TexasCHLforum.com

ClarkLZeuss wrote:... "Well, the police are professionally trained in handling firearms." This is where the rubber really meets the road. How do we respond to this?

Police officers generally don't have all that much training. I don't know exactly what they do get. What is the DPS curriculum? Twenty-six weeks? That's not exactly a Ph.D. in law enforcement and criminal justice. Much of it is about issues like search and seizure, evidence, and how to deal with domestic disputes, which are not concerns for the non-LEO citizen.

The bottom line is that when someone is kicking your door down at 3 a.m., you don't have to be Elliott Ness to know who the bad guys are and where to point the shotgun.

- Jim

Let me retell this story of two women:

Suzanna Gratia Hupp saw her parents killed by a lunatic in the Luby's massacre in Killeen in 1991. She went on to become one of the foremost proponents of the right to keep and bear arms. No one can say for sure, but it's possible that we would not have had CHL in Texas if not for her testimony. She later was elected to the Texas House of Representatives, and would still be there if she wanted to.

Carolyn McCarthy's husband was killed and her son was severely injured by a lunatic in the Long Island Railroad massacre in 1993. She went on to become perhaps the only member of Congress whose sole agenda is "gun control" and nothing else.

Perhaps the tree grows the way that the twig is bent, and little can change that. I dunno. It's above my pay grade.

- Jim

Mithras61 wrote:I suspect that the root of the problem is a commitment to non-violence at the core of her beliefs.

There are very few true pacifists who will not lift a hand even when they are directly attacked, like the Amish.

Most people like the woman in question here simply wish that violence would not happen. They may think that violence is caused by social ills such as poverty, and could be eliminated through education and understanding. This is, of course, magical thinking.

When they are attacked, they want the police to use force on their behalf. They may complain afterward that the police used too much force; but in their moment of terror, they want to police to come down like the wrath of God.

I'm neither a psychologist nor a mind-reader, but I suspect many of them have failed to deal with repressed violent impulses of their own.

This kind of illogical emotion cannot be fixed through intellectual debate or lecturing, as I said earlier.

- Jim

I am going to ramble a bit uncharacteristically here, because some of my ideas in this vein are not fully formed.

As others have said, you cannot talk someone out of deeply held beliefs or fears. The motivation for change has to come from within, or from some experience that the person cannot ignore or rationalize. As the saying goes, a neo-conservative is a mugged liberal.

Two aspects of this issue have to be separated:

• the need to provide for your own defense
• fear of firearms

The need to provide for your own defense is blindingly obvious to anyone who take his or her head out of the proverbial sand. Every week we can read in the newspapers about home invasion robberies, rapes, abductions, and other violent crimes that are launched with no advance notice.

People who deny this issue are fooling themselves, and pretty much have to become a victim before they realize the truth.

Fear of firearms is a different issue. It is caused by ignorance, such as thinking that "guns go off by themselves."

You can tackle this problem. You can invite such a person to a range to learn safe firearms handling and shooting. You can sell this idea by saying that even if the person does not intend to acquire a firearm or shoot, it's better to know how to handle one safely -- just as we pay attention to the emergency instructions on airplanes without every expecting to need to follow them.

A person who goes shooting, however timidly at first, usually comes to enjoy it.

If going to the range is too big a first step, you can try starting with AirSoft or BB guns, which many people (erroneously) regard as toys.

- Jim