I'd like to link to a story of a brave gun-owner

[james_davis_nicoll]

of the sort who I am sure, from the rhetoric used to defend the American 2nd Amendment, leaps up to defend endangered crowds of innocents from people like Jim David Adkisson and Buford O. Furrow but for some reason I cannot find any examples. Instead, have the story of Joshua Seto, and a lesson in why it's a bad idea to jam a gun down the front of your pants.

[added later]
snippy offers Pearl High School in comments.

Comments

[jwgh]

There's this, I guess: http://www.slate.com/id/2280794/

[maruad.livejournal.com]

The Darwin Awards may come knocking for that guy. He seems to upstaged Plaxico Burress, who did his best but came up a bit short.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaxico_Burress#Accidental_shooting

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

As I understand Seto's situation, he's now a bit short!

[avram]

<rimshot!>

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Maine, being a rural (if not wilderness) state, does present cases of people using firearms on a regular basis against two-legged predators. That sort of thing happens when the nearest cop is half an hour or more away.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Even in a big city, when you need help in seconds, the cops are minutes away.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

You know, while I live in a country where that's a non-issue, if I did live somewhere where two-legged predator defense at home was an issue, my preferred tool wouldn't be a pistol. (Nothing says "burglars not welcome here" like a shotgun.)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Jhetley said "firearms", not "pistols." Most Mainers I know who have firearms have shotguns or rifles, since they have them primarily for hunting.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

This is an open issue among the self-defense community. Shotguns are cumbersome to maneuver in the confines of a house or apartment, impossible to use at really close quarters, and provide leverage that can be used against you. On the other hand, they're quite intimidating, and quite effective if you do get a shot into the attacker. As I say, those that write and train for armed self-defense haven't come anywhere near consensus on this topic.

Oh, and shotguns are also somewhat harder to secure well while keeping easily accessible for emergencies. If I've been carrying, I just keep the gun on me when I'm at home, plus I keep a gun in a push-button lockbox by my bed that I can get into in just a few seconds in the dark; it's much harder to keep a shotgun that accessible.

Oh, and Scotland tops list of world's most violent countries.

The Scottish government reports 266,000 violent assaults and robberies in their latest figures, which I compute to be about .051 of population.

Wikipedia at least reports US rates of a bit under 500 / 100,000, which is a bit under .005 of population -- that is, you seem to live in a country with ten times the violent crime rate of mine.

Comparing this sort of thing is always hard; differing definitions, reporting rates, and so forth. Still, I do find myself seriously questioning whether you live in a less dangerous place than I do, based on a few minutes reviewing online information.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Joshua Seto and such are one of the many strong arguments for NOT making do with just the training that comes in the box with the gun. One of the important safety rules is to keep your finger out of the trigger guard until you're ready to shoot, and another is to use a holster that covers the trigger. (Dunno for sure, but the usual method of shooting yourself while reholstering a gun is to have your finger in the trigger guard when you push the gun into the holster, and I suspect Seto did something similar.)

A few million successful gun defense uses a year, according to the 1994 Department of Justice funded survey. Much more often onesself and family rather than strangers, of course; that's who you're around, especially at home. And the legalities of intervening in a situation you walk up to (and don't know the history of) are complex and risky; which of those guys is the drug dealer and which is the undercover cop?

Okay, I thought I remembered this. Civilian marksmen helped considerably in keeping Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower Sniper, from continuing to shoot very much while the police got through the door and confronted him directly. In general, when there's a chance to do good, people tend to do good; whether armed with guns, or brooms, or Israeli battle dressings.

We don't think of ourselves as heroic, so much as "socially beneficial".

[maruad.livejournal.com]

If you are saying that keeping a loaded gun, with a round in the chamber and the safety off, in your underwear while at a nightclub isn't proper gun safety then I agree with you.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't absolutely draw the line against things like "Thunderwear", though I haven't used them myself. But those are designed to retain and position a gun, and keep the trigger covered. Just stuffing a gun in your waistband seems like a bad choice, yeah. In fact, even "the training that comes in the box" often manages to find space to recommend against that.

(I personally recommend against guns with an external safety device, and in favor of carry with a round in the chamber though, if you're going to carry at all. Modern guns with trigger-linked safety devices don't need additional manual safeties, and it's just one more thing to go wrong, an extra complexity, can easily be nudged "off" leaving you counting on something that is no longer there, and generally seems like a bad idea. Old-fashioned single-action autos don't in my opinion fit modern civilian carry at all well; I strongly prefer revolvers or modern semi-autos designed for carry.)

[snippy]

Gee...Pearl High School comes to mind.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Here's a defense-of-other case from just today, but not a random other, so perhaps it's not heroic: http://oldnortheast.patch.com/articles/applebees-diner-shoots-mugger

And here's a defense-of-stranger case that's pretty recent (this is a current article with more information about the case): http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-seattle/skyway-shooting-update-victim-a-felon-citizen-fired-once-suspect-used-22

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

The New Life Church, Appalachian School of Law, and the Trolley Square Mall mass shootings, all of which were violently interrupted by shocking displays of gun violence inflicted by intended victims with no respect for Canadians' hysterically overwrought firearms sensibilities, spring to mind...

[rivka.livejournal.com]

One thing has always stuck in my mind from the Jim David Adkisson shooting. His manifesto shows that he had absorbed enough stereotypes about liberals and gun control advocates that he thought he would be able to go into Tennessee Valley UU Church and keep shooting, reloading, and shooting again until the police arrived and stopped him.

Instead, of course, he was almost instantly taken down by a bunch of unarmed congregants who ran towards him, subdued him, disarmed him, and restrained him until the police arrived.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Yes, guns are not nearly magical enough to actually stand off a room full of people who seriously attempt to take down the shooter. It does make it kind of grim for a few of the people in the first wave of the rush, though. That's better for everybody in the end I think -- and the people in position to be part of the first rush are rather exposed and likely to be shot in a spree killing anyway (you don't, however, know if the attacker is after specific people, or just on a killing spree).

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Breivig managed it by impersonating a cop. Shoot one batch of kids, go somewhere else, claim to be the police and to be getting things under control, repeat. And he and the Virginia Tech shooter were both mostly going after kids.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it's a lot easier to take people out in small batches and where there is confusion about what's going on. I don't know if teenagers are by nature less likely or less able to defend themselves than adults, but it probably is a factor that TVUUC was packed with parents and grandparents whose children were present in the room.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

Before getting any weapon for purposes of personal safety, there are some questions I believe it's helpful to ask yourself.

1) Am I willing to put in the time to develop and maintain the ability to use this weapon safely and effectively?

2) Would I be willing to use the weapon to kill an assailant if necessary to stop the weapon being taken from me and used against me?

3) What, if any, psychological difficulties would I be likely to experience should I kill or seriously injure another person, whether intentionally or accidentally?

My personal take on matters is that if the answer to question 1 or 2 is "no" or "maybe", I'm better off without the weapon. If the answer to #3 is "none at all", everyone else is better off if I don't have the weapon.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I strongly agree with items 1 and 3. 2 sort-of falls out from being willing to use the weapon in the first place the way I think of it; and having your weapon taken from you is statistically very very rare for civilians (it's much more common for police; police have to approach people and handcuff them as part of their jobs, and they carry openly).

I do disagree on your interpretation of #3 there; quite a large percentage of people feel no really deep psychological disturbance after using deadly force in a clear-cut self-defense situation. Not that anyone really knows in advance.

Also, on things you need to learn -- learn about the laws on use of deadly force in your state and any other states you'll carry in (many states have some degree of recognition of out-of-state carry permits). And learn about police procedure, and about the attitudes of your home-city police force at least. One of the things I enjoyed teaching carry classes, and which I think may have done broader social good, was explaining to a class of white suburban folk (not exclusively, but more than the average percentage in the area) that the police weren't their friends any more, and they couldn't count on being assumed to be the good guy.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

You know what I was thinking about vaguely? How you don't hear too many people talking about how there was an altercation of some sort, and someone didn't pull out a gun, because nobody involved had one to pull out.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Upthread dd_b seems to be arguing that in a society without guns you get a lot more drunken bar fights. I guess the question is how many avoided drunken bar fights are worth an extra homicide.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is one of the stock "blood in the streets" predictions that's made by somebody prominent enough to get news coverage in every state debating going to shall-issue rules for carry permits. But we've got decades of experience now, and there's no evidence that altercations get escalated by people with carry permits.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Not really. We just recently had a case of two drunken guys arguing about religion, here in town. One strangled the other and then tossed him out a second-story window.

Never *did* learn which side was pro-god and which anti. Maybe that will come out at the trial . . .