Mr. Wong told the man that he had probably shot 10,000 rounds in about a year’s time. “He was pleasant,” the man recalled. “He was courteous. You would never suspect that he would pose a threat to anyone.” NY Times, April 11, 2009
You mean, aside from shooting 10,000 rounds?
What more information do you need? The man who didn’t want his name used happened to be using the shooting range next to Jiverly A. Wong one day. He noticed that Wong was practicing the art of firing his hand gun rapidly and accurately. This is America, where “you would never suspect” that someone practicing using a handgun would pose a threat to somebody. After all, Mr. Wong had a permit.
If that statement– “would pose a threat to anybody”– doesn’t alarm you, you must a red-blooded red-state rural American.
The NRA would probably respond, as they have in the past, that if only someone else in the room had had a gun, Mr. Wong would have been stopped.
Okay– let’s say someone else in the room had a pistol strapped to his leg. Mr. Wong fired 98 shots and killed most of his victims in the first 60 seconds. So this potential hero is sitting in the classroom working on his forms and a stranger walks in. The stranger pulls out his pistols and starts firing, quickly, randomly. Let’s say we’re really lucky and our hero isn’t one of the first ones hit. Let’s say we’re even luckier and he doesn’t happen to be directly in front of the shooter. The potential hero, quick as he can, gets to his feet and pulls out his own heroic tool. Is he going to stop Mr. Wong with an accurate shot, under terrifying circumstances, before the damage is done?
Maybe the hero gets lucky and gets his gun out before he is himself hit, and maybe he draws it without drawing Mr. Wong’s attention, and maybe he isn’t too nervous and excited and is able to aim and keep his hand steady and get off an accurate shot or two. Even under the best of circumstances, several people will already be dead. And anyone who has seen real footage of people engaged in a gun battle know that it is very difficult to shoot calmly, accurately, under those circumstances.
I wonder if the families of Mr. Wong’s victims consider themselves martyrs to the second amendment. They died so Americans can be free to own guns without the slightest impediment.
On this website a writer argues, remarkably, that if we allow the government to abridge the rights guaranteed under the second amendment, they will feel free to take away the rights guaranteed under any of the other amendments.
Okay. Would this person be amenable to the argument that if we allow the police to tap our phones, they will then feel free to plant hidden cameras and microphones in our bedrooms? If we allow the government to ban pornography, will they soon come after our editorials? If you let your child have a sip of beer, will he then feel free to do drugs?
From the same hilarious pro-gun website:
To deny a human the right to defend him- or herself from any threat is the most grievous crime against humanity that I can think of. Human enslavement, you say? Genocide? Well, that kind of thing can’t happen to an armed populace. Hitler’s holocaust, together with a world war, began by disarming the German people. So to own a gun for the purpose of defense is one of the most universal and basic human rights – period.
That’s pretty amazing. Aside from the historical inaccuracy (the Nazis never “disarmed” anybody) the writer essentially asserts that the only way to preserve freedom is through violent resistance. Virtually every developed nation in the Western world is a vigorous example of the contrary.
And when, pray tell, have Americans ever used their guns to defend liberty? And you really think you will stop tanks and aircraft with your pistol and your AK-47?
What’s even more amazing is that after years and years of solid majorities favoring some form of gun control, the NRA has been able to stymie every effort to do it.