Ravenwood - 07/11/05 07:45 AM
Say Uncle asks where has all the fisking gone. Well, here's a fisk of an anti-gunner from San Diego. Not satisfied with banning guns for all the regular folks, the gun grabbers are seeking to disarm police officers. Richard Riehl argues that allowing police officers to carry guns makes the county fair unsafe. Off-duty police officers want permission to carry guns out of fear of retaliation from thugs they've arrested.
Riehl doesn't actually have anything against the police. He just figures that if exceptions are made for off duty cops, then other groups will want preferred citizenship status as well. His argument for keeping the cops unarmed, is filled with the usual holes, contradictions, and pretzel logic.
The San Diego County Fair is not alone in banning guns. Legoland, Disneyland and Dodger Stadium all have similar policies. It's hard to understand why the court would single out the fairgrounds to change their policy.The difference is easy to understand. Disneyland is private property. If they want to ban guns on their property, that's their business. County fairgrounds are public property paid for with taxpayer dollars. Duh!
But it's even harder to understand how allowing concealed guns into the fair will make anybody any safer.No. It's hard to understand how banning guns makes anyone safer. If gun bans worked, Washington D.C. would be the safest city in the world, instead of a periennial contender for armed robbery capital of America.
The recent courtroom murder of an Atlanta judge is a graphic example of what can happen when someone takes a gun away from a police officer. More guns on the fairgrounds will make such tragic confrontations more likely.Actually, the guard wasn't carrying a gun at all. Brian Nichols was being led to trial on charges of rape when he allegedly overpowered the 5' unarmed grandmother, took her keys, and retreived her gun from lockup. He now faces charges for 4 murders as well as the original rape charge.
Metal detectors and security searches provide some assurance now that no concealed guns are being carried into the fairgrounds. If off-duty officers feel threatened, shouldn't their police training enable them to protect themselves against unarmed assailants?Since when do metal detectors guarantee people are disarmed?
Guns are a deterrent only when they are visible. Some off-duty officers may choose not to carry them. Potential assailants won't know whether the officer is armed until a weapon is drawn, putting all innocent bystanders at risk.One statement contradicts the other. Visible guns don't deter crime at all. They simply shift the crime to unarmed victims. Would be armed robbers will just target those that are obviously unarmed. That potential assailants don't know who has a gun and who doesn't deters them from commiting a crime against anyone. (It's the same principle as the skymarshal program. If you make skymarshals wear a uniform and sit right outside the cabin door, terrorists know exactly what planes to target. By giving them anonymity, terrorists are at a disadvantage.)
How will the fair's on-duty officers recognize a person drawing a gun as a cop and not someone who has smuggled in a firearm?More contradictions. What happened to the metal detectors and everyone being unarmed? I don't know about California, but cops in Virginia (on or off duty) don't go around brandishing their sidearms for no reason. They also don't demand money from strangers at gunpoint. If San Diego cops are so stupid at recognizing a threat from a non-threat, what's to keep them from shooting kids playing over at the arcade? (Assuming that California hasn't already banned "violent" arcade games.)
If it becomes known that off-duty cops are carrying guns, we can expect the bad guys to figure out how to fabricate IDs to gain entrance to the fairgrounds with their own concealed weapons.This guy is grasping at straws. As long as we're playing what if, what happens when the bad guys figure out they can just parachute into the fairgrounds to avoid the metal detectors set up along the perimeter fence? Picking off the disarmed masses as they rain down from the skies should be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Category: Cold Dead Hands
Comments (4) top link me
The police, who will conficate and arrest a citizen caught with a gun for defense, deserve no special treatment either. Let them go unarmed like they will force us to.
Posted by: william at July 11, 2005 8:18 AMBetter idea: Make the police chief, the DA, and the city council go alone and unarmed. Cops don't set policy; the most they can do (and many of them do) is to be selectively blind to concealed weapons on apparently law-abiding people until there is an incident that makes it impossible to ignore the gun. Like using it for self-defense...
Posted by: markm at July 11, 2005 9:41 AMVery good fisking, Ravnwood, but I will add one comment/correction:
The Federal Air Marshals aren't the crack cops that they used to be. You're right about the idea of anonymity (sp?), but you can still pick them out by the fact that they sit in first class (costing the airlines big bucks), and they usually have dumb looks on their faces and are not reading the Wall Street Journal (more like Archie and Jughead comics ;-) ...
Posted by: Jimmy Antley at July 11, 2005 4:02 PMI'd rather have off-duty cops caring concealed than the on duty cops standing around and wasting tax dollars.
Here's another straw to grasp at: Maybe the criminals will sneak in through the sewers and go completely underneath the metal detectors!
Or maybe, and this is only speculation, the first unarmed criminal goes in, and walks over to a fence and has his criminal buddies toss the guns over the fence in a MacDonald's bag. Anyone who sees it, including the cops, would probably laugh and nod in appreciation. "Yeah, the food is really expensive here." Then his buddies come through the front gate, unarmed, and they meet and go into a restroom where they hand off the guns in the toilet stalls.
Too complex? How do you think they sneak large quantities of drugs into a theme park whenever they post drug sniffing dogs at the ticket gates? You've probably seen them, the guy in the collared shirt with the Beagle who's standing at the ticket gate, not going in, just minding his own business? Yeah, he's a cop. You stood in line for 30 minutes and this guy, with a pet in a "no pet's allowed" area is what, waiting for his girlfriend to come out of the bathroom? Is she taking a shower?
The sad fact is, not all criminals are stupid. It's not only their business, it's their survival! In fact, it seems that most of them are smarter than anti-gun legislators.
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