Through a miracle of modern jurisprudence, Washington, D.C. has transitioned from a complete handgun ban to “shall issue” concealed carry. (The government now must show good cause why they shouldn’t issue a carry permit to a citizen.)
This in The Washington Post’s own backyard! No surprise, then, that the rabidly anti-gun rights rag gave editorial space to an in-house Fudd to decry the partial return of firearms freedom to our nation’s capital . . .
I won’t be one of those trying to get a concealed-carry license.
Not that I am irrevocably opposed to gun ownership.
Records of the D.C. police will show that I am a registered gun owner — have been for years.
Got my license when I returned to the District after living in Maryland, where I acquired my .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle. Renewed the license last year after being fingerprinted and undergoing an FBI background check.
I know my way around guns, having fired an M1 rifle in Army training. I also am familiar with pistols. During my years as a special agent with the State Department in the ’60s, I was qualified in the use of a .38-caliber pistol and a .357 magnum. These were the weapons issued when I was assigned to protect visiting foreign heads of state.
Interesting that WaPo Opinion Writer Colbert I. King doesn’t refer to his .22 caliber semiautomatic firearm as an “assault rifle.”
Anyway, here’s why Mr. King won’t be undergoing the District’s unconstitutional training regime: paperwork, a criminal background check, two hours of range training and a 16-hour safety course. And no, it’s not because the Geneva Convention considers 16 hours of state-approved training a form of psychological torture.
While my own weapon is trigger-locked with the key out of reach, I don’t particularly like myself when I have a gun on my hip.
Recalling my experience years ago when I was pressed into service to help protect a foreign leader attending a U.N. General Assembly session and making an official visit to Washington, I back off the idea of carrying a lethal weapon.
I liked the experience way too much.
I loved the weight of the weapon on my hip, the glances I got from the people on the streets, in the hotels and at receptions who noticed the gun when my jacket slid open.
I liked too much the feeling of empowerment, and the what? — the itchiness to show off, to be seen taking on possible threats. Just spoiling for a challenge.
Back then, the lure of coming off macho was in my head.
It could be with me now.
So Mr. King is something of a nutcase. Sorry. Suffers from some form of PTSD. Condolences and, well, fair enough.
Mr. King is hardly the only gun owner I’ve met who won’t carry a gun because they don’t trust themselves to use it responsibly. Or not use it when they shouldn’t. In fact, props to Mr. King for telling the world he owns a pair of those “dangerous hands” the Post’s gun control advocates keep rabbiting on about.
That said, brickbats (as usual) for the assiduously anti-gun Post.
I’d be totally cool with Mr, King’s declaration of psychological/emotional instability IF his the paper published a piece from a responsible gun owner welcoming the change in D.C.’s carry laws. Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.
And yet The Post regularly accuses the NRA of being a bunch of fear mongers. Go figure.
I think that the not-so-subtle subtext here is “I was trained by the government and I can’t trust myself. Therefore no one else can be trusted either.” which plays nicely with the antis assumption that we’re all wannabe Rambo folks just itching to show off and hoping to blast someone into the next life.
Personally, every time I strap on a pistol I hope that I don’t have to shoot anyone with it.
Aren’t all LEOs trained by the government, if he can’t trust himself, why should we trust anyone trained by the government.?
Get out of here with your logic.
Give the guy credit- he found his level of incompetence and is avoiding it.
AND found a home at the WashPo. How appropriate can you get.
You are aware of your own level of incompetence and are trying to avoid it.
I am SO saving that for the next bigot that insists to me that they would never deign to touch a gun.🤠
Man’s got to know his limitations.
Yes, Projection seems to be a reason that so many antis are the way they are: “If I couldn’t trust myself, no one should be trusted.”
Speaks more to the liberal mindset than anything else.
Hmmmm. Maybe I dont want him to be armed either.
My guess is that the DC 5-0 could use his written statement to revoke his ownership.
But I am pretty sure that the gun is not respsonsible for his attitude.
He brought that stuff with him.
Hope he doesnt have a family tomhave to put up with him.
He should never be issued a DC CC permit, at least not until they’ve issued them to all the sensible people who know that a CC pistol/revolver gives him no special mojo, and learns that letting the jacket flip open to expose a pistol carried under authority of his CC permit is a misdemeanor….unless he’s a current Fed. I note that when he received his training….the Fed instructors were still teaching the cup-and-saucer grip for revolvers.
They can only try for an emotional argument so it is all about the feelings, after all, it’s hard to refute someone’s personal testimony: “I support the second amendment and all, and look, I have guns so that makes me an expert… But after Vegas I think I am just likely on the verge of going crazy and shooting everyone, so please, restrict me, and everyone else who by projection also feels this way. I am an expert, remember, I own a gun. I forget what it is, I think it is a high powered .22 LR machine gun. So ban all guns!”
The good news is, Mr. King, gun rights are neither a requirement to carry or even own, nor a binary decision. After you confront your demons and get some help, you could still one day be able to safely possess, use, and even carry firearms. Maybe you don’t have the desire now but you can decide differently later. Unless you and your friends succeed in restricting everyone.
Good Lord! No wonder liberals don’t want people carrying guns. They’re incompetent and unqualified themselves.
Isn’t this from the same rag that says only police and soldiers should have guns? Seems a little contradictory
More evil POS (D) “We’re F’d up, we need to fix you” routine. It makes sense in their minds, and their minds are F’d up. They are the Problem, and the Problem doesn’t get to define the Problem or formulate the Solution.
Undoubtedly, our own government IS the root of so many of our most pressing problems and assuredly is the most imminent threat to our liberty. How could government possibly be the solution? It would require something unnatural; people with a borderline obsession with gaining power…for the sole purpose of severely diminishing said power, and then relinquishing what power remains. Until that is common in politicians, we shall always exist alongside a serious internal hazard to liberty.
Then *he,* and specifically he, should probably not carry a gun. The feeling he describes is very similar to the feeling I once had absentmindedly carrying a pocket knife I had found on a recent trip into the mountains and snow. I was a child and had accidentally carried the knife with me to the bus stop on my way to school and felt the need to show it off (not brandish it) by telling another bus rider about it.
If he, as an adult, has a similar emotional reaction to carrying a gun as a somewhat sheltered 9 year old had to a knife (which was also a new aquisition), then he probably has a moral duty to abstain from carrying one. He also has a moral duty to not project his own short comings onto millions of other people, people who have actually used those firearms to defend the lives of themselves, and the lives of their children and spouses.
In short: Cool story, bro. But bad policy.
“A man’s got to know his limitations”
Kudos to him, not merely for articulating, but more incredibly ascribing to himself, the very psychoses that most in the anti-gun crowd merely project upon law-abiding gun owners.
When antis refer to us as “ammosexuals” and claim that we are merely compensating for a lack in “size”, this man is, by his own admission, exactly whom you should envision.
Unfortunately, he’s lending his voice to those who want the public to think we’re all just like him, but without his minim of self-awareness. And he’s still projecting his own neuroses onto the rest of us. Kudos withdrawn. And may God have no mercy on his hypocritical soul.
right now the woman in his life is telling him that they should both start seeing other men
I would refer to Mr. King as a responsible gun owner. I’ll not attempt to change his mind regarding his own choices, and kindly ask him not to change my mind regarding my own choices.
I don’t believe that I would feel safe sitting at the dinner table with this gentleman. Whenever he picked up a butter knife and a dinner roll at the same time I could possibly crap my pants thinking he might come over the table at me for some extraneous reason that the other voices told him I did. My bowels are starting to get loose already…… (sarc)
–not to mention the dreaded, lordly, one-knife-that-rules-them-all….steak knife. I can see in my minds eye the aggressive grin on his continence every time he picks one up. And that is not meant as a comment on his weight, or steak.
Pretty boilerplate stuff: “I, as as anti-gun liberal, am by my own admission mentally unstable, and you should therefore look to me for guidance on public policy. Hey, I did say I was mentally unstable.”
Another way of expressing Joe R.’s sentiments above — I love it!
I am going to remember that one and use it at some point.
I appreciate when someone can be honest about whether they really should be carrying, it displays a level of self awareness that alot of young men don’t seem to have. What I dislike is someone trying to project their own shortcomings on the rest of the group. It’s not my fault you’re wrong in the head, your limitations are not mine.
Also, as someone currently serving, the training we receive is horseshit until you start to get into actual high speed stuff, and this jackhole knows it. I learned more in the 20 minute intro lesson at my first range trip then I’ve been taught since enlistment in regards to actually employing a weapon. Being in the military doesn’t make you any more competent, any more trustworthy, or any less of a piece of shit. Waving that in front of peoples faces as a veneer of competence is relying on peoples ignorance more than the fortitude of your argument, and just goes to show how shaky you know your position is.
Glad he is aware of his short-comings. However, I have just the opposite experience–when I am carrying I feel the weight and responsibility of it.
My only thought when I first started carrying was the worry that someone would see it. Then again, I wasn’t then and am not now an armed security guard swing his balls around.
I HAVE heard the exact same thing from other black men. “I can’t trust myself, when my blood’s up I can’t control my actions and so forth. And I say FINE-you shouldn’t have s gun homie. Or be a cop. Driving home an unpleasant reality. What a maroon…
He doesn’t trust himself to carry a gun? Good. I don’t trust him either. In fact, I believe that he has no right to own a gun, and he should be permanently prohibited from having one.
Because that’s exactly what he wants for me.
He doesn’t trust himself enough to carry a firearm? Why should WE trust that HE is informed enough to one, exercise his 1st Amendment Right to speak on any subject or two, vote.
King is part of a large stable of lefty progressive/liberal opinion writers that work for Pravda-on-the-Potomac. He is statist and thoroughly against any freedom agenda. This column is total BS.
It’s funny that while I hear this line of thinking from time to time regarding firearms, I don’t hear these folks speak the same way about other tools that they have access to in their daily lives that could also be used to lethal effect.
For example, these folks don’t pontificate about how dangerous train stations are since standing next to the train tracks during their subway commute, they could push somebody in front of a train. They don’t drive thinking about the fact that only a few degrees of steering wheel turn is literally the difference between life and death for someone traveling beside them on the road.
So this superficially rational argument falls flat. I have to assume therefore that people who feel this way about guns but not about other things like the ones I’ve mentioned above, are making a conscious choice to think about guns differently simply to rationalize their political views in their own minds.
When I was 16, with a freshly printed drivers license, occasionally I did consider the vehicles potential as a weapon, more often, generally just after some near miss on being in an accident , I would considering how lethal driving could be to others…and myself even accidentally.
When I began to carry a gun I was also accutely aware of it as a weapon, and like the car, it could be dangerous in the absence of intent, and again like the car it could be shown off, used for attention getting, or even used to intimidate.
With either one, increasing maturity, familiarity and confidence eventually made carrying a gun much like how an experienced driver feels about a car: I hardly think about it, it’s implications or its lethal potential either inadvertent or intentional, unless and until some situation, like seeing someone swerving on the highway, makes me suddenly very aware of my status, location, activity, responsibility and ultimately the potential for someone to get hurt…just as with driving, it’s nearly unthought of until there is danger.
This!
I will not shed a tear in fact just the opposite, I will rejoice when Fake News’ WP mouthpiece, Colbert King, becomes a “crime statistic” of his own dysfunctional community.
WTF. Dude go watch Hannah Montana or something,
I’m sure the more energetic members of the criminal class in DC also prefer that Mr. King not carry a firearm.
I applaud Mr. King’s admission that he has issues that make him a poor candidate for concealed carry. Since he recognizes he has these issues why is he not addressing them? Becoming a concealed carrier forced me to deal with my demons. I am a better person because I recognized and corrected at least some of my issues.
Don’t let him around steak knives and heavy blunt objects either. If he cannot trust himself around a gun, he cannot trust himself around any object that can be used as a weapon. Thank God that others do conceal carry when you have short fuses like this guy.
Can they do anything but project?
Colbert King doesn’t even know the difference between pistols and revolvers. He writes, “I also am familiar with pistols. During my years as a special agent with the State Department in the ’60s, I was qualified in the use of a .38-caliber pistol and a .357 magnum.”
So, a .38 special revolver is a “pistol”, and a .357 Magnum revolver is a “pistol”?
I suppose in addition to his .38 Special and .357 Magnum “pistols”, Colbert King has fired 9mm and .40 caliber “revolvers”, or better yet, the deadly “0.9mm caliber revolver”!
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