Tag Archives: Firearms

Clueless and rude

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Red Sky in the MorningOver on the excellent Grumpy Lion blog, there is a regular commenter who, I think it is fair to say, often gets the wrong end of the stick. However, Steph is so inordinately self-opinionated that nothing will ever come close to swaying her on any issue. It doesn’t matter if she is wrong. It doesn’t matter if you point out her mistakes. She appears to refuse to listen. If you correct her twice she will swear at you and call you a stalker. This is all good internet-kook behaviour, generally confined to the more religious zealot. Feel free to pop over and read her comments – she comments a lot, and often on topics about which I know nothing, however when it is a topic I have some understanding off, she is invariably wrong. I would be interested to know how this extrapolates to her other comments.

Anyway, the most recent “encounter” was on a recent post that degenerated into an argument about UK gun control laws. Quite wisely, Ric has now ended comments as it was, sadly, repetitive. However, in the best internet traditions, I now feel left out as I haven’t had the chance to get the lastword™®© in 🙂 . However, here the magic of the interblog steps in…!

For those who don’t know (or don’t want to read her screed), Steph has made numerous claims, all of which would normally need something to back them up. Take this from her very first comment on the thread:

But States with tight gun control laws have higher gun crime rates than the States with lax gun laws. And most gun crime is perpetrated against those who don’t have guns.

Gathering StormFair enough. The first bit is regulary bandied around but I have yet to see where the figures come from. The second sentence is pretty meaningless. It is an attempt to imply that carrying a gun reduces the chance you will become a victim to gun crime. This is akin to saying if you are a mugger you will be less likely to be mugged. It is hollow and provides nothing of substance, so I will not dwell on it further.

Steph trots out the old bit about how she has her gun and will kill to defend herself, and knows how, etc. This is regularly used by people with very little experience of violent encounters – especially ones involving weapons. In a nutshell, if it was this easy, why do armed forces the world over train their soldiers? Owning a gun is no use unless it is in your hands and pointing at the person who may do you harm. As you don’t know who this will be you would have to travel everywhere with your weapon drawn and keeping a bead on everyone you encounter. Realistic, maybe, in some post apocalypse nightmare film but certainly not on the streets of an even moderately populated village. Continue reading →

Turning the other cheek?

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An advert on Wingnut Daily leads to “The ultimate biblical exploration of self-defence”, a book with the title Shooting Back also available as “an exciting DVD.”

What would you do if armed terrorists broke into your church and starting attacking your friends with automatic weapons in the middle of a worship service?

Well, that is one form of terrorist attack that is never going to affect us non-believers….. You might therefore think a common-sense solution to that imaginary scenario for phobic believers might be to maybe stop going to church, but this book doesn’t go down that route….

It’s advice for his fellow worldnutters from a South African who was in a church that was attacked in 1993. (Don’t ask me if it was one of those extremist Terre-Blanche-style-white-hate-“churches” because they don’t actually mention that small detail. )

….But van Wyk was not defenseless that day. Had he been unarmed like the other congregants, the slaughter would have been much worse.
“Instinctively, I knelt down behind the bench in front of me and pulled out my .38 special snub-nosed revolver, which I always carried with me,” he writes in “Shooting Back,” a book being published for the first time in America next month by WND Books. “I would have felt undressed without it. Many people could not understand why I would carry a firearm into a church service, but I argued that this was a particularly dangerous time in South Africa.”

Many people indeed might not understand why someone would carry a firearm into a church service.

(I am a mite distracted by the odd physical conformation of someone who is naked without a gun. How much human flesh can a gun cover? Is he a really odd shaped human? Is it a pretty large gun like an anti-aircraft weapon. That might cover enough flesh to constitute an article of clothing. However, it would be hard for it to pass unnoticed by even the dumbest church-attackers.

If he put the gun behind a bench, was he was therefore conceptually naked in his church? No, my misunderstanding. The gun wasn’t behind the bench. To cover his conceptual nakedness effectively, it must have been stashed somewhere about his person that he couldn’t get at without having to do the modest thing and get behind a bench. )

Now, maybe I am being a bit too biblically literal here but from my school Religious Knowledge lessons, I don’t remember much in the New Testament about fighting back with maximum firepower? I thought it was all about loving thine enemies and turning the other cheek. My misunderstanding. That was another New Testament altogether.

But, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. In fact I’ll see his paranoid advice and raise it.

I myself feel in a state of mortal terror unless I’m armed with at least a couple of dozen inter-continental ballistic weapons. I mean, you never know when you might come under attack and have to protect innocents around you. So I always feel that a few medium-to-long range nuclear weapons gives you all the security you need. Why stop at carrying mere hand-guns into church?

And indeed, what utopian fool would go anywhere without wearing at least an NBC suit over a set of Kevlar underwear? And carrying a light submachine gun. We live in a dangerous world.

One bullet destroys three lives

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Now, normally I would be quite happy to rant about how the average person in the street should not be carrying firearms and the like, but in this current case it is a moot point. The weapon in question was held illegally and, for now, we don’t have a “right to bear arms” in the United Kingdom.

As background, today the news centred around how the person who shot and killed 12 year old Kamilah Peniston in April was named as her 17 year old brother, Kasha Peniston. In a nutshell, their mother illegally owned a .38 revolver, Kasha found it and was playing with it when “it went off” and shot Kamilah in the head. Paramedics arrived to find Kasha screaming for help, cradling Kamilah in his arms. She was later pronounced dead at hospital. (BBC news)

The brother was initially charged with murder (and pleaded innocent) but has now accepted a charge of manslaughter. (This is reasonable as murder requires intent, there is no reason to suspect there was any intent in this case). The mother has pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition.

From that one accidental discharge of a firearm, three lives have been irrevocably destroyed. The mother and brother will live the rest of their lives with the guilt, the social stigma and the criminal record. Assuming the brother serves the “typical” sentence for manslaughter, he will be around 25 when he is released back into the community – knowing nothing about adult life other than what he has learned in jail. Without wishing to be downbeat about this, the chances of him re-offending is significantly higher than his already high peer group. The mother has basically lost her family as well as facing a sentence of around 3 – 5 years (possibly longer as the consequences of her illegal possession may influence the sentence).

It is a tragic tale and it highlights a sequence of mistakes and errors – the mother should have taken stronger measures to ensure the children had no unsupervised access to the weapon, the son should have been taught how to use the revolver safely etc. The most basic thing which could have been changed to save the daughters life is for the mother to not have the weapon in the first place.

It is certainly the will of Cocidius that this tragic event happened at a time where there is considerable debate in the UK about people having the means to defend themselves in their houses. I am sure Kamilah’s mother felt she needed the .38 for a sensible reason, but does that reason seem so sensible to her now?