Kevin DeGraaf’s Blog

I found myself in a gun-control debate earlier today.

Alex Weaver:

So far as I can tell, keeping and bearing arms in civil life is a means for certain kinds of people to assuage deep and overwhelming emotional insecurities, not a rational response to any threat faced by our present society.

My response:

That’s quite the stereotype. Would you happen to have any evidence demonstrating that law-abiding firearms owners must have such insecurities?

[Another commenter] is correct to point out that concealed carry is useless against car-bombing and other such indirect methods of attack, but you (Alex) went far beyond that to decry defensive weapons use entirely (including a potent dose of ad hominem for good measure).

Are you prepared to back up the assertion that, facing an assailant who is armed with a gun, a knife, a baseball bat, or even just muscular strength and who is intent on committing murder, rape, and/or the infliction of serious bodily injury, it is irrational for innocent parties to have available a reliable method available to deter said attacker?

I’m no “gun nut” (although I suspect you would disagree). I fully support reasonable efforts to block the sale of firearms to those who are morally deficient and/or mentally unstable, and to dramatically strengthen the training, skill, and background check requirements for concealed carry permits. However, I cannot comprehend the reasoning of the ultra-dogmatic anti-gun position.

Criminal defense aside, suppose the government’s recent headlong plunge into tyranny continues unabated. Would this not constitute an ever-growing threat toward rational, liberal society? Are you so steeped in anti-firearm sentiment that you would deny everyone the means to throw off another repressive government, should that become necessary? (If you contend that small arms are insufficient to resist a modern superpower army, please direct your attention to Iraq.)

Alex Weaver:

Kevin, none of what you posted has any coherent relationship to either my actual position or my statements. Observing that the comments of Christopher here and in other threads, and of most others I’ve encountered who share his views, appear to reflect an intense emotional “need” to possess weapons in general and firearms in particular which is entirely divorced from the level of actual risk of the person in question facing any of the scenarios you describe, but which may be highly relevant to the level of threat posed to other citizens in connection with the gratification of said “need,” and is not even an anti-gun position, let alone “ultra-dogmatic.”

What I posted has a very straightforward, coherent relationship to Alex’s attack on gun owners. He made two assertions: (1) that gun ownership is a method for assuaging emotional insecurities, and (2) that gun ownership is not a rational response to any modern threat. I requested evidence for the first assertion, since the burden of proof is on the accuser, and provided two strong rebuttal examples to the second assertion (defense against criminals and defense against tyranny).

If Alex had claimed that a subset of gun owners, in his experience, exhibit emotional immaturity, I would not have objected, but there was no such disclaimer. If he had claimed that, for any given person living in a modern society, the level of risk of an attack in which a defensive firearm could prove useful was rather low, I likewise would not have objected, and that likewise was not even remotely made clear.

The statement that “bearing arms is [...] not a rational response”, without appropriate qualification, is dogmatic. I will be more than happy to consider retracting my assertion of Alex’s ultra-dogmatism pending further clarification toward that end.

I have no idea whether Alex will follow me over here, but he (or anyone) is free to jump into this discussion at any time.

Cops pay 3 a.m. visit to tell man his door is unlocked

LAKEVILLE, Minnesota — A Lakeville man says he feels violated after two police officers woke him up at 3 a.m. to tell him his door was unlocked.

Their surprise visit was part of a public service campaign to remind residents to secure their homes to prevent thefts. Usually, officers just leave notices on doors.

But they went further in Troy Molde’s case on Thursday. Police entered the house where four children under 7 were having a sleepover, and then went upstairs to Molde’s bedroom.

Are these police officers insane? Invading someone’s house in the middle of the night is bad enough, but entering a bedroom as well?

Let me be very clear: pull that nonsense on me and you will find yourself staring down a .40-caliber barrel.

If you identify yourself as a police officer and explain your presence, I will dial 911 and have a supervisor sent down to resolve the situation. However, if you reach for your gun, I will have no choice but to start firing and keep firing until the threat you pose is neutralized. Michigan’s castle doctrine law will immunize me from prosecution and civil suits.

I don’t want to kill anyone, especially not a police officer, but what the hell do you think is going to happen when you barge into bedrooms at 3:00 in the morning?

What could possibly be the justification for something like this?

The officers told Molde his garage door was open, the TV was on, the keys to his truck were left in the ignition and the door to his house was ajar.

A police spokesman says the intrusion was justified because the officers’ initial door knocks went unanswered, and they wanted to make sure nothing was wrong.

Granted, this homeowner is an idiot for neglecting to secure his property, but that does not give the police the right to trespass, especially in such a dangerous manner.

One of our most fundamental rights as Americans, codified in the Second Amendment to our Constitution, is the freedom to “keep and bear arms”. While it would certainly be nice to live in an environment in which there was never any need to defend ourselves against violent threats, those of us who live in the real world must accept the harsh reality of the situation and deal with it accordingly.

Muggings, home invasions, rapes and murders happen every day, and while the risk of being the victim of one of these crimes is low and can be further minimized through smart decision-making, it can never be eliminated. So we are faced with a question: do we want to rely on the police to protect us, or should we be proactive and be prepared to respond to threats of violence ourselves?

The importance of the right to bear arms becomes even more clear when we remember the circumstances under which the Bill of Rights was ratified. Our country’s freedom was won only after a lengthy war against a brutal, unreasonable, tyrannical government, and the Founding Fathers correctly realized that firearm ownership was an important protection against the new federal government turning into the very type of oppressive regime that had just been violently thrown off.

Make no mistake, I am not advocating the overthrow of our government; I am simply pointing out that if we continue to head down the path of secret prisons, sanctioned torture, surveillance without oversight, the suspension of habeus corpus, and supreme executive power in general, it would be nice to have a way to press a political “reset button” and restore our cherished American liberties.

So, in order to protect myself and those around me, I chose to take a concealed-carry course back in October. Michigan is a “shall-issue” state, meaning that as long as a person meets a stringent list of criteria, the state shall issue him/her a permit to carry a concealed pistol in public. I received my concealed pistol license (CPL) last week, and then purchased a .40-caliber Glock 23 semiautomatic handgun (info, specs).

Those of us with civilian CPLs (as opposed to the CPLs issued to retired police officers) may carry our pistols anywhere in the state, except in the following “gun-free” zones:

• Per state law: schools, day-care centers, sports arenas, bars, houses of delusion worship (unless the presiding official approves), entertainment facilities with 2,500+ seats, hospitals, colleges, casinos, and courthouses.
• Per federal law: federal buildings and Post Offices.

These restrictions are ludicrous and exist only to pacify sheeple who would rather feel safe than actually be safe.

We CPL holders are at least 21 years of age, have been subjected to detailed background checks (no felonies, mental illnesses, restraining orders, dishonorable discharges, DUIs, etc.), have passed training courses covering safe firearm handling, marksmanship and the justifiable use of lethal force, and are legally bound to register our weapons and completely abstain from alcohol while carrying them.

In other words, we are exactly the sort of people who should be carrying firearms in schools, day care centers, arenas and the like. We, as responsible, law-abiding, armed citizens, serve as a useful adjunct to the police. When some deranged nutcase opens fire in a crowded building, having CPL holders around means that the bad guy can be neutralized without waiting for the police to arrive. Where concealed carry is banned, the innocent-bystander body count can soar.

Do proponents of gun control really think that criminals willing to use firearms to commit theft, rape and murder are going to give a second’s thought to laws preventing them from possessing guns in these locations in the first place? As nice as that would be, this isn’t utopia and we can’t stop criminal gun usage by simple legislative fiat. These restrictions simply increase the asymmetry between the good guys (who are shackled by the law) and the bad guys (who aren’t).

In closing, I’d like to quote from this blog post. I disagree with a fair number of the author’s positions, but he’s correct when he says:

I don’t carry a gun to kill people. I carry a gun to keep from being killed.

I don’t carry a gun to scare people. I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m paranoid. I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m evil. I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.

I don’t carry a gun because I hate the government. I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m angry. I carry a gun so that I don’t have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared.

I don’t carry a gun because my sex organs are too small. I carry a gun because I want to continue to use those sex organs for the purpose for which they were intended for a good long time to come.

I don’t carry a gun because I want to shoot someone. I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed, and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.

I don’t carry a gun because I’m a cowboy. I carry a gun because, when I die and go to heaven, I want to be a cowboy.

I don’t carry a gun to make me feel like a man. I carry a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the ones they love.

I don’t carry a gun because I feel inadequate. I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three armed thugs, I am inadequate.

I don’t carry a gun because I love it. I carry a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful to me.