As you may have heard by now, particularly if you are a pro-football fan, New York Giants receiver Plaxico Burress accidentally shot himself in the leg in a Manhattan nightclub on Friday. While covering the Redskins-Giants game last Sunday, FOX Sports commentator and former NFL defensive tackle Tony Siragusa summed up the situation pretty well: "If you go to a place that you feel you need to carry a gun, the best thing is, stay home."
Or, as NBC's Bob Costas said, "I'd like to have somebody show me one time when an athlete was out in a public place and by having a gun, he either averted harm to himself or other innocent people. Show me one time as against the dozens of times people came to grief for carrying guns."
The comments by Siragusa and Costas make a point not only about common sense, but also about a culture of fear that the gun lobby in this country is constantly trying to generate. The gun pushers want us all to be afraid of one another so we feel the need to carry a semi-automatic pistol every time we leave the house. Apparently Burress felt that way.
Except Burress isn't an ordinary gun owner - and not because of his status as a professional football player. Until this past May, according to reports, he had a valid concealed carry permit from the state of Florida. If we are to believe the gun lobby propaganda, that made Burress the classic "law-abiding citizen" that all Americans should trust to carry a loaded, hidden handgun anywhere, at any time in public - someone who is supposedly educated about the laws regulating where and how he can carry his firearm, and who won't accidentally shoot himself in the leg.
Obviously that wasn't the case.
The gun laws in New York and New Jersey (Burress's reported state of residence) are some of the strongest in the country. They work to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, helping both states rank among the five with the lowest gun death rates in America.
On the other hand, Florida's gun laws are notoriously weak. In just this year alone, according to news reports, Florida concealed carry permit-holders have been charged in at least two murders and a manslaughter; another apparently had an illegal drug record; another was arrested for impersonating a police officer; at least four others shot themselves in gun accidents (here, here, here, and here). These are just published reports. Almost certainly, many more go unreported every month - and not just in Florida.
What these incidents show is that some people who we're led to believe are responsible, law-abiding gun owners - people like Plaxico Burress - can still exhibit dangerous behavior with firearms in public every day. The fact that most gun owners really are responsible, law-abiding citizens only highlights the risk of serious injury or death that a firearm in the wrong hands can cause.
This risk is borne by the public as much as by gun owners themselves, and the Burress incident is just one more example of how a gun kept for protection is often used against its owner instead. Yet the costs of Burress shooting himself are not borne by him alone. His team is also paying the price, in medical costs, media scrutiny and their chances on the playing field.
When it comes to the steady drumbeat of stories about guns in professional sports, John Feinstein wrote an important column in yesterday's Washington Post. While Feinstein's desire to "repeal the Second Amendment" is a nonstarter, another statement of his gets at the same point Tony Siragusa made: "If [Burress] felt he was unsafe going to the New York club two questions arise: Why go there? And, if you think you need protection wherever you go, at $7 million a year [in salary], why not hire bodyguards?"
Rather than put himself, his team, and the public at risk with a gun he didn't know how to handle, in a city that didn't allow him to carry a firearm without a proper license, perhaps Plaxico Burress should have gone somewhere else last Friday night - or just stayed home.
Hopefully, we can all learn a lesson from this - guns are dangerous and gun ownership is a serious responsibility. Any one of us has the potential to make a mistake, get angry, or get drunk, which makes carrying loaded guns in public all the more dangerous for all of us. We all need to understand the risks and responsibilities that go with guns.
(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)
So maybe Obama will toss the playbook and go two full terms without muttering the phrase gun control.
We all remember NY Gov. Elliot Spitzer, right?
What a fine track record.
Thus many gunowners cannot help but comment when it turns out that anti-gunowner legislators were the ones who REALLY were for sale.
Via Amendment II Democrats:
Fast forward to June 9, 2007. Now we find Blagojevich surrounded by the families of people killed by violent criminals - and once again calling for a ban on semi-automatics, denouncing Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan for not allowing a vote on banning "high-capacity" magazines on the House floor. But this time, the venue is different. Blagojevich delivered these remarks while standing outside the Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago...
...which, as it turns out, is the very same hospital that Federal prosecutors allege was secretly threatened by Blagojevich with a loss of $8 million in state funds, earmarked to reimburse doctors who treated Medicaid patients. The reason? Blagojevich complained that he never received a contribution from hospital CEO Patrick Magoon to the tune of $50,000.
The personification of Il politics. You have to love this guy.
Did you see the press conference with MAIG member Daley? He's scared.
There are precautions that anyone can & ought to take in order to enhance their personal safety while hiking, camping, etc. (ie., never hiking alone & staying in groups, staying on designated trails & not wandering off, watching for park service postings for any bear sightings/warnings, etc. & take it seriously, not wandering around after dark, keeping a very close eye on youngsters, etc.).
The only thing I shoot with is my camera.
And this behavior has well served both myself & my environment ~ & others, too, for that matter ... no accidental shootings or a child or someone else who shouldn't be getting ahold of a gun to worry about, etc. ~ for a number of years now.
I suspect that some of you pro-gun types just wish to be able to take your guns just about everywhere you fancy. And that is more dangerous, in my view, than the possibility of facing a grizzly bear or a mountain lion.
This is about Plaxico. There is another article regarding the national parks issue.
Think tank: If each of us carried a gun . . .
. . . we could help to combat terrorism
Richard Munday
...For anybody who still believed in it, the Mumbai shootings exposed the myth of “gun control”. India had some of the strictest firearms laws in the world, going back to the Indian Arms Act of 1878, by which Britain had sought to prevent a recurrence of the Indian Mutiny. ..
...The Mumbai massacre also exposed the myth that arming the police force guarantees security. Sebastian D’Souza, a picture editor on the Mumbai Mirror who took some of the dramatic pictures of the assault on the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, was angered to find India’s armed police taking cover and apparently failing to engage the gunmen...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article5299010.ece
Michael
A lot of those "elite" police officers in Mumbai didn't even know how to shoot straight.
I have to agree with Emily, and others, that this is probably the most absurd argument presented by the anti-gun side. I see it occasionally on other anti-gun blogs as well, and it's the dumbest thing I ever heard.
Do you honestly think that the founders were so stupid and short-sighted that they believed the Brown Bess musket was as far as firearms tech. would ever advance?
Firearms technology was advancing during their own lifetimes. When Ben Franklin was a boy, the flintlock was a new advance. Later in the 18th century, riflling came along. During the Revolution, a British army colonel invented a successful breach-loading rifle. The French were trying to develop the first practical revolver.
I am surprised at you Kelli, for even trying to resort to such a lame argument.
There ARE limits, of course; civilian gun capability was frozen by the National Firearms Act of 1934, which de facto limits civilian guns to non-automatic, non-sound-suppressed firearms under .51 caliber. Lever-actions, bolt-actions, revolvers, and semiautomatics were deemed appropriate for civilian use, whereas automatics, explosives, and cut-down rifles and shotguns were restricted. No one is seriously trying to overturn that.
What I, and most gun owners, wish to do is PRESERVE that compromise. I want to retain the right to lawfully purchase, own, use, and maintain currently legal non-automatic, non-sound-suppressed NFA Title 1 civilian firearms.
The Brady Campaign's attempts to outlaw protruding rifle handgrips and ergonomic rifle/shotgun stocks, mandate 1860's style magazine capacities, move the rifle caliber limit from .50 down into the .40's or .30's, etc. are all attempts to undermine that long-established compromise. And since those features are pretty much irrelevant to gun violence in the USA, the underlying motive is to screw responsible gun owners.
Unless, of course, the US Supreme Court has ruled on the matter:
"Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35-36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding."
Worth reading again: "We do not interpret constitutional rights that way."
Well that's odd, because Leonardo da Vinci did, back in the early 16th century. And how do you know what the Founders expected? Weapons technology, including firearms tech. had been advancing since the dawn of time. So, I think you're wrong again.
"The Founders never expected 30-shoot magazines/automatic and semiautomatic weapons suggesting the Founders expected advances in weapons technology"
Did you mean to contradict yourself here, or did you mistype?
And why are you harping about conservatives? Many of us here, and nearly half of gun-owners in general (including myself), are liberal leaning Democrats or independents.
And what of the police? How did they perform? Not very well, as it turns out:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article14086308.ece
"There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."
"I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera."
Perhaps we should use a new slogan: Guns don't kill people, gun control does.
http://www.guncite.com
# 1,408,907 licenses have been issued.
# 533,181 of those are current and active.
# 166 have been revoked due to a gun-related crime. ...
Even if you include all 3716 that have been revoked, that .027% .
A larger percentage of Million Mom March Chapter Presidents commit crimes.
Gun Control:
Hitler was for it
Gandhi was vehemently against it.
Gandhi:
"I used to issue leaflets asking people to enlist as recruits. One of the arguments I had used was distasteful to the Commissioner: 'Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity.
If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial,
distrust will disappear, and the
ban on possessing arms will be
withdrawn.'
http://www.mkgandhi.org/autobio/chap151.htm
Plenty of us Liberals defend the 2nd amendment for it's deterrence to tyrants, not just for self defense and hunting.
I can see why Plaxico would carry a gun.
This is what psychology calls a "confirmation bias." They seek out information that confirms a preconceived belief while completely ignoring any information or evidence to the contrary.