ATL:"Calls for armed citizenry rely on belief in superhero fantasies"

[rocinante]

I posted Cynthia Tuckers editorial from the week before VT that was about gun control. Same dumb dumb dumb AJC stuff. You got to give them credit for consistency.

 

[The_Shootist]

Lighten Up, Guys

Cynthia Tucker is a sniveling left wing bleeding heart liberal swine who won't be satisfied until we're governed by either a trench coat mafia off-shoot or maybe some Islamofascist group and have to run around in bedsheets.

She wouldn't say boo to a mouse and represents the worst of the mouthy delusional crap you hear on the left.

Did you HONESTLY expect that vermin to say anything else?

Hell, my sister in Ga who is somewhat to the left of Hillary Clinton grudgingly conceded (and I wish I had a tape recorder at the time) that if just ONE semi-prepared/armed CHL holder been present they might have made a difference. Next trip to the east coast (and luckily I can drive through states from Tx with reciprocity) she wants me to bring my G19 and snubby so she can test fire them! Not sure where she is going with that, but it represents a BIG change in attitude!

 

[MarkDido]

Calls for armed citizenry rely on belief in superhero fantasies

Originally published April 23, 2007
ATLANTA // Kids love superheroes because they're invincible, brave, all-powerful. Children can suspend disbelief to look up in the sky for Superman or around the corner for Wonder Woman. Teenagers are enamored of a TV series called Heroes, which revolves around young people with - you guessed it - superpowers.

But it's more than a little disconcerting to hear that so many adults also believe in superheroes. They must. Why else would they insist that the best way to prevent carnage of the sort that occurred last week at Virginia Tech is to put guns into every available hand? They're indulging their childhood fantasies, remembering the movies in which the Caped Crusader or John Wayne instantly dispatched the bad guy.

In real life, police officers - trained to fire in the heat of battle - hit their intended targets only about 40 percent of the time, according to University of South Carolina criminologist Geoffrey Alpert, an expert in police shootings. And we all know about wartime "friendly fire" tragedies, when well-trained soldiers accidentally kill their own.

Yet conservative commentators have been in high dudgeon for days, suggesting that students with guns could have guaranteed a Hollywood ending in which an unflappable sharpshooter would have felled Cho Seung-Hui with a quick head shot. Michelle Malkin was among those who denounced a Virginia law that excludes college campuses from areas where concealed weapons are permitted.

"What if just one student in one of those classrooms had been in lawful possession of a concealed weapon? ... It darned well isn't too early for me to raise questions about how the unrepentant anti-gun lobbying of college officials may have put students at risk," she said.

That utterly preposterous argument comes straight from the National Rifle Association. The gun lobby now peddles an insane policy of making firearms as ubiquitous as cell phones.

The NRA has supported measures that would prevent employers from banning firearms in vehicles in their parking lots. Despite police opposition, it has pushed policies that would allow motorists to tuck firearms under the seat of their car. It has lobbied against closing the gun-show loophole, which allows private gun sales without a background check. No responsible gun owner should accept the NRA's irrational positions.

My father certainly would not have. An avid hunter and veteran of combat in Korea, my father owned shotguns, rifles and a handgun. Yet he was fanatical about gun safety.

When I moved to Atlanta just out of college, I told him I was going to buy a handgun. He strongly disapproved, believing I'd be more likely to get injured with my own gun than fend off an attacker with it.

"You don't need a gun," he said. "You need to stay out of dangerous places." I took his advice.

His concerns are borne out by the FBI's statistics about gun crimes. In 2005, 8,890 people were murdered with firearms. Guns were also used in 142,471 cases of robbery and 151,118 cases of aggravated assault. By contrast, there were only 143 cases of justifiable homicide by civilians using a firearm.

If dozens of Virginia Tech students had been armed, "Lord knows what a disaster we would have had," Mr. Alpert said.

"If they had had a Jack Bauer, maybe so. But the world isn't composed of Jack Bauers," he noted.

So all those armchair heroes - all those firearm fanatics who claim everything would be different if they'd been in one of those classrooms with a gun - should don their red capes and take a leap.

Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her column appears Mondays in The Sun. Her e-mail is [email protected].

Firefighters are trained to fight structure fires. They are professionals. So when you get a grease fire in the kitchen, DON'T grab that extinguisher you keep in your pantry and put it out. Let the pros do it!

 

[thexrayboy]

Replying to closeminded mental midgets such as this columnist is a futile waste of effort. Her mind is made up and no amount of logic, proof or rational debate can touch it or her firmly espoused anti self reliance.

Arguing with her is like the proverbial pig wrestling match. She gets emotional and egocentric validation by recieving correspondence. It makes her feel useful, valuable and knowledgeable. In her mind the fact that people correspond with her makes her important. The beliefs or views expressed are irrellevant. So, don't feed the trolls. Fence sitters are worth the effort. Lost causes like this are beyond reach. The only imaginable thing that could change her mind is if she ever survives the utterly helpless feeling of looking down the barrel of a gun in the hands of a criminal and survives, and even that is no guarantee she will return to reality.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

By contrast, there were only 143 cases of justifiable homicide by civilians using a firearm

That FBI UCR statistic is killing of a felon during commission of a felony by a citizen as adjudicated by the initial police crime report. It is a subset of justifiable homicide and does not reflect the total number of voluntary manslaughters eventually adjudicated as justifiable homicide by the justice system. That number--which should be an important crime statistic--is unknown. Lott estimated over 1,000. Kleck estimated under 3,000. Wolfgang wrote that when and where such statistics were kept, 20-30% of homicides were adjudicated as having some element of self-defense or justification. We recently had a shooting by police that was not adjudicated until the grand jury level. One of the most important stats in the whole debate is simply not kept by authority. One would have to follow all voluntary manslaughters from the police report, through: medical examiner or coroner's report, prosecuting attorney office, grand jury, trial judge, trial jury and applellate court levels.

asked by VanEasten
What's the psych term for applying your own fantasies as if they were the fantasies of those you oppose?

The clinical term, if I recall correctly, is called "projection." Projecting one's own motives onto total strangers always struck me as kinda paranoid or delusional.