Phatty
Member
I'm sure everyone here recalls the shooting last month of a pastor during a church service in Illinois. The story came and went in the national news, but additional information has been released in the local news. Apparently there was a retired police officer in the church at the time of the shooting and was carrying. Here's a link to the story:
http://www.bnd.com/news/local/story/717689.html
The retired officer did not have a clear shot to stop the murderer. No problem; sometime's even when armed you are unable to stop a crime from occurring. My issue with this story is the way the local police sergeant infers that if an "untrained civilian" had been in the retired officer's position and was carrying in the church they would have began firing haphazardly and caused more harm than good. The local sheriff also sings praises about carrying his pistol while off-duty (including into church) to help prevent tragedies like this, but of course here in Illinois all of us common folk can't provide that same valuable service.
If training is the big difference between civilians and police officers, why not just make training a requirement for Illinois civilians to be able to carry? I would be more than willing to complete the exact same firearms training as police (or even more) to get a permit, but I don't even get the opportunity. Nonetheless, it really irks me when people insinuate that "untrained" civilians would recklessly fire their weapon into a crowd. Seriously, you don't need an instructor to tell you in some class that you shouldn't shoot your weapon unless you have a clean shot. I hate to break it to the law enforcement crowd (and I mean no offense to the police officers here) but you're not exactly the intellectual elite in society. Any responsible person with common sense and average intelligence can easily learn to safely handle and use a firearm.
Has anyone here ever even heard of a situation where a civilian that was carrying a firearm got into an old-fashioned cowboy shoot-out and ended up killing innocent bystanders? I haven't. Yet every single mass murder story is accompanied by some police spokesman who injects the gun control debate into the story by volunteering that if one of the civilians on the scene had been armed, the situation would only have been worse because they would have simply closed their eyes and spun in a circle while blindly firing their pistol in all directions.
http://www.bnd.com/news/local/story/717689.html
The retired officer did not have a clear shot to stop the murderer. No problem; sometime's even when armed you are unable to stop a crime from occurring. My issue with this story is the way the local police sergeant infers that if an "untrained civilian" had been in the retired officer's position and was carrying in the church they would have began firing haphazardly and caused more harm than good. The local sheriff also sings praises about carrying his pistol while off-duty (including into church) to help prevent tragedies like this, but of course here in Illinois all of us common folk can't provide that same valuable service.
If training is the big difference between civilians and police officers, why not just make training a requirement for Illinois civilians to be able to carry? I would be more than willing to complete the exact same firearms training as police (or even more) to get a permit, but I don't even get the opportunity. Nonetheless, it really irks me when people insinuate that "untrained" civilians would recklessly fire their weapon into a crowd. Seriously, you don't need an instructor to tell you in some class that you shouldn't shoot your weapon unless you have a clean shot. I hate to break it to the law enforcement crowd (and I mean no offense to the police officers here) but you're not exactly the intellectual elite in society. Any responsible person with common sense and average intelligence can easily learn to safely handle and use a firearm.
Has anyone here ever even heard of a situation where a civilian that was carrying a firearm got into an old-fashioned cowboy shoot-out and ended up killing innocent bystanders? I haven't. Yet every single mass murder story is accompanied by some police spokesman who injects the gun control debate into the story by volunteering that if one of the civilians on the scene had been armed, the situation would only have been worse because they would have simply closed their eyes and spun in a circle while blindly firing their pistol in all directions.
