Washington Post “what ifs” violence

Chief Tango sends us a link to the Washington Post‘s editorial board as they war game two separate incidents that happened this weekend. One, in Colorado involved a gun man who was carrying his long gun openly and subsequently gunned down three innocent citizens before police returned the favor in kind. The other, was the knife-boy terrorist who stabbed four people in University of California at Merced – he was also shot and killed by law enforcement.

The editorial board complains that there were 9-1-1 calls in regards to the Colorado gunman because he was carrying his rifle openly while riding his bicycle, but that the 9-1-1 operator didn’t take the calls as seriously as he/she should have because open carry is legal in Colorado. And “what if” the California stabber had a gun instead of a knife?

Imagine if Colorado weren’t so permissive in allowing people to openly display guns. Would that 911 operator have recognized the danger more quickly and would lives have been saved? Similarly, imagine what would have occurred if the attacker at the University of California at Merced had wielded a gun instead of a hunting knife. Would there have been fatalities instead of injuries, and would there have been additional victims before the attacker could be stopped? Indeed, would the construction worker who bravely broke up the attack have been able to do so if a gun were involved and not a knife?

The Colorado gunman was a nut who shouldn’t have owned a gun. He made blog postings about how we all deserved to die. In fact, most people who engage in these types of random shootings have displayed behavior that should have precluded their ownership of firearms. “What if” prosecutors, legislators, law enforcement, medical professionals and journalists took that seriously?

And the little jihadist terrorist boy with a knife? California laws prevented him from having a gun – he was only 18 years old. So I guess it’s too much for the Washington Post’s editorial board to admit that there were sufficient laws in place to prevent that incident from including a firearm. In fact, as we read yesterday, the construction worker has changed his mind about concealed carry laws. He wished that he had a gun that day – but that little fact shot right over the head of the Washington Post’s editorial board.

I am not a big advocate of open-carry, but not so much that I’m going to condemn the Second Amendment rights of those who prefer that method of personal protection. Police easily spotted Colorado guy with his openly carried firearm, so open carry advocates should consider that factor as compared to concealed carry.

It is simple nonsense to liken the damage that can be caused by a knife — or baseball bat or whatever other weapon the gun lobby feebly offers up as an alternative — to the lethal capacities of guns.

Yeah, um, dead is dead whether the death is caused by a knife or a gun or a hammer. It’s simple nonsense to think that we should put our trust in the police to bring their firearms to the scene of a crime to protect us from criminals with “a knife, or a baseball bat, or whatever”.

Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists