“People go to the guns much quicker than ever before, and for much less reasons. The days of going behind the woodshed and taking care of things like men are gone. We just shoot each other now.” – Toledo Police Chief George Kral in Event stresses importance of safety locks for guns [via toledoblade.com]
Evidence please, Chief. Tell us bumpkins how we don’t know nuthin’ no more.
Yeah. I’m calling BS to that claim too.
The proof is in the stats. Not everyone is going to guns faster; just take a look at where most homicides (by guns) takes place. Inner city ghetto’s account for much of the so called “gun violence” where most shooters and shootees are AA. Take those out of the equation and all of sudden “gun violence” goes way, way down.
What does he expect? Not everyone has a woodshed!
Yep need a Federal program – “Woodsheds n Outhouses fur da gettoe”
You just solved big city ‘gun violence’. We need more woodsheds!! 🙂
The days of going behind the woodshed? For some time the loser from behind the woodshed could go to you mister policeman and file a complaint on the winner, no matter who started it.
Now people don’t see a benefit of going behind the woodshed, they’d rather drop the issue and move on with their lives, but some people won’t drop the issue.
I’m not planning on pushing an issue and starting a fight, it’s just not worth getting injured, being out of work or losing my job, risking getting sued, and worse things than a black eye can happen, someone gets knocked down and hits their head and dies. None of this is worth going behind the woodshed.
I’m sorry, let’s move on with our lives. But some people can’t move on, they need to show how tough they are, and if they choose to show how tough they are with an armed citizen who knows their rights and is in fear of grave harm from mister tough guy, then yes, ballistic conflict resolution may happen.
Exactly what I was thinking. Some a$$hole will film it on their cell phone and the winner gets arrested by clowns like this police chief. “We have to arrest you. Just following the law, Sir”.
Yes, it reminds me of the Crazy Uncle Bidden shoot-in-the-air defense, someone who should have credibility says something and when someone else uses what that advice they get the book thrown at them.
So does that mean that the Toledo PD are going to leave their guns in the car and try to challenge armed suspects to fisticuffs?
Silly wabbit! His opinions are directed at us peons, not the elite like himself.
Go behind the woodshed and take care of things like men? How well does that work when one combatant is 5′ tall and 100 pounds while the other is a foot and half taller and three times the weight? Even if they are similar in size, strength and skill, how about brain injuries caused by blows to the head? I am sick of this “real men” bullshit. Real men avoid fights but, when they have no other option, do what it takes to protect themselves and their loved ones.
But…. Bruce Lee….. 🙂
More seriously, most violence are between young men. As in, the group least likely to suffer substantial damage from some fisticuffs. And lots, not saying all but still lots, of the stuff they get all aggro over, is, as it was back in the day when people did have woodsheds, things that often does/did resolve itself simply by blowing off some steam. Things that may seem worth dying for in a testosterone fuelled haze of rage, ended up being laughed about over a beer the next day, while the wounds healed.
And I’m sure police see more of these kind of situations than anyone. So what the guy’s saying isn’t nonsensical, It’s based on a good read of human males throughout history.
Of course, the ambulance chasers and taxfeeding know-betters and make-you-dos have, as always, managed to, in practice, destroy this age old institution as well. To replace it with ones that revolve around everyone else bending over, bowing down and handing over all they’ve got. While chanting “Rule of Law”, “Rule of Law”, just like they’ve been told to.
Your observations would be correct if the people Chief Kral were talking about (without actually saying so, because cops seem unable to admit that we have a gang problem, not a gun problem) were junior high school kids tussling over a girl. But the “young men” who are most resorting to guns instead of fisticuffs are gang members who aren’t going to laugh about it over a beer later. You win a fistfight over a gang beef, and your vanquished foe’s homies are going to jump you later. If you know it’s going to end up in gunfire eventually, why not skip the bruises and pissing blood and just shoot first?
The problem in many major cities is that we’ve locked up a lot of the old school gang leaders who were able to manage their people well enough to keep these kinds of squabbles from escalating. The idea of fighting organized crime by “cutting off the head” doesn’t really work. It doesn’t stop the crime, it just takes away the “organized” part. The escalating violence in places like Chicago is what you get when you take away the “brains” of an operation and leave the “brawn” to take charge.
“Why not meet him on the street with a .45 and (imitate gun noise)”
Bruce Lee, Enter the Dragon
Society has created a situation where boys are not allowed to grow into men. A large number of 25-30yo males that have never advanced, mentally, past the 13yo level.
They still live at home with mom. They’ve never had a moment of discapline in their lives. They think only of their momentary pleasures.
A simple school yard tussle lands them in life altering trouble. Is it any wonder they don’t know how to respond other than reaching for a gun?
Boys need male role models. Male, not neutered. And they need to be allowed to fight when they’re young. They can learn that a black eye or bloody nose isn’t the end of the world.
And it wouldn’t hurt to bring back the draft.
You do make a good point kids get into more trouble for doing less these days. Then they get a record making everything else down the line more difficult. Police use to give drunk drivers rides home. They would go to your parents if you stole from a constitution site to build a fort. Now the police go strait to the station and have the state deal with it. Instead of family members.
This is the unintended consequence of the Warren Court decisions and increased police oversight. Officer friendly no longer can give a troubled kid “a lecture” in the ally and set him on the straight and narrow. The police no longer can use their judgement and must go by rules. Do you think the cop that stops you for going 7 mph over the limit can let you go with a wearing when his bodycam is running?
Police are just now getting body cams in some major cities, and not necessarily for all officers encountering the public. Besides, these issues go farther back than the advent of body cams, anyway.
If anything, Officer Friendly’s hands are tied because he’s no longer a peace officer. He a tax collector for the welfare state. It isn’t that he can’t let you go after having stopped you gor going 7 mph over the speed limit. It’s that he can’t show up back at the station after his shift without having ticketed enough somebodies for going a meaningless few mph over the speed limit.
The liberal political machine in nearly every big city burns through cash faster than a 1990s dotcom start-up. That forces police departments to become profit centers seeking out and initiating citizen contacts in the hope of extracting wealth. Whether that’s from plain old B.S. tickets or civil asset forfeiture, it doesn’t matter. Just keep the filthy lucre coming.
That is faux Libertarian BS. The uniform application of rights results in a rule based system that leaves the officer with little discretion. Equal protection means everyone gets treated the same whether it is teenage driver making a mistake or a reckless drunk. The example below of the two guys duking out is spot on. The cop no longer has option of determining whether it was just two guys settling a dispute or whether it is actual crime. By rule somebody has to be arrested. Faux Libertarian anti-police rhetoric has further result in the piling on of more rules and allowing less discretion. Remember Radley Balko supported the Ferguson gang bangers and their supporters.
Shoot, according to my dad (65 years old), back in the day, two grown men fighting didn’t necessarily end with people going to jail. The two men would fight, if a cop showed up and the guys appeared to have gotten “it” out of their system, then that was it.
Doesn’t help that there are cops everywhere now. Back in the day if I got caught in a fist fight at school the lunch lady would come out and break it up, maybe call our parents. Now if a kid gets into a fight at school a police office is going to come out and power bomb his ass onto the concrete floor. Follow it up with a nice pepper spray shower and a trip to jail just for good measure.
You forgot about the mandatory suspension and possible expulsion. Like the kid on the bus who was attacked and punched multiple times for wearing a Trump MAGA hat, and had the temerity to push the attacker away. Both he and the attacker are suspended. Punishment for doing nothing wrong is something wrong!
I’ve been arguing this point forever. To a teenager, whose brains are not fully formed yet, the penalty for a fist fight seems life ending. To them you may as well shoot the fvcker.
Had a guy at work get into an argument with me and he threatened to meet me behind the proverbial woodshed. I said bring your gun because I’ll have mine.
Shut his ass up real quick like.
Armed and polite. Here’s a novel idea: Why don’t we stop fighting?
Because, if God didn’t build men to fight, he wouldn’t have given them fists.
For genuinely tripped out flower power children, a world entirely without any kind of conflict may seem, like, realistic. As everyone’s on their own, literal, trip. And in their own universe….
But for the rest of us, there will, on occasion, be conflicts that require resolution. A fight is one such resolution. Works in some to many cases, although not in all.
But the problem is that the alternatives that are currently promoted as superior, is nothing more than bowing down to a bunch of tax feeders and lawyers. So that they can “issue a ruling” on every little detail about people’s once-were-lives. So, instead of two free men with bloody noses, you end up with two permanently bent over serfs with raped until bloody you-know-whats.
I’ve never seen a fight resolve a dispute where both sides had a legitimate complaint. It just pisses off the loser even more because he was cheated out of whatever was rightly his for no other reason than someone else was better at something as irrelevant to the matter as fighting.
Unfortunately that’s how it is now. You can’t just get into a fistfight with someone and assume it’s over after that. I specifically avoid any and all confrontation, because if it gets physical, and I happen to come out on top, these days you can safely assume the other guy will want to escalate at that point. Or he’ll call the cops or a lawyer and come after you that way.
You’ll never lose the fist fight you avoid.
Like I told the “urban outdoorsman” at the gas station when he threatened to “woop my a$$” and take “all my sh!t” when I refused to give him some $$.” I quit fighting on my 21st birthday”, as I exposed my holstered gat. He left, and I see him regularly and he doesn’t say a damn word to me.
Killers are not looking for a fistfight. They use firearms, knives, IED’s. People breaking into your home are not looking for a fistfight, they are looking for easy pickings and easy prey, they may very well kill you and yours just for fun. Gangs are not into fistfights, they are into killing each other, mostly, for any reason, anywhere.
Chief, make it policy for your officers not to arrest anyone, just take them out behind the shed for a good old fashioned fistfight. Disarm your officers, make sure the fight is fair. Lead by example. Safety lock their firearms. (For those of us at home, yes, practice safety first, especially with children in the house. Even toddlers have proven they can pull the trigger. Give it some thought.)
The police chief fails to understand the issue. The people reaching for a gun are not trying to settle a dispute over someone’s dog crapping in their yard.
They are reaching for a gun to.protect their business. Whether that is drugs, prostitution, extortion, or some other crime they are fighting over cash flows, territory, and brand respect. In short they are fighting for their livelihood, no matter how illegitimate, and a fist fight is not.going to protect those assets.
Bizarre. Some town hall type meeting at a church to talk about safe firearms storage and distribute gun locks because of several cases of ballistic negligence that resulted in the deaths of children and criminal charges. And here’s the police chief saying we should go behind the woodshed and settle our disputes like real men with fists. Bizarre.
Since the event was about accidental shootings involving children, maybe he was saying people should beat their kids more? The only other explanation is that this police chief is an idiot, and that can’t possibly be true.
I’m going with the latter.
Real men don’t go looking for an excuse to beat someone, like skin color.
Real men don’t break into people’s houses and rob them.
Real men don’t rape.
Real men don’t prey on those they consider defenseless.
Real men don’t start fights, but when one does, they finish it using the best tools they have.
Real men have guns not because they’re not “real men,” but because of the people who aren’t.
I think he was speaking about himself and his officers when he said “we”.
In fairness, no.
The “people” he refers to are people who are raised in neighborhoods where certain concepts like personal responsibility, gainful employment, fatherhood and Christian values do not exist, and have not existed for generations.
That suspect that was his intent as well. However, I posit that including police in the ‘we’ is fair (accurate) too.
Ahhh…….this from a guy whose own police force members used to walk a beat alone with a night stick and maybe a revolver.
Now they have whole SWAT teams equipped with body armor, select fire rifles, stun grenades, tasers, night vision, infra red, MRAPs, drones, and more.
The inclination of the government to up armor and employ deadly weaponry as a default is far more menacing than any alleged rise in deadly disputes between neighbors.
Good point.
Besides last year, murder rates have been declining for decades. That seems to point to less people resorting to ending a life. I’m not quite sure what this cop is talking about?
Exactly. Combine that fact with the growth of gun ownership and the rise of concealed carriers across the country since the late 1980s, and this chief’s argument completely collapses.
“The days of going behind the woodshed and taking care of things like men are gone. We just shoot each other now.”
For most of recorded history “handling things like men” meant putting a sword blade or spearhead through your opponent’s chest…..that changed over to musket balls and bowie knives in 19th century America. This guy has an awful understanding of the history of conflict resolution.
And then in the mid-to-late twentieth century they resorted to calling their lawyer and suing the person who didn’t see things their way.
Progress?
He’s deliberately omitting the fact that it’s primarily the gangs that are going to guns to settle things. The political structure in cities knows damn well that if they took about 1500 people off the street, homicides and shootings would drop miraculously overnight.
I have a plate in my neck that insists I shoot anyone who tries to hit me in the face. I’m too old for a beatin’.
For those people that grew up in my time (the 60’s) will remember if you talked in class and the teacher gave you a slap in back of the head. You did not dare go home and tell your old man. If you got into a fight with another kid , the police were not called.
In most cases you ended up as friends again. Different times.
Yes, all the shootings that occurred in the Wild West days of yore were never over small issues, right? Hell, in the Wild West, fist fights were considered unmanly (according to the Mammoth Book of the West by Jon Lewis).
For centuries, the only appropriate way to settle an argument and maintain your honor (and therefore manliness) was a duel. It is relatively recent history that duels have been outlawed.
Oh, and responsible gun-owners do not willingly place themselves in situations where they would have to use their gun. How well would it work when Mr. Burglar or Mr. Psycho are breaking into your house, and you challenge them to fisticuffs? I doubt their response will be “Marquess of Queensbury or Prize Ring rules?”
I think it is a good thing for young men to occasionally settle their differences in “the ring”. It makes them better men. We’ve all won some and lost some as they say. There have even been times as an adult where a buddy and I will spar together a little, no hard feelings.
The people so quick to pick up a gun because of a crossways look, insult or because they got their butt kicked are not responsible adults. Don’t lump us in with them.
Yeah I haven’t heard “the woodshed” BS in quite awhile. I was in a few fights as a kid in the 60’s(besides my brothers). Now police are called or some poor12year kid is slammed to the floor with a fractured skull like what happened to a middle school boy this week. These kids(and adults) aren’t going about it like I did as a kid. Get a gun and learn to use it.
This guy’s own statement kind proves the opposite of his point as well. Yes, people are picking up a gun for little to no reason these days- someone states they will shoot you because you gave them a dirty look or offended them in some way- you aren’t exactly going to assume that you can just whoop them. Some people might be inclined to start toting a gun.
Most of the “gun violence” (not counting suicides, because wtf would you) is driven by drugs and inner-city gangs. Most of it is NOT driven by two guys arguing about sports teams and deciding to have a shootout instead of fistfighting.
Actually Mr. Policeman, you’ve got it completely backwards. Gone are the days that men settled their disputes with a pistol duel.
What other crazy shit can you spew?
Times have changed. American society has regressed from predominately Christian all-life-is-sacred to ‘everyone did what was right in his own mind’. The secularization of American education (and indeed European / UK as well) from a God-focused country to a self-focused country, forced scientism religion disguised as ‘[thou shalt not question] Science!’ insists to the growing child ‘you are nothing but an animal with a bigger brain’, marriage for life becomes a tax shelter for only as long as both parties are ‘happy’, precious human lives are sacrificed at the altar of convenience named ‘my body,my choice’… all of these things go together to de-value life, remove the intrinsic value and substitute extrinsic. Taught they were animals, they became as animals. Life is worthless, there is no god, live for today, i’m gonna take what’s mine, give me what’s coming to me.
No wonder we escalate to gunplay. Without the reason or ability to forgive each other, there is no reason for you to exist it you bother my existence.
Anyway, thank God it’s not true. We do have a future and a hope. Nostalgia about the conflict resolutions of the pre-post-truth era is an exercise in futility and the thing of black and white TV shows.
I think you’re on point. Glad there’s another Believer out there who realizes all Life is immeasurably precious.
Except we secular types do no such thing. You need to go to neighborhoods where churches come three on every block to find that kind of violence.
What utter nonsense. It seems to me that there are thousands of fundamentalist religious gleefully slaughtering each other, their women and their children, all in the name of the Same God. Life has little value in the Middle East, Africa, and most of Asia and the Indian subcontinent, even though many of those places are quite conservative religiously and morally. I also seem to recall that the Cosa Nostra and the Sicilian Mafia are solidly Catholic, but that does not seem to prevent them from engaging in gambling, prostitution, drugs, theft rings, political corruption, blackmail, and any other criminal activity that makes them money while going dutifully to Church every Sunday, baptising their children, and assiduously tithing.
All of those things you mention, including the generic ‘religious’ slam, would be antithesis of Christianity. I won’t argue with your ignorance in the matter. The message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. Humans in general have ‘good intentions’ but tend to bad behavior. Without an understanding and view of the Truth, anything goes, everything is relative to your subjective views. Christians *know* they are bad, it’s a pre-requisite to admit this and acknowledge their inability to be truly good absent God..
Horse hockey! First, I’m a responsible gun owner an don’t go to guns unless my life or another’s is under threat. Second, if I were to take some snowflake moron behind a woodshed and handle a problem like men, then he’d be crying, we’d both be on the news, and I’d be going to jail, even if he swung first because I’m the big, (5’7″) mean, martial-arts-trained Soldier. Besides, if dueling in any form made a come-back, society would get pretty damned polite, and skin would triple in thickness pretty quick.
Yes, I remember very fondly the good old days when men were men and Crips, Bloods and MS-13 would resolve their differences with a boxing match judged on the ten-point must system.
Who’s “we”, Kemosabe?
He wants people to scrap?! Guy sounds too immature, reckless and sadistic to be a cop. I’m glad I don’t live in that JD.
To quote Harry Callahan, “I didn’t start shooting at anyone that didn’t start shooting at me first.”
It seems to me that fighting back behind the woodshed is a crime, perhaps a serious felony if anyone picks up a board or a bat. Is this chief–who as all chiefs seems dead set against anyone but the police possessing guns–actually encouraging people to resolve their differences by engaging in “lesser” criminal acts? Guffaw.
I firmly believe that kids go to guns because they never learned that fisticuffs never leave a winner, just one that did not lose as much. Kids need to scrap, that is what young mammals do, is train to scrap and defend themselves. Pre teens don’t usually hurt each other much and it is healthy. Keep pulling them apart and sooner or later the weak one, who never found his/her place in the pecking order, will pick up an equalizer.
Feral male humans are not men.
Assuming he were correct, why doesn’t he just think of it as evolution in action?
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