Below are excerpts from an essay by Matt Bracken that was published at Western Rifle Shooters Association. I meant to post this a couple of days ago, but all the jihad news from Germany caused a delay.
It’s very appropriate to all this breaking news, but not all that much help for Germans or most other Europeans, since they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being allowed to carry firearms, no matter how bad the cultural enrichment gets. But Americans who cherish their Second Amendment rights will find it useful:
Orlando Carry
by Matt BrackenThe Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando taught millions of ordinary citizens something very important. It confirmed for us that seventeen years after the Columbine massacre, we can still find ourselves penned inside a disarmed-victim slaughter zone by an armed maniac or maniacs, and while innocent people are bleeding to death and futilely calling for help, government law enforcement agency employees might decide to take a powder, set up a security perimeter, and then burn three irreplaceable hours while debating how best to attempt a rescue operation. And when it finally happens, the belated rescue operation might end up killing many more victims than if some of the aforesaid victims had simply pulled their own guns on the madman in the first place, three hours earlier, and shot him dead, even in a vicious cross-fire.
This lesson also carries over to the recent Bastille Day truck massacre in Nice, France. It took good men with guns to finally stop the bloodthirsty Tunisian’s motorized rampage. But the truck and its driver did not cause all of the carnage in one go — according to various news reports there were fits and starts when the truck slowed and even stopped, and when this happened, brave but unarmed men tried to climb onto the cab to end the carnage with their bare hands. Unfortunately, the only good guys with guns in their possession belonged to government law enforcement agencies or GLEAs, and they were not in position to shoot the driver until 84 innocents were killed and many more were severely injured.
Can anybody claim that the outcome in Nice could have been worse if an armed citizen or two or three had jumped onto the cab during a pause, and fired their own pistols at the Tunisian driver? With weapons dispersed among the Bastille Day crowd, concealed among trained and trusted military veterans, for example, would the death toll in Nice have been as high? Can anybody imagine a truck driver conducting a two-kilometer kamikaze rampage against pedestrians in Tel Aviv or Texas, without his taking effective fire from armed citizens every fifty meters along the way?
Even beyond the lessons of Orlando and Nice, we recently learned in Dallas and Baton Rouge that first-responding GLEA employees cannot even protect themselves from a single deranged gunman, much less protect anybody else who happens to be in the madman’s range. In both cases it took even more good men with even bigger guns arriving on the scene to put the cop-killers down. In Dallas and Baton Rouge the killers were only targeting police officers, but what happens when the killers are targeting shooting galleries full of unarmed trapped civilians?
Fort Hood and San Bernardino come to mind. Innocents trapped in gun-free killing pens will be slaughtered until the killers depart, or the SWAT teams arrive and shoot their way in. This is not rocket science. Fort Hood, San Bernardino, Orlando and Nice have taught us that when we are faced with an armed homicidal terrorist, we will have nobody but ourselves to depend on for our self defense during the first minutes, or even hours. As the saying goes, “When every second is a matter of life or death, the police are only minutes away.” Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan Theater in Paris also spring to mind. Nobody on the scene at the beginning of a murder rampage will have a gun except the killers — and those citizens who accept the responsibility of being armed in their daily lives.
In the United States we are blessed with the Second Amendment to the Constitution, affirming our God-given right to self defense, which we know as the right to keep and bear arms. State and federal laws and politicians might come and go, but as Americans, the right to armed self defense is coded into our DNA. Five politically-appointed black-robed Supremes cannot change the meaning of the 2nd Amendment: it was written in plain English so that we the people can understand it.
Today, in the face of a rising tide of Islamic jihad terrorism on top of the usual random assortment of homicidal maniacs, a well-armed citizenry is more important than ever. In 2016, GLEA employees who might take three hours to mount a “rescue” (and tag the bodies) are simply not a reliable part of our self-defense equation. By the time the SWAT breachers blow holes in the walls, hours too late, you and your family might already be dead. If the Second Amendment means anything, it means that we have the right to bear arms to protect ourselves, our families and our communities from armed terrorists or other violent lunatics. Police, politicians and judges cannot protect us: they can only respond after the fact, meaning, after we are dead.
Read the rest — with all the technical details about different types of “off-body-carry” that gun owners can avail themselves of for concealed-carry outside their clothing — at Western Rifle Shooters Association.
Bad luck for me I live in NJ a state which has rejected and circumvented our Constitutional 2nd Amendment rights to bear arms. Oh yes one can ‘apply’ for a carry permit, however the issuance is rare as a snowball’s chance in hell. Only the politically connected,street thugs and criminal vermin are armed in NJ. Weapons transported in a vehicle must be unloaded and cased, in this draconian state. Should Terrorist attacks be perpetrated in the future , they will more than likely be in gun free zones and states.
“… not all that much help for Germans or most other Europeans, since they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being allowed to carry firearms, no matter how bad the cultural enrichment gets.”
I disagree. There is a point at which the cultural enrichment becomes so bad that people will [be] carrying – that is when western law and order, and society itself, is fatally collapsing and the enrichers are actively taking over. At that stage, it will be every man for himself and what was legal and illegal previously will not matter.
You have made my point. A Germany where the rule of law has disappeared – a rule they carried into Rome with them and spread it throughout the West – will no longer be recognizable as Germany, with all that we understand in the connotation of that word.
You can carry and be judged by a jury of your peers (if you run afoul of the law). Or, you can do without and perhaps be carried by 6 of your peers. One needn’t be obvious when carrying, in fact it is best to not obsess over your piece when carrying because that is a dead giveaway. A .357 J frame SW is very easy to conceal. There is an article at Western Rifle Shooters that mentions J frames as too 1985 and nowadays many perps are using body armor. So, get enough range time to be able to reliably hit a face sized target 100%. Lets all live happily ever after.
Arizona is great for gun rights with open carry and no concealed weapons permits. I could see that during the Mosque protest in Phoenix, Arizona that open carry kept both the Muslims and their Leftist allies from physically attacking the protestors, unlike in Europe. I see it as a good deterrent and hope that is all that will happen. The day that they try to force Sharia Law on Americans is when we must fight for our liberty. Mark Passio has an excellent YouTube about the Second Amendment.
See YouTube Mark Passio: The True meaning and Purpose of the Second Amendment.
At the driver – ok
At the truck…At least 84 dead in France after grenade-filled truck plows into crowd – not so clear
Highly unlikely that a pistol round would penetrate the truck cab/container and the grenade casing to set off the explosive in the grenade.
The post-Christian elites of the West have a problem. They hate Christianity so much that they are encouraging everything anti-Christian – from Gay Lib to Islam.
In encouraging this motley coalition of evil they stupidly forgot that its members have as many differences among themselves as they have with the traditional Christian faith and the civilisation based on it. And some day they will be at each other’s throats.
This day has come. The victims of “islamophobia” have begun murdering the victims of “homophobia” and “male chauvinism”. But the ideological leaders of the establishment continue to denounce “islamophobia” and “homophobia” in the same breath.
The absurdity of all this is nauseating.
Not sure “Gay Lib”, as you quaintly phrase it, is “anti-Christian”. As a secularist, I’m against any imposition of religious beliefs on the general population, especially Muslim ones; this doesn’t mean I’m against the private practice of religion (with qualifications which should be obvious).
BTW, excuse my ignorance, but does “GLEA” mean Government Law Enforcement Agents/Agencies”? Google doesn’t know; maybe the acronym is more familiar to Americans than the rest of us.
Gay Lib or, if you do not like this term, let us call it ‘political pederasty’, is anti-Christian, because it forces society, including its Christian members, to accept the absurd idea that homosexuality is not a pathological deviation, but a perfectly normal and even laudable character trait. And those who object to be force-fed this mad idea are nowadays required to keep silent – or else.
Christians have always believed that homosexuality is deadly dangerous for the soul. If a person who has homosexual inclinations does not combat them he – or she, for that matter – dies a spiritual death and becomes unfit for eternal life.
(It does not mean that Christianity denies people with the problem of the kind a chance of salvation. They can achieve it by fighting their sin just like people who fight other sinful passions. St. Porphyrios of Kavsokaliva said he had met a number of transgender youths of both sexes who refused to follow their inclinations and remained virgins. He said they had truly angelic souls.)
This view of homosexuality is based on the Bible, the teachings of the Fathers of the Church and on practical experience.
But nowadays a priest or pastor who finds the courage of publicly defending the Christian teaching on this particular point risks criminal prosecution in most Western countries. Christian parents have no possibility to protect their children from pro-gay advertising.
In fact, all this broad advertising of the idea of homosexuality being ‘normal’, of the introduction of the so-called ‘gay marriage’, proliferation of homosexual pornography and the constant discussion of the subject in the media, in films, books, shows, etc. is a powerful attack against the basics of Christian morality and worldview which are the foundation of the Western civilisation. It is part of the war on traditional family – which is the essential element of any viable society. It is one of the many ways in which the West is being weakened and made vulnerable to Islamism – and to any destructive force which may threaten it.
If Europe does not return to an authentic Christian world view and morality (most probably it won’t), in about 20 years it will no longer exist. Perhaps it will be islamised, perhaps, it will lie in ruins or turn into some sort of crazy totalitarian State of a new and particularly vicious type – I do not know. But in any case, it will be pretty horrible.
Anton, the current scientific view is that homosexuality,like transgenderism (is that a word?), is caused by the wrong dose of testosterone in utero, ie NOT a matter of personal choice.
If this proves to be incorrect, science will have to change its view, as it usually does, albeit sometimes reluctantly. This is not a weakness, but a strength, one which fundamentalist religious beliefs such as yours lack.
If you want to see something really nauseating go to YouTube and watch some videos regarding Dearborn, MI.
The treatment of Christians conducting a peaceful march with placards by the Ummah is disgusting.