“Every day, we hear of people being accidentally shot by police officers who are trained in gun safety. Are we really going to be safer when an incident occurs and a bunch of John Wayne’s start blasting away. I won’t So, let’s stop listening to people who are being compensated to be NRA mouthpieces, and start listening to reason for a change.” – James W. Miliner (not shown), To the Editor: On guns, start listening to reason for a change [via fosters.com]
Most people shot by police officers need shooting. In fact, far more people need shooting by police than actually get shot.
“In fact, far more people need shooting by police than actually get shot.”
Someone once said (to the effect of) “Some people go around saying “Kill me! Kill me!”. Sometimes we accommodate them…”
Except in NYC. There it’s usually a bystander.
Is this what you’re trying to say?
“Some men just need killin’.” — James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok
I’ll take Stuff That Never Happens for $400, Alex.
or “stuff that has already been disproven in multiple cases for $400”
Yeah, we all know that cops only shoot unarmed people who aren’t doing anything, so if you have a gun you’re less likely to get shot by the police, even if you are making a fool of yourself. :^)
The stuff that never happens is the “John Waynes” blasting away.
I ask people all the time; Given that there are already hundreds of millions of guns and gun owners in this country, when do we get to the critical mass where your blood-in-the-streets prediction becomes plausible?
Right now, there is at least one gun per person in the U.S. and we don’t have mass shootouts, will we when we hit two guns per person?
I think one thing a lot of these pearl clutchers don’t really appreciate is just how many of us are already armed.
MyName, there is no such thing as good guy with a gun. That’s just NRA propaganda. Don’t you know that all those millions of guns are in safes of just 3% of citizens? Wait, 3% of gun owners. Or was it just three guys? 😆
The difference isn’t in the training, the difference is that when a cop claims it was an accident they give him a month paid vacation. When a civilian claims it was an accident they prosecute him.
BTW, I have not received any compensation from the NRA.
I’d go even further and say that police are innocent until proven guilty while non-badge carrying citizens are guilty until proven innocent, and even then they may still be guilty.
And I compensate the NRA.
I think we need to regulate the media, you know, for “public safety” reasons.
Keep it up, I think if you write for a newspaper go on air as a regular anchor person you need a journalist licence, doctors are licence, lawyers are, lets break the leftists back, shall we?
Letter to the editor, so not the newspaper’s direct fault here.
Editor still gets to choose which letters are run, which ones fit their agenda… So yes, editor’s fault.
From a journalistic standpoint, it would wrong for a newspaper to refuse to publish a letter to the editor just because the writer is stupid and writing stupid things. They should publish all opinions, stupid or not.
From a business standpoint, newspapers like to publish letters that will, in the long run, tend to sell newspapers. They thrive on controversy. So they should publish letters like this, as well as any rebuttals that it may generate. That would be good for their bottom line.
“Every day, we hear of people being accidentally character assassinated by journalists who are trained in fact finding and truth reporting. Are we really going to be safer when an incident occurs and a bunch of John Waynes start blogging away? I won’t. So, let’s stop listening to people who are being compensated to be Bloomberg mouthpieces, and start listening to reason for a change.”
Fixed it. The editor must have been in a hurry to publish it, because the typos did not reflect much training.
Hank, yes, we all see this analogy. Unfortunately, this one falls flat. Despite the adage that “the pen is mightier than the sward”, in our context people “feelzzz” that “sicks and stones will hurt my bones but words can never hurt me”.
Better analogies might be the rights to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure or the right to remain silent. Society takes a risk when it acknowledges and guarantees these two rights. E.g., suppose there is a suspicion that someone is a terrorist keeping an explosive factory in his house or a member of a conspiracy to launch an attack. Arguably, society compromises public safety if it doesn’t conduct a warrantless search or compel an explanation of ambiguous messages sent by a suspected conspirator. Our Society, at the time of the ratifying generation, took a decision to accept these risks. Whether they were right at the time – or right for all time – we will never know with certainty.
We do know, with confidence, that the right of self-defense was well established and well understood at the time of the ratifying generation. And, not much has changed since. They might have said “when seconds count, the sheriff is only days away”.
Instead, I think we need to compare and contrast the police vs. civilian carriers. We have 800,000 police officers who bear arms in public 1/3 of the hours of every day. And, how many people do they shoot collectively? What are the sorts of people do they encounter within the scope their work? How many do they shoot under dubious circumstances? How does “qualified-immunity” factor into their shoot/don’t-shoot decisions?
The number of civilian carriers in the US is some multiple of 800,000. If there are 15 million CWP holders then there must be 800,000 such holders actually carrying at any given hour of the day. How often do they encounter someone they deem worthy of shooting? How often do they actually shoot? How many of these cases are dubious? How does “unlimited-liability” factor into their shoot/don’t-shoot decisions?
If there are 800,000 or 1.6 million or 2.4 million civilian gun carriers in America, and if they were shooting innocent people with any great regularity, wouldn’t we have data on this by now?
Who are these people who are killing people? Suicides constitute 2/3’s of the total; and these aren’t of much danger to the public. Homicides are mostly accounted for by criminals who are not eligible for CWPs. Accidents are so few in number that they hardly count.
If CWP shooters were slaughtering people why isn’t the FBI compiling statistics to reveal the quantitative aspect of the problem? Don’t the local police investigating homicides and accidents have access to the shooter’s wallet and the State’s CWP files?
Some precincts, e.g., those in the South side of Chicago, have very low “clearance rates”. The police have a body but no suspect. Are we to believe that most of the shooters in these precincts are card-carrying CWP holders?
Does this fear of law-abiding CWP-holders shooting-up neighborhoods seem more like a myth than a reality?
“If CWP shooters were slaughtering people why isn’t the FBI compiling statistics to reveal the quantitative aspect of the problem?” – Because the NRA is blocking all government research on gun violence prevention. At least that’s the go-to claim for the lack of data from any source other than heavily-biased private research….
“we need to address the proliferation of guns in this country which is leading to more gun violence and deaths.” – citation please.
“Some state and local governments have attempted to craft sensible local laws to address some of the problem.” – if it doesn’t solve the problem and infringes on the people’s civil rights, is it still “sensible”?
“Like most Republicans, he apparently believes there is no problem that can’t be solved by a “gun totting cowboy.” – it may very well be a cowboy who solves the problem… and he may or may not use a gun to do it.
“So, let me ask you: do you really feel safer knowing that people in your church, or your child’s classroom is “packing heat.” – Yup. Especially if it’s me.
🤠
Not to let facts get in the way of a silly, ignorant, liberal rant, but violent crime and homicide rates have been going down while the ‘proliferation of g uns’ has been going up.
” a majority of the people [I speak with] agree that. . . .” – I don’t doubt that a majority of his group of friends and family agree, regardless of whether any facts support their view.
“Like most Republicans, he apparently believes there is no problem that can’t be solved by a “gun totting cowboy.” – Not every problem, but most of them. Like, I’m not going to the cowboy for my IT problems.
Well, a lot of the cowboys I’ve know would tell you that if you throw out that dadgummed computer thing you won’t have any more IT problems.
“He is sponsoring a bill which would allow individuals to sue local officials who, representing a majority of their constituents, craft reasonable restrictions on gun laws.”
Writer misses that those local laws are illegal under NH’s pre-emption law. Apparently, violating state law is “reasonable” to Mr. Miliner.
Uhhm, I shoot more in any range trip I do than an NYPD officer gets to shoot in a year. My striker fired semi auto also does not have a 12lb trigger on it. You’re welcome.
The media put police on the pedestal as highly trained with firearms. To be honest, unless officer plod is self motivated, the police compared to the average citizen target shooter are barely trained and practice even less. This may explain the higher accident rate with police when compared to citizens.
Many police would only train a few times a year and only because their superiors told them too. Some departments will only allow dry firing training sessions, because ammunition costs money.
The citizen target shooter trains because they want to, pays for their own equipment, and pays for their own ammunition too.
“Are we really going to be safer when an incident occurs and a bunch of John Wayne’s start blasting away.”
To be fair here, those guys were a bunch of crooked cops AND most of us Armed Intelligencia don’t have MAC 10s.
Rochester is a shithole. Islands of wealthy liberal white neighborhoods surrounded by moats of check cashing, screen printing and beer selling businesses. A true dem plantation if there ever was one. I believe the welcome sign to the city says “Keeping’ ’em down since 1965.” MA should annex it.
Uh Oh, you said “shithole”. You’re in trouble now.
Two thoughts:
1. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t hear about accidental shootings by cops every week, much less every day. Like Serge said, most people shot by cops needed shooting, and those that didn’t still aren’t usually accidents.
2. Can anyone provide an average of number of innocent people shot by an unbadged good guy with a gun as opposed to those shot by badged good guys with guns?
*This comment not sponsored nor endorsed by the NRA nor any of its affiliates.
It couldn’t possibly be that his pro-gun opponents are arguing in good faith. It couldn’t possibly be that there are large numbers of people who take personal responsibility for their own protection and that of their families. It couldn’t possibly be that those same people argue strongly to protect their natural rights. No, no. His opponents must be a shadowy group of rich gunmakers funding some grubby lobbyists to peddle their wares. Oh, and the six guys in America who own all three hundred million guns.
Those other five guys got way more than their fair share.
Apparently he prefers the tyranny of petty, local bureaucrats to the tyranny of significant, national bureaucrats. Not sure which is worse, but both are to be avoided.
My life is fulfilled I have heard from Miliner The Druggie, The Idiot of Rochester. Every city has one but it’s time to send him home to North Korea so that he can get a full dose of what the Govt can do to you if there aren’t any restraints on it like the 2nd does for us. After a time in their lockup he might start to appreciate what the right to carry means. I’m tired of hearing the crap about how “There will be Blood Running In The Streets” ship him somewhere where it does.
Or Iran, or Venezuela or . . .
I prefer ME than the yahoo cops of nearby Chiraq. You’re welcome!
YA, I read the OP and said “Wait, you mean we have to WAIT 40 MINUTES FOR 5-0 TO ARRIVE TO SAVE US, SO THEY CAN SHOOT US INSTEAD ???”
F TO THE THAT !
“Are we really going to be safer when an incident occurs and a bunch of John Wayne’s start blasting away.” – James W. Miliner
Answer: the Sutherland Springs, Texas church attack (26 dead, 20 wounded) settles that notion. The attacker operated without any opposition and WOUNDED OR KILLED ALMOST EVERYONE IN THE CHURCH BUILDING.
Even if four armed parishioners promptly returned fire — from four different directions with the attacker in the middle of all four armed defenders — the outcome could not have been worse and would have almost certainly been better with far fewer wounded or killed.
In the various “incidents”, as victims huddled in classrooms, bathrooms, behind theatre seats, pews, or cubicles, in some cases as a killer stalked freely about, killing, even sometimes taunting victims, shooting them again as they played dead, did any of them think “would I really be safer if a bunch of John Wayne types start blasting away? I won’t…”
I don’t think you can have any expectation of safety in any incident where someone is committing violent acts against you directly or the public around you. In such a case I would rather trust the John Wayne types who at least have the same goal as me, surviving, than the person initiating the violence, who likely intends to kill me and those around me, likely even intending to die in the process. Or at least has rationalized using violence to accomplish their plan. Maybe John Wayne kills me in the crossfire, or a ricochet, but the situation certainly wasn’t otherwise safe.
Yeah, the ole John Wayne analogy really breaks down for this guy when you recall that John Wayne usually shot at the bad guys, defeated their evil plans, rarely hurt the innocent and then rode off into the sunset as the victor. Seems like John Wayne is a pretty handy guy to have around.
Peddlers of Tyranny. F em all, wherever you find them.
And now to address Mr. Miliner’s not-so-veiled assertion that some or even most armed citizens will conduct themselves in a dangerous manner when attacked: I cannot find even five examples where armed defenders opened fire on an attacker in a crowd and wounded or killed a bunch of people. In fact I cannot find even ONE instance. And yet something like 15 million people in the United States carry handguns with noble intentions as they go out in public. That is quite a spectacular safety record.
Mr. Miliner would be wise to differentiate between unbridled imagination with no basis in reality versus hypothetical scenarios grounded in available facts.
Have you ever found an incident in which the police showed up and shot the armed defender? I haven’t, but that does seem the more likely of the all the bad outcomes* the screechers go on about.
*A cops job being harder because they aren’t violating the Constitution isn’t a bad outcome.
YA.
If YOU’RE not breaking the law, in being where you are or doing what YOU’RE doing, and you are forced to use a gun to defend yourself. THEN THE COPS ARE ONLY THERE FOR CLEAN UP AND PAPERWORK, and (the late to the party / “I’m in charge here, now what’s going on???” MFs) THEY BETTER WATCH THEIR ASS.
How does the armed citizen know the next ahole rolling up on him isn’t in-on-it? HE/SHE DON’T. The police better make their presence known gently.
TX_Lawyer,
Cops showing up and incorrectly shooting an armed defender literally never happens because the attack is LONG over by the time police show up.
I am aware of one instance where an armed defender was in a firefight with an attacker long enough for police to arrive while the firefight was ongoing. That would be the Trolley Square Mall attack in Utah. The armed defender was an off-duty policeman who was having dinner with his wife in a restaurant at the mall where a spree killer attacked. The armed defender survived, the police did not shoot him, and the spree killer did not survive.
Ok I think it’s safe to say this man has never touched a firearm, never read the 4 rules, and has no clue the R.O.E we place on ourselves. You see Mr Milner, when we get our carry permit or decide to carry we take responsibility both civil and criminal for every round that gun fires. So we make damn sure we hit what we aim at and that what we aim at is the correct target. Say your scenario occurs, gunman opens fire in a crowded area or event, most permit holders will leave the area without firing. For those that decide to engage they will attempt to do so by positioning themselves behind cover or concealment (if possible) and return fire only when they can ID the target and what lies beyond (that’s rule 2 or 3 depending how the author orders his list). If they cannot do either of those they will not fire. So your little scenario comes off the rails there but actually it comes off way back at it’s base, in that not all carriers carry to play the hero. We carry to defend ourselves and our families given the choice we will avoid a shooting situation rather than charge in headlong goin full on Leroy Jenkins guns blazing like a cheap knock off of Rooster Cogburn.
It never ceases to amaze me how, no matter how low an opinion these people have of the police, they maintain that civilians gun owners must be less skilled, and less responsible, pretty much axiomatically.
By listening to reason I assume you mean your reasoning? No thanks, I’ll pass.
This!
Every time one of these control freaks mentions ‘reason’, or ‘common-sense’, or ‘an honest discussion’, what they mean is “Shut up and listen to my reasons.”
Ask that person in Amarillo, TX who went into the pizza shop with an airsoft pistol illegally modified to appear real whether or not the LTC permit holder was capable of hitting only the perpetrator. Wait! The perpetrator was the only one hit and is dead. Perhaps the License To Carry permit holder was using those bullets which the actor Daniel Craig was talking about when he said that the bullets would find you even if you tried to hide behind a wall. Craig then said that bullets hunted you down. Maybe that is why the perpetrator was the only one hit. OR, more likely, the LTC holder had actually spent time shooting his gun and knew what he was doing.
“Every day, we hear of people being accidentally shot by police officers who are trained in gun safety.”
Uhhhh, no we don’t.
“Are we really going to be safer when an incident occurs and a bunch of John Wayne’s start blasting away.”
As of 2017, there were 16.3 million people with handgun permits in the U.S.A.(notice: not every state requires a permit to carry a handgun), and between 39% and 50% of American households have a firearm(2011 Gallup survey). If there was an issue, we have already had James W. Milner’s scenario happen before.
I really don’t know why he is worried. After all, DGU’s never happen! Why, you are more likely to be killed by your own gun or kill someone else in your family than to stop a violent incident out in public! HAVEN’T YOU BEEN LISTENING?!?
Well, John Wayne didn’t perforate innocent bystanders in movies or in real life, so if a bunch of John Waynes pop up and start firing, we should be just okey dokey.
Information and consequences matter.
First, if I defend myself from an attacker I have a good idea who the bad guy is – the one trying to kill me. Cops don’t always have that information because they have a job which requires them to get involved in situations (interfering in a domestic argument, serving a no knock warrant, arresting a parole violator, etc.) that I can avoid.
Second, if I kill an innocent bystander, no union will defend me, no taxpayer money will be used to settle lawsuits , no DA will hesitate to charge me, no jury will be as sympathetic to the circumstances, and my employers will not pay for the psych care I may require to deal with the aftermath. I have every reason to fear the consequences of a bad shot more that a police officer.
So yeah – I expect I am less likely to shoot an innocent than even a highly trained police officer… and not all of them are that highly trained with firearms.
I think John Wayne wins this one.
Not to mention that police are called when there is a problem. The rest of us have the right to leave the scene if we can. Police place themselves in the situation, most of the rest of us do not want to be there. Having protection on your hip is great, but the reasons for escalated use are different.
I may be getting more senile, but I don’t remember where I read about, or heard about, a citizen defender “blasting away”. I have read where a bunch of cops fired off a few hundred rounds and hit with a couple. Seems most citizen defenders make do with one or two rounds. (generally speaking).
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