“Ask yourself: If (the Nairobi mall siege happened in) Denver, Col., if that was Texas, would those guys have been able to spend hours, days, shooting people randomly? What I’m saying is it makes police around the world question their views on gun control. It makes citizens question their views on gun control. You have to ask yourself, ‘Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past with an evolving threat of terrorism?’ This is something that has to be discussed.” – Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble, After Westgate, Interpol Chief Ponders ‘Armed Citizenry’ [at abcnews.go.com]

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68 COMMENTS

    • Look at what happened in the Portland Mall shooting. When challenged by Joe Q. Public with a ccw, he shot himself.

      • I think it is very effective psyops. All over the world, people have been conditioned to think of Americans as armed killers.

        This helps cement that image, and complicates the preparations of our enemies.

    • It would have taken 10-15 minutes for PD to get there in sufficient numbers. Another 30 minutes to get SWAT on site with the MRAP -you’d think they’d have two sets of keys for it. Another 5 to get situational awareness -next go in.
      Remember, many malls in Texas are defenseless victim zones as shown by the legal no guns sign (displaying 30.06 law) which does apply to CHL holders. Most of the time the malls do have the old retired police guys walking the floor and they carry a glock of some kind. When seconds count…

      • FYI, MRAPs, like most military trucks, don’t typically have keys. Just padlockable points (steering, doors, etc)

      • And then several hours of arguing between the police, SWAT, FBI, etc over who has jurisdiction in this area. In the meanwhile, the terrorists just carry on.

  3. Interpol boss was tired of his job? Making statements questioning gun control in the international venue is a good way to get fired.

    • I was thinking the same thing myself. While nice to hear someone in the ‘international’ community speak with a sense of intelligence, I don’t think he’ll be long for his job, given who he works for…

  4. Just as settlers had to be ready for attacks from hostile Indians in the days when the Bill of Rights was composed, so terrorism is a real possibility today. If the gun-grab crowd could only grasp the meaning of the word “emergency”, maybe we of the sensibly-armed crowd would get less static from them.

  5. He had better carry a gun (and a shield to deflect drone strikes) now that the UN and the White House have elevated him to international public enemy #1.

  7. Woohoo! My first contribution.

    Reading that article made me wonder if some people may finally come to their senses with arming the citizenry…

  8. Not just Texas but anywhere in the South. We get the reputation for being gun loving down here but there are other states that like to exercise their 2nd amendment rights just as much if not more than Texas.

    • Indiana. We have OC. Something Texas cant say. Not an insult just stating we are a very pro 2a state. When all of the libstates went batty cota after Newtown, we passed several pro 2a bills in response.

    • It wouldn’t last long in PA. Despite going blue in the last election we’re VERY gun-friendly here. $20 for a CCW permit and open carry is legal, no permit required. The people in this state are armed to the teeth. It’s just Philly that gves us a bad reputation.

      • West philladelphia born and raised on play ground where I spent most of days chillin out relaxin actin all cool and shootin some b-ball outside of the school when a couple of guys started making trouble in my neighborhood

        • Now this is a story all about how
          My gun rights are in grave danger now
          So I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there
          I’ll tell you how to protect your rights from being impaired

          In the Land of the Free, born and raised
          At the gun range is where I spent most of my days
          Chillin’ out, shootin’, reloadin’ my Glock
          Observing the Four Rules around the clock

          When a couple of statists from the state of C.A.
          Tried to pass some laws to take my guns away
          I bought one AR and Feinstein said “sheeeeit,”
          “Assault weapons have no place on our streets!”

      • I live in New Jersey and I think in response to the attack, we would ban all semi-automatics, shopping malls and make it a crime to congregate in groups of more than 20 people.

      • Took me 18 months and 400 bucks to get my non CCW pistol permit in suburban NY.

        PA CCW permit? 26 bucks and, including mailing both ways, 5 days.

  9. If he’s against Obamachrist’s policies, he must be a racist. Probably one of dem white self-identified Afro-americans.

  11. ‘Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past with an evolving threat of terrorism?’

    Buh, but, but… the constitution is outdated! We don’t have to fight off bears and Indians with our muskets anymore. And the founding fathers never imagined scary black automatic assault weapons with thousand round clip thingies.

  12. You can literally see the light bulb appearing over this guy’s head.

    I think a better example is the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai. India has bred a hoplophobic culture for decades and it came back to bite them. The siege lasted for three days, killing 164 and wounding 308. Did I mention that the attacks were carried out by only 10 terrorists?

    • Because of India’s extreme fear of weapons, even the police had no idea how to operate their firearms under stress, and literally many just hid until fired on.

      I work in IT, there are a number of Indians in IT. Taking some out to lunch, a small folding pocket knife dropped out of the car, and their reactions was as if a bomb was at their feet. When you have people who are literally afraid of a small tactical flashlight, Fenix LD22, you have an issue.

      This fear doesn’t go away once they become officers, or join the military. It’s hard to be effective when you fear your own firearm, and your superiors fear you having that firearm.

      10 people attacking a major city in the US would have been shut down without an hour, they may be hiding after that, but they would no longer be on the offensive.

      In India, that attack ended simply by attrition, because it was 10 against thousands, eventually the Indian police just got lucky enough to take them all out, but after 150 plus were killed.

      The financial capital of India was shut down for days because of 10 people. Think about that.

      • The financial capital of America (possibly the world) was shut down for at least that long by 19 terrorists, you may recall.

        Airplanes are “Gun free zones”.

        Just sayin’.

      • I heard in the Mumbai incident, some of the terrorists actually ran out of ammunition. It must have been a target rich environment.

  13. Most people don’t understand how brittle the civil order is. It took only a couple of hundred hard core individuals on both sides to turn Ulster into a shooting and bombing gallery for 25 years. The “Thin Blue Line” is illusory. They depend on the citzen as much as we depend on them. It’s too bad that many police departments have forgotton that.

    • I heard it said once that civilization is only a thin veneer over the savage state that always exists in nature and that we’re never much more than 9 missed meals from having our baser instincts revealed.

      I think the observation was accurate and have spent some time wondering what a city or a country might look like with everyone wondering around 3 days from their last meal.

      Civil society can be described as being a situation not so different from any day to day one except in scale. That is, just because the mall was safe every time you went before doesn’t mean that it can’t be a killing field next time you go, and just because the police have always come when called and your neighbors have never broken in your house or attacked you in your yard doesn’t mean they never will.

      The concept that there is greater harm to being armed than there is value can only be supported if one assumes that what has been always will be AND one is mistaken about what was, is and will be. While civil stability has never lasted forever anywhere ever, crime and violence have plagued every society. So while the current calm isn’t likely to persist indefinitely for us as a culture and a nation, violent crime and criminals will always be with us.

      Every day is SHTF day for someone, therefore the only logical response is to be prepared everyday in case it hits the fan for you.

      • Outstanding points!

        Anti gunner keep talking about not needing guns in “civilized societies”…

        The difference between “civilized people” and “uncivilized people” is electricity and readily available food and water.

        People can get uncivilized real quick when they’re hungry and thirsty.

  14. Yeah, he gets it.

    More and more citizenry are getting it here in the good old U.S. of A. as well. One of my friends figured it out all by himself immediately following the Aurora movie theater shooting. And a neighbor figured it out all by herself after the Newtown Connecticut school shooting. People are waking up. It just takes time — on the order of one to two years unfortunately — for them to get passionate enough to start learning and voting accordingly.

    That is why we have momentum everywhere in the U.S. except for California, the Chicago Megalopolis, and the Boston – Washington D.C. Megalopolis. I know the situation is discouraging in those three regions. Everywhere else rights are expanding. If you live in any of those regions, you really should take a vacation to some place in the rest of the country to see, first hand, how different things really are.

  16. thanks for the h/t on raising the article. . . . 🙁

    now I have to go back to dreaming about Shannon Watts

    • So when you fantasize about her, which is it:

      A) You dream about converting her to enjoy guns somehow, disband her group, and become your range/sex partner,

      B) You dream about striking up a relationship with her, keeping your love of guns hidden, until one night when you two are about to make love, and you take off your shirt revealing your concealed carry pistol, savoring the look of horror on her face as she realizes that she has been going on dates and making out with one of “them”

      I’m just curious.

        • more like after a fun romp in a cheap motel room, she suggests we go to the local gun show and she spends all of her rich hubbie’s $$$ buying me new toys and even gets my name tat’d across her a$$. Of course, then I find out he likes to watch so it’s all good and he springs for that Porsche 911 I wanted. . . .

          I am curious fellas – what do you think? Shaved or au natural? I bet she has a tramp stamp (she did go to Missouri-Columbia) and has a nice landing strip.

  17. I’m a CHL holding Texan, but I don’t know if this is necessarily true. Lots of people have guns, but keep them at home or in the truck.

    I carry religiously, but most people don’t, even in the south lots of people are unarmed most of the day.

    I travel for work a lot and I’ve gotten out of speeding tickets in various parts of Texas because cops were impressed that I actually had a weapon on my person. One of the cops even admitted that most CHL holders hand over their license (because we are required to here) and the first words out of their mouth are ” I’m unarmed” or ” I don’t have a weapon on me”.

    For example, as you read this do a gun check, are you carrying right now? Most probably aren’t because of work, school, or whatever.

    Gun check yourself and your buddies often, you’d be surprised how many people can carry, but chose not to, for whatever reason.

    • While your post is spot-on, you don’t necessarily need people carrying to deter criminals. Usually, if there’s a potential for someone to be carrying, criminals look for a softer target. In the case of the Aurora movie theater shooting, the shooter (I refuse to name him and give him any more notoriety) didn’t choose the theater that was closest to his house. Nor, did he choose the theater with the greatest capacity. He chose the theater that had a strict “no weapons” policy.

  20. This guy was born in Jersey, went to Stanford Law, is a tenured law professor, and he STILL somehow “gets” it. I’m sure all the real-life LE and counter-terrorism experience has something to do with the difference in his viewpoint vs. his contemporaries that never left the imaginary world of University.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Noble

  23. You missed the rest of his quote on page 2 of that article which is equally good:

    “For me it’s a profound question,” he continued. “People are quick to say ‘gun control, people shouldn’t be armed,’ etc., etc. I think they have to ask themselves: ‘Where would you have wanted to be? In a city where there was gun control and no citizens armed if you’re in a Westgate mall, or in a place like Denver or Texas?'”

  25. Too bad the shopping malls even in gun-friendly States like to post the “No Guns” signs. Or is it not the same everywhere?

    • I can confirm that in both indiana and Kentucky(there are other states I’m sure), those signs hold no force of law. I carry… everywhere.

  27. ‘Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past with an evolving threat of terrorism?’

    Yes.

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