On Irony and Guns
I was at the gym the other day, on the treadmill and watching the TVs on the wall. I was watching a report out of Seattle on KOMO or KIRO or one of the US TV stations. The report started out talking about an armed home invasion followed by a car jacking, just blocks away. As the broadcast started talking about the home invasion I started thinking.
Now I’ve always been a pretty staunch anti-gun person. Not totally anti-gun, I went to the firing range with Muckhead a couple of years back, and appreciate the deer meat that I got from Brad from his hunting trips. However, I just don’t think that people need hugely powerful automatic weapons for hunting, and that the “but I need a gun to defend my home/car/office/computer/pepsi” theory causes more problems than it solves.
I started thinking that maybe this could have been prevented if the home invasion victim had had a gun to defend themselves. I honestly started questioning my own position on the whole issue, wondering if maybe I’ve been wrong with my thinking. As this soul searching was going on the broadcast continued to say how the woman in the car was duped into checking her watch and then looked up see a gun in her face (so no chance to pull the gun in the glove compartment if she did have one, but that’s another story).
As the broadcast was ending it noted what was taken from the house. Three handguns.
Sort of ironic (or something) dontcha think?
Of course, unless you’re carrying the gun around with you, at all times, it’s not going to help you protect yourself in the event of a breakin or a home invasion… it’s not like you can tell the perp to wait a minute so you can go into the bedroom, get the lockbox from the top shelf of your closet, load your gun, turn off the safety and return.
When a cop enters a situation where they feel they may need to defend themselves, they are trained to pop open the clasp holding their gun in their side holster, and rest their hand on the butt of the gun.
Even being prepared in this way, if the suspect is within 12 feet (I think that’s the number), the member has a 0% chance to draw-aim-fire before the suspect will reach them and enter hand to hand.
So… according to police training, not only does your pistol have to be on your person at all times, it has to be in your hand, and preferably pointing at the person you need to target.
Hence, I think, why you see/hear of officers aiming their weapons at a target as soon as they feel their safety is threatened – they want as much advantage over the suspect as possible, up to and including deadly force.
Just a little info I thought ya’ll would find interesting.