and was charging rent, but hey, it's the downtrodden.
Funny you sight the great depression and try to pass it off. thing is Dennis is that guns were ALOT easier to get and had no restrictions. Heck you could by them at the hardware store. Were their people being shot all over back then since many were unemployd ?In the days even prior to the depression. Were their school shootings, drive by's etc to the level we have today ? Nope. Oh that's right there must be more opressed and downtrodden people today than there was then right ? Pfft.
You just said that during the Reagan period, that if handguns would have been prevalent, we should have seen the crime rate rise tremendously. Sorry, it went DOWN Dennis, DOWN.
As a matter of fact, tell me one, just one state in the USA that went from giving very few people the legal permisssion to carry concealed weapon, to allowing more people to do so, where the crime rate went up for the next few years.
Hint for casual observers: this is where a normal person engaged in the debate over an obviously heated issue like gun control, would come back and address the issues I noted above. But watch as Dennis will go off on another tangent and never answer a direct question or provide any useful, factual links to the opinions he provides.
"The Clinton paradox continues. Bill Clinton's presidency was a moral disaster, but many cultural indicators improved during his two terms, according to a compilation by one of his major critics, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett.
"Bennett's latest "Index of Leading Cultural Indicators" shows that crime rates, juvenile violence, welfare rolls, child poverty and teen suicides all declined during the Clinton years..."
--Morton Kondracke's Roll Call, March 12, 2001
In contrast, crime during the Reagan years was high, and for understandable reasons.
Like the current George Bush, Ronnie was an unabashed class warrior acting in outrageous behalf of the American military-industrial elite.
He began his reign by breaking the PATCO strike, signaling private industry that it could treat its employees likewise. He massively increased Pentagon spending, gave lavish taxbreaks to the wealthy, and predictably precipitated a severe recession as he conciously followed a policy of shifting the nation's wealth from its workingclass base to special interest coffers.
I was one of countless U.S. workers who lost previous, union-scale employment as a result. Like most of them, I was jobless for many months, ultimately finding work that
provided only a fraction of the pay and benefits we'd known before. By about 1988,
roughly half the country "enjoyed" less real-term purchasing power than it had wielded in 1970. Reagonomics constituted the greatest, most blatant theft of labor-produced wealth in
U.S. history.
Not surprisingly, its greed coincided with the beginnings of the crime-in-the-streets saturation that's now oozing out of capitalism's ugly pores. Remember the "Me Generation" and the corrupt values exemplified by Gordon Gecko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street?
As masses were thrust into poverty, street crime logically rose.
At first it was largely a phenomenon of "crimes of necessity", such as I witnessed in my
steadily deteriorating neighborhood: out-of-work parents or older siblings engaging in petty theft to pay for family food, shelter, clothing. (It was a also a period when nearly all riders on our buses, at certain times of the day, were poor people going to the local blood bank to sell plasma. I was among them.)
But then something happened to dramatically change the nature of street crime for the worse.
Cocaine begin to flood the neighborhoods. It became the drug of choice for affluent yuppies, and the ghettoized poor got caught up in its trade.
We didn't know where it suddenly came from, or why.
It took disclosure of the Iran-Contra scandal's incredibly convoluted and abysmally unethical/illegal dealings before it became clear that cocaine introduction into America was a key part of the secret arms trading that supported Nicaraguan contra thugs -- who
terrorized Central America innocents on a scale vastly greater than Palestinian extremists
currently terrorize Israelis. (Where was your noisy indignation then, conservatives?)
So, thanks to a combination of artificially induced "extra" impoverishment and abundant cocaine from south of the border, Ronald Reagan built a solid foundation for years of worsening U.S. street crime.
The NRA will tell you that subsequent reductions came as a result of more Americans
buying guns to protect themsleves. They'll also provide phoney-baloney statistics
from supposedly unbiased reserachers who regularly turn out to be partisans of the gun lobby. Rightwingers are notorious for such misrepresentation; witness outlandish claims about breast cancer "epidemics" among women who get abortions, or the glowingly "positive results" of school vouchers.
So, I present this challenge to our gun-slinger friends:
Please document, based on carefully weighed claims form both sides of the issue -- and, importantly, from those who are genuinely neutral -- that concealed carry was THE key reason for reduced gun crime (as opposed to increased, lethal gun accidents!) in the post-Reagan era.
Surpassing the influence of an improved economy, more and more efficient community policing, the impact of the Brady Law, plus other contributing factors.
Thank you.
Begin Dennis Rant: "The NRA will tell you that subsequent reductions came as a result of more Americans buying guns to protect themsleves. They'll also provide phoney-baloney statistics from supposedly unbiased reserachers who regularly turn out to be partisans of the gun lobby. Rightwingers are notorious for such misrepresentation; witness outlandish claims about breast cancer "epidemics" among women who get abortions, or the glowingly "positive results" of school vouchers."
"So, I present this challenge to our gun-slinger friends:"
"Please document, based on carefully weighed claims form both sides of the issue -- and, importantly, from those who are genuinely neutral -- that concealed carry was THE key reason for reduced gun crime (as opposed to increased, lethal gun accidents!) in the post-Reagan era."
"Surpassing the influence of an improved economy, more and more efficient community policing, the impact of the Brady Law, plus other contributing factors."
-end of Dennis rant
In one sentence you say you want documentation of proof from us right-wingers that concealed carry brings down crime rate. In a paragraph before that you say that any right-wingers statistics are phoney baloney. Seems rather counter-productive to debate you given those rules. The only studies that count are the ones you are biased towards. We can't have a fair gun-fight if you have live rounds and we have blanks. Before you discredit sources we haven't even put on the table, try to keep an open mind. You'll be surprised to find out that once in a while the other guys views make sense. Believe it or not, Dennis, you HAVE actually made good arguments that changed peoples' opinions (including myself).
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,60839,00.html
The Supreme Court is being asked to consider whether shooting at pictures of Saddam Hussein and Usama bin Laden is an expression of free speech or a dangerous drill that could lead to the killing of real people.
And if it's permitted, let's see if the precedent established will be applied to allow shooting at pictures of Bush and Cheney.
My guess is that some TIPS spy would report that turnabout to Homeland Security and the offending targeteer would wind up leg-chained to John Walker Lindh.
In the Tombs.
What I want the Supreme Court to decide is this...
Since people already have assholes, do they have a right to
also BE assholes?
Or does some sort of convoluted, intestine-like double indemnity/jeopardy exist to force us to crap ONLY through our natural anus?
(And, yes, I'D be willing to BE the test case.)
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/3904631.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gee what do you know, another crime stopped by a lawful citizen with a gun. You know if we just had tougher laws on people like that 80 year old WW2 Marine Corp vet, things would be much better. Gun control is such a great idea, I am sure that all those gun laws helped stop the woman in Minneaplis from killing officer Schmidt. especially considering how tough their gun control laws are in Minneapolis . If we only had more laws i'm sure crime would go away. And conceal carry, forget it, you can see what happens when an honest law abiding citizen has a weapon. Crime is stopped and we wouldn't want that now would we. Although I'm sure this guy couldn't be trusted and I'm sure girl scouts and the pizza delivry guy were in grave danger when they came to his door. It's the knock, knock, blam blam theory that's proven so usefull. Well let's just hope they make more gun laws after all we wouldn't want to see criminals apprehended.
I am sure that all those gun laws helped stop the police officer who was killed in Minneapolis considering how tough their gun control laws are.
You're right.
We've yet to pass a law banning stuffing a gun up your ass.
She had plenty of room to hide it :) Too bad she didn't pull the trigger when it was still jammed up there. Gee if we only had one more law I'm sure she wouldn't have hid it in her crack and murdered a police officer.
It's amazing that the BATF didn't show up when it was found out that the perpetrator had guns up the a$$. You know they don't like citizens with "arsenals".
Bill,
There are plenty of stats that show that to be more common than you think. I don't blame anyone for not knowing about it. Sadly the media doesn't report it as much. The Strib didn't runb the story at all. Soucheray was wondering the same thing on his show and he called the Strib and they said they didn't feel it was newsworthy. HuH ? Yea I guess talking about all the intriquacies of macaroni and cheese on a stick at the fair is more relevant. 2 of the other main local news channels didn't run it either.
If the homeowner was the one shot in the arm, I wonder if the Star Trib would deem that as newsworthy. I don't know for sure, but I bet it would have been covered.
There may be a hidden message here from the Star Trib. The occurance of a good citizen defending himself at home with a handgun, is so common, that it isn't even covered because it is not really newsworthy.
Do you think that message was purposeful or sublimimnalal.
I don't know Joel if it was intentional, I think it's editorializing the news by simply not reporting it. The Strib, and 2 other major news outlets didn't seem to think it was, I think it was newsworthy considering macaroni and cheese on a stick seems to pass the litmus tests. Was it front page or even broacast news leading, no, probably not but it definately was a good story. Here was a an 80 year old vet who had a thug break into his house and he stopped the attack and shot the guy in the arm. It was definately news worthy. They didn't think so, oh yea, I forgot there's no media bias.
Bill Fold,
Yea, unless the other guy had a gun.
Good thing for Mr.Keefe he didn't take any chances.
Call 911!
Accidentally stapled nose to door...
Typing with toes...
Ban guns!
No, no, no
banning guns would leave us femmes at the mercy of bigger, badder, and more skillful males. There's a reason why guns are called equalizers. I like mine thank you very much although my attitude puts sooo many guys off that I haven't had to shoot anyone yet except in the way of biz, you understand. A nice 45 cal auto is just perfect for most femmes. Like that ads say, just point and 'click'.
(From hospital bed) I meant staple guns...
Just don't ever let a newbie to shooting ever start with a .45.
When my Dad was younger, he knew a guy that shot himself in the head because he couldn't control one.
Or do what I did when I was at the range for the first time with my Grandfather. He was teaching me how to shoot and after I got used to the single shot 22 and become proficient I asked him to try his deer rifle. After carefull instruction from my Grandfather and a few shots down range I had gotten over the kickback from the old 32 Winchester special. I let him know I had everything under control. He decided I was doing fine so he decided to sight his other rifle that I would inherit one day. ( a 35 Remington open sights)
I was definately getting better with it. It was hard for me to get used to the scope and I kept losing my sight line so being a 12 year old kid I decided I could see much better if I put the scope right up against my eye. Yep, you guessed it. When I pulled the trigger the kickback slammed the scope into my eye and cut me in a semi circular pattern just above my eye. It felt like someone hit me in the eye with a hammer, blood gushed as it does from any head wound and I thought a round ricoched or something, I thought I was going to die until my Grandfather told me I was going to be o.k, he knew right away what I had done. My Mom was beside herself when i got home of course and I looked like the dog from the little rascals for about 3 weeks as I had a bruise around my eye in a circular pattern. God did that hurt. But it taught me to respect the power that a weapon has. And to this day I shoot open sights....Not for that reason but it's what i'm used to and did in the Marines so you get used to it. The eyes are getting worse and it's time to put a scope on. I think I'll ask for a padded one at the store :)
Oh man, that had to hurt.
I can still feel it to this day.
Edit. If I remember correctly it's the first time I used the F-word in front of an adult.
I remember thinking I was going to be in trouble but my Gramps let it slide and didn't say a word. I suppose he figured after having that happen that it was justified :)
Heavy ?
Yes but a .45 loaded with a nice water-filled hollowpoint bullet only has to hit an attacker ONCE.
I don't know if it'll be shown on HBO again, but...
Last night I watched one of the best movies I've ever seen.
"Bread and Roses," about the ultimately victorious Janitors For Justice struggle in L.A.
It should be seen by all Americans, especially by those who have very prejudiced views of what poor people, and immigrants, are like.
A powerful, intensely moving film.
See it if you possibly can.
I've been poor. I have no desire to watch a show about it.
I'm agreeing with THX ?!?!?
Having been poor I do not desire to even remember let alone explore how others would deal with it. It does NOT build character it merely gives you every reason to show the character you already have.
Correct, it doesn't build character. It does make me appreciate what I have.
My kids will never know how good they've got it.
I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing.
Didn't you tell them
that they are poor? I tell mine that all of the time. Of course, that does get kinda discredited when I then go out and buy a $600 lawnmower but hey! the last one worked for more than 20 years! I include them in the budgeting sessions, the shopping tours, the financial planning - everything although they don't get to vote. They can speak and they have some good ideas. But since they are there and they see and live with 'up close and personal money management', they are not inclined to waste the ready. They see us fixing our own cars, repairing rather than buying new, wearing old clothes to the point of disintegration, doing the work ourselves rather than hiring out - all of that and sometimes they get to play too. Mine know damn well how good they have it.
They know more than I let on.
They just don't know what it's like to not eat, not have water, phone, heat, electricity......
then
take them camping in the winter.
Oh! BTW
you can use two hands and the back of a chair, etc., and shoot a .45.
No need to break your wrist over it. Besides, your blood will be up.
you can use two hands and the back of a chair, etc., and shoot a .45.
I've never had trouble with a .45.
I did have trouble with a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum.
Darn thing was just too big for me and would jam on almost every shot I took.
Sorry, Bill, you missed the point.
Popverty EXPOSES your character. Consider those who become rich through CRIME. As you now see, simply becoming rich or better off is NOT ENOUGH. It HOW this feat is accomplished that is the test of a person's character. Poverty itself does nothing beyond making one desperate enough to try almost anything - and it is that ALMOST that makes the difference.
Almost but not quite.
Tis ok though.
Last week, a Townsend spokeswoman told The Washington Post that Mr. Ehrlich's idea of insisting that gun-control laws should curb crime "defies common sense."
Townsend is Katherine Kennedy Townsend, daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy and the Lt. Governor of Maryland, who is running for Governor of same.
Ehrlich is Robert Ehrlich, who is the Republican challenger for Governor of Maryland.
It seems that Ehrlich has opened up a huge debate by saying that he will look at several gun control laws that are expensive to administer, yet seem to have little effect on preventing or solving crimes.
I think the quote of the Townsend spokesperson is very illustrative of how some people view gun control. To them, all gun control is reasonable, and necessary, regardless of its effect on crime. When they sell gun control, however, they typically use crime control as the main issue that the gun control law will address. Not always, but often.
This should read: Townsend is Katherine Kennedy Townsend, daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy. She is the current Lt. Governor of Maryland, and is running for Governor.
It looked from my original statement that one of her parents was the Lt. Gov. of Maryland. I just wanted to clarify.
Interesting role reversal as well.
ISn't Townsend a Democrat and Erhlich a Republican? Gun control laws do nothing to control crime since the guns THEY use are stolen. Hey ho! Which is why one takes precautions when one has weapons criminals may want. Since they have to ditch used guns that could link them with a crime, they need a constant stream of new guns - any calibre will do, of course.
I had posted this last night in another forum but LUV2FLY thought I should repost it here.
Let me apologize in advance for the long post but I just had the funkiest experience.
I was out getting one of our cats, as I'm walking toward the back door (The door I had gone out) this guy comes up in our neighbors driveway on the other side of our picket fence.
He says nervously, "I need help, there's some guys after me".
I said "What's the problem"? because I didn't understand at first.
He says "There's some guys after me, they've been following me".
I said "What do you want me to do"?
He says, "Can I come in and call a cab or call the police"?
I said, "No, but I can call you a cab or call the police".
He continues rambling and I get this "Something's wrong here" feeling and I say I have to put the cat in the house because he's going to get loose.
He's on the other side of the fence which is good so I quickly go to the back door, get inside and lock it and turn the alarm on.
I grab the phone and start going to the front door, I'm almost there and I hear a knock at the back door. I got back there and the guy wants me to let him in to use the phone.
I say "I won't let you in but I'll call a cab or the police for you".
He then says "Yeah, call me a cab", and he's acting all weird like someone is back there.
I say to myself that this just isn't right, so I call 911 and get that squared away... the police are on their way.
Right after I hang up, he trys opening the door and acting like he's in danger or something... Like they're about to attack him.
Well, that was enough. When he trys to open the door I run upstairs and grab the Glock. I come back down, go to the back door and make sure he sees the gun. He says something like "OH, Ok, that's cool".
He starts saying "Stay here and talk to me", I say "Ok, what do you want to talk about"? He says he doesn't care and keeps looking in the distance like someone is there. So I ask him, "Where are they, I don't see anybody".
Then when he's talking I can't hear him. Like he's faking talking. I swear he was faking it.
So then I ask him where he lives and he says down the block, which for all I know means Chicago. I ask him his name and he says "John". I think to myself, "Yeah right, John, sure it is".
Well, all the while he's turning the knob on the door, trying to get in but not really trying. It's like he's doing it out of nervousness.
I see him reaching into his pocket of his jacket and I think "Shit, I'm gonna have to shoot this guy" and I back off from the door quickly so I'm out of his line of fire if you know what I mean. I got my Glock up, pointing right at him and I see him flashing a drivers license.
So I cautiously go back to the door and have a quick look at it and sure as shit, his name is John Edward Peters.
Well, after that stunt I'm a bit nervous and stay back a bit. He keeps wanting me to come closer and talk to him but no way, I don't trust the guy.
I just keep telling him that I called 911 and the police are on their way. About a minute goes by and I hear "FREEZE! PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!".
The guy starts saying "I'm the one who had him call you". The cop of course don't care and keeps telling him, "PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR".
I see the guy with his hand in the air and see him walk down the steps by the back door. The cop has him back up to him and he cuffs him, brings him to the squad and puts him in.
I go talk to one of the cops, tell him what happened, he says "This just doesn't sound right". We go in the back yard and he's looking for any dropped weapons or drugs or anything.
The cop asks to see my ID, which I go get, he takes my info down and says "I'll be back after I figure out what's going on".
Well, two more squads come up and they talk for about 15 minutes, then they leave.
The cop never came back. They just left!
What do you all think of that?
I would guess that you were a little bit nervous. I would guess most of us would be. Hindsight is always 20/20, but you may have retrieved your protective tools first, then called 911. But overall, I believe that you handled this very well.
Of course, this blows a hole in some of the anti gunners theories. In their world, you would have blown this guy away and then called the police, only to learn that he was really a Wellstone campaign aid, sent out to put up lawn signs, when a bunch of rich, white teenagers, who's parents are Coleman supporters chased the guy down the block threatening to beat him up.
I'm sorry. I'm in a fiesty mood this morning.
It is a bit strange that the police never followed up with you. Have you called them to see what this guy was all about?
Is this something that happened to you
Yes, this happened to me, sorry I didn't make that clear here.
...but you may have retrieved your protective tools first, then called 911.
Yeah, in hindsight......... I wasn't too afraid of the guy until he tried to get in the door. Then I was like "Screw this, I'm getting my gun in case he tries breaking the window or something".
But overall, I believe that you handled this very well.
Thanks, I was surprised how clear thinking I was. I was nervous but I was in control.
I'm sorry. I'm in a fiesty mood this morning.
LOL! I see that. :-)
It is a bit strange that the police never followed up with you. Have you called them to see what this guy was all about?
I'm going to try and call them today, see if I can find anything out.
Yikes!