| Community Leader Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 737 Level up: 87%, 26 Points needed |  |  I posted this on an AOL gun message board around seven years ago in response to someone who didn't like guns.
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On December 7, 1993, in the late afternoon, on a Long Island commuter train, Colin Ferguson rose from his seat, took an automatic pistol from his bag, and began firing at the occupants of the train until he had shot 23 people. Some of them died from their wounds. The scene was described as mayhem as the people scrambled over each other, slipping in the blood of those already shot, trying to get to the other end of their "metal death chamber", away from the carnage, and knowing that their turn would come if the man continued.
From the New York Times: "On board American Flight 77, Barbara Olson, a conservative television commentator, called her husband from a cellular telephone. Mrs. Olson said hijackers, armed with knives and a box cutter, had herded a pilot, flight attendants and most of the 58 passengers into the back of the plane."
It has been mentioned, on Thursday, that "Sky Marshalls" are being considered. The "incident" occurred on Tuesday. Now, I'm not a nuclear physicist, but even I can see that there are two days difference between Tuesday and Thursday, and that Thursday is two days later than Tuesday, and after the devastation. The 60 Minutes program, several weeks ago, reported that there were suicidal religious zealots prepared to die and take others with them in the name of their particular cause. Even I can see that providing protection for the occupants of an airplane on Thursday is not going protect those occupants, nor the thousands who died in the wake of the devastation, on Tuesday. Our "government intelligence" (an oxymoron if ever there was) is sorely lacking. So, who is protecting us???
The words from the opinion of the court in the case of US v Gomez were never more cogent: "It seems tendentious to reject out of hand the argument that one purpose of the [Second] Amendment was to recognize an individual's right to engage in armed self-defense against criminal conduct. In modern society, the right to armed self-defense has become attenuated as we rely almost exclusively on organized societal responses, such as the police, to protect us from harm. One can argue that the rise of a professional police force to enforce the law has made irrelevant, and perhaps even counterproductive, the continuation of a strong notion of self-help as the remedy for crime. The possession of firearms may therefore be regulated, even prohibited, because we are "compensated" for the loss of that right by the availability of organized societal protection. The tradeoff becomes more dubious, however, when a citizen makes a particularized showing that the organs of government charged with providing that protection are unwilling or unable to do so. The fundamental right to self-preservation, together with the basic postulate of liberal theory that citizens only surrender their natural rights to the extent that they are recompensed with more effective political rights, requires that every gun control law be justified in terms of the law's contribution to the personal security of the entire citizenry"
A plainclothes detective was driving his car, and stopped at a stop light. He was approached by a carjacker, who pointed a gun at his head and told him to exit the car. He complied, keeping his body facing the "perp". The "perp" entered the vehicle, keeping the gun pointed at his victim. As he turned his attention to the operation of the vehicle, and turning the gun into the car, the detective reached behind him for his gun in the small of his back. He brought the gun out and told the "perp" to "freeze". The "perp", surprised, turned toward his victim, bringing the gun with him, and the detective "iced" him. One less "perp".
A woman was accosted in a parking lot by an assailant with a gun, who ordered her into her car and demanded the keys. He then drove to an isolated spot, holding her at bay with his gun. She had a gun in her purse. When they reached the isolated place, she exited the car carrying her purse. Her assailant exited the car from the drivers side. She realized that it was now or never; she believed that she was going to be killed after being raped. She opened her purse, retrieved the gun, and, in a splitsecond, "iced" the surprised "perp".
Alberta Nicles, an 85 year old widow, was awakened at 4 am in the morning by an intruder who had apparently cut her phone lines and was ransacking her home. The intruder, Michael Moore, approached her and took off her pajama bottoms. She told the intruder that she knew where there was some money, and led him to a closet. Under some blankets in the closet was a gun that had belonged to her late husband. She opened the closet door, and reached under the blankets and retrieved the gun; turned and shot the surprised "perp". He lay dying on the floor while she ran to a neighbor's house to dial 911.
Suzanna Gratia, in Killeen, Texas related an incident at the Luby's cafeteria, in 1991. She explained that she didn't grow up with guns; she wasn't raised in a violent neighborhood. She does not favor hunting. She was given a gun by a friend, when she moved out on her own, for her personal self-protection and was taught how to use it. She was at the Luby's cafeteria with her mother and father, enjoying a noon luncheon, when a truck came through the front window of the cafeteria. She said that she believed that there had been an accident and she got up from the table to go help. Then they heard shots being fired. She said that she and her parents dropped to the floor, turned the table over, and put it in front of them for protection. The firing continued. At first she thought it was a robbery, but the firing continued, intermittently. She then realized that this was an execution, and that eventually she and her parents would be the target. She said, "I reached for my purse and then realized that I'd made one of the stupidest mistakes of my life. I had taken my gun out of my purse about three months earlier and it was 100 yards away in my car because in the State of Texas there is no such thing as a concealed carry permit. You can't get one." She was a licensed chiropractor, and was afraid that if "authorities" found the gun on her person she would lose her license to practice. She said that she would have had the perfect opportunity to shoot the individual who was executing the occupants of the cafeteria and to stop this carnage if she would have had the gun in her purse. Her father said that he had to do something to stop this man, and rose from the floor to attack the man during a brief moment while his attention was elsewhere. As he lunged toward the man, the man saw him coming, turned toward him and fired. Her father fell to the floor, mortally wounded. Her mother, horrified at the sight of her husband laying on the floor, went to him to comfort him, and, cradling his head in her lap, she was shot by the assailant. Suzanna, and some others, escaped from this carnage. She lived to tell the story. Her parents did not.
She submitted testimony in 1995 to the Virginia Legislature concerning a bill before them concerning the right to self defense. She noted: "On Dec. 17, 1991, in Anniston, Ala., a restaurant patron defended himself and saved the lives of nearly two dozen others held hostage by two armed would-be robbers. The reluctant hero, who was legally carrying his .45 caliber fire arm, stopped both assailants before they could complete their crime or injure any innocent customers. On Oct. 16, 1991, in Killeen, Texas, an armed homicidal maniac methodically killed 22 people and then himself, facing no resistance from the scores of potential victims, including me. That tragedy will be forever etched in my memory. My parents were brutally murdered, and I was helpless to protect them. None of us in that restaurant could control our own destinies, for Texas politicians had seen fit to keep us disarmed." She noted the difference between the concealed carry laws which were more lenient in Alabama at the time. She also noted: "Clearly, concealed-carry laws translate to saving the lives of loved ones in a manner similar to health or life insurance. If ever there arises that time when it is needed, no substitute will do, and I don’t intend to be victimized again."
She pointed out: "In drafting the Bill of Rights, the Founding Fathers acknowledged self-protection as a prime goal incorporated in the Second Amendment. In quoting criminologist Cesare Beccaria, still renowned for his work "On Crime and Punishment" penned in 1764, Thomas Jefferson said: ''Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants, they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." "
Legislators, and judges, have made, and upheld, so many regulations against the keeping and bearing of arms by the individual since the time the Bill of Rights, and State Declarations of Rights, have been ratified, that the people are now so afraid to defend themselves that they are relegated to scurrying like trapped rats when the "terror of the moment" arrives, as in the case of the commuter train incident. The woman who recalled that some of the people were slipping in the blood of others trying to get away, also declared that "It was awful." Yes, it was awful; but there is not one report that anyone stood before Colin Ferguson and told him that he was violating the law. And the people on the plane, "herded" into the back of the plane, like cattle headed for slaughter. Nobody was there to protect them, and they had nothing to protect themselves with.
I won't be lighting a candle. I grieve for Americans for the plight that they have grievously bestowed upon themselves. To me, this is a low point in the American Psyche.
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03-14-2007, 06:42 PM
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