gun control – chrishernandezauthor

The One Gun Control Measure That Gun Rights Advocates Should Support

chrishernandezauthor — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 16:00:11 +0000

I’m a huge gun rights advocate. I’ve been shooting and collecting guns since I was twelve. I got my first AR-15 thirty years ago, at age sixteen. I joined the Marine Corps Reserve at seventeen and became an infantry weapons repairman and marksmanship coach, and later was a tank crewman, cavalry scout and human intelligence collector in the Army National Guard. I’m an Iraq and Afghanistan combat vet. I’ve been a cop for over twenty years, and for a few years was one of my department’s Response to Active Shooter instructors. I’ve attended advanced weapons training through the military, my police department, and as a writer for BreachBangClear.com. I’ve fired tens of thousands of rounds out of everything from .22 pistols to ARs to heavy machine guns to sniper rifles to an M1A1 Abrams tank’s 120mm main gun.

Engaging multiple targets at a Vehicle Close Quarters Battle course

Attending a 1MOA Solutions Precision Rifle course

In addition to reviews of guns and accessories, I’ve written numerous articles about citizen response to active shooters, tips for new concealed carriers, the importance of the 2nd Amendment, realities of gunfights, the stupidity of magazine capacity limitations, the need for armed teachers, and the public’s legitimate use for military-style weapons (conversely, I’ve also beaten up on the stupid fools who thought they were “helping” by walking into Chipotle with ARs and SKSs). I’ve defended the 2^nd Amendment my entire adult life, and was even defending it in my childhood.

I don’t defend the 2A because it makes me money. I don’t sell guns or get paid to teach shooting skills. I defend the 2A because I’m a student of human behavior and history. I know that the incredible peace, freedom, security and prosperity we enjoy is an anomaly; conflict and tyranny have been the norm for most humans for most of our existence. An armed populace, rather than hope or wishful thinking, is a good deterrent against external aggression and an excellent defense against internal oppression.

The 2A guarantees our right to keep and bear arms, for incredibly important reasons. It does not, however, require us to be blind and stupid. It doesn’t mean we should ignore obvious warnings from aspiring mass killers, like last week’s high school shooter.

Photo credit goodhousekeeping.com

In many previous mass shootings, there were no clear prior warnings. Some vague danger signs may have been recognized afterward, but often, as with the Las Vegas shooter, nobody had any idea whatsoever of the shooter’s plans, and the shooter had no criminal or mental health history. But the Florida massacre was carried out by a teenager who announced his intention to be a school shooter. And he was still able to legally buy a gun.

Of course, we all know the two tips to the FBI about the shooter’s statements weren’t properly followed up. But what if they had been followed up? Depending on the jurisdiction, simply saying “I’m going to be a professional school shooter” isn’t necessarily an arrestable offense, isn’t necessarily a felony, and isn’t necessarily enough to justify an involuntary mental health commitment. So it’s plausible that even if the FBI had investigated, and confirmed he had made the statements, and that he talked about murdering people, and that he introduced himself as a future school shooter, and that he had a history of erratic behavior, he still would have been able to legally buy an AR-15 to murder people with. I say allowing a known aspiring mass murderer to legally buy guns is blind and stupid. And I think most of my fellow 2A supporters would agree.

Or let me put it this way: if a radical Muslim extremist posted online that he believes in violent jihad against the Great Satan and praises the Paris terrorist attacks, would it make sense to let him legally buy an AK? How many gun dealers, if they knew about his plans, would sell him one? Few to none, I’d think.

So is there a way to legally prevent gun sales to those types of people, without infringing on the 2A rights of the innocent? Yes. Does supporting the 2A require us to support gun sales to people who are telling us they want to commit murder? No.

I’m not talking about banning the AR-15, advocating confiscations, repealing the 2A, or any nonsense like that. I’m not suggesting anything that would affect the tens of millions of legal, peaceful gun owners who we live and interact with every day. What I’m suggesting is that when someone tells us they’re buying a gun to commit a crime, especially a crime like mass murder, even if they haven’t broken the law or been committed, we listen to them. I’m proposing that we put laws in place to make those threats part of the background check system, and stop those wannabe murderers from legally buying a damn gun.

No, I’m not saying creation of such laws will be easy, or simple. I recognize the danger of a slippery slope that leads to further gun restrictions. I know legions of gun control advocates stand ready to exploit any opening toward their ultimate goal of “domestic disarmament.” I also know that not every mass shooter legally buys a gun, and this proposal won’t stop all mass shootings.

The Las Vegas mass shooting

But I also see seventeen dead kids and teachers. I see a shooter who told us what he was going to do. I see that current laws allowed him to buy an AR-15 to commit the mass murder he was planning. And I can’t imagine anyone arguing that nothing should be changed, that if the shooter’s clone showed up at a gun store tomorrow he should still be able to buy a gun. So I’m talking about laws that would stop some mass shootings, or maybe only a few, or maybe only one. You can’t convince me the lives saved in that one mass shooting aren’t worth it.

We can talk specifics later. Right now I just want intelligent, reasonable people to discuss solutions, pitfalls and roadblocks. Hopefully I’ll get my fellow gun owners and 2A advocates to agree with the principle, that it’s possible to enact laws to prevent aspiring (yet not convicted or committed) murderers from getting guns, without stopping the rest of us from getting guns.

I welcome any and all intelligent, informed opinions, whatever they are.

Chris Hernandez is a 23 year police officer, former Marine and retired National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com and has published three military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve, Line in the Valley and Safe From the War through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at [email protected] or on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ProofofOurResolve).

A (Mostly Tactical, Partly Ideological) Argument against Open Carry

chrishernandezauthor — Fri, 02 May 2014 15:03:59 +0000

Photo credit news.yahoo.com

I’m not a fan of openly carrying a pistol.

Before you accuse me of being an “anti-gunner” or liberal activist, you should know I’m about as pro-2nd Amendment as they come. I’m a 20 year cop, 25 year Marine and Soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and am 100% supportive of armed citizens. I’ve written extensively on the importance and need for the 2nd Amendment, and effectiveness of armed citizens against a variety of threats.

Having said that, I think open carry is a bad idea.

No, I’m not saying everyone who open carries is a bad guy. Nor am I saying there’s never a good time and place for open carry. Several people have told me success stories about open carry, and I believe them. But hear me out on this. As a cop I’ve carried a gun on and off duty for decades, and have a pretty good grasp on the factors involved with being armed in public. So I’m going to lay out my reasons why people shouldn’t, generally speaking, open carry a pistol.

1) OPEN CARRY MAKES WEAPON RETENTION HARDER

I started as a cop in 1994, not long after police went through a collective “holy cow” realization about how many officers were killed with either their own or their partner’s gun. For decades cops were more concerned with a fast draw than a secure holster, and as a consequence lots of cops were disarmed and killed. Around the early 90’s equipment companies started pushing security holsters, and police academies started training harder on weapon retention techniques. The number of officers killed with their own weapons fell sharply. In my first years on the street, I was in a couple of chaotic fights where the suspect apparently unsnapped my holster without me realizing it, but couldn’t get my weapon.

Fast forward a few years to 2001. I was a UN police officer in Kosovo, working with officers from 54 countries plus the local cops. In my unit we had officers from America, the UK, Greece, Germany and a few other places. I bought my own security holster, but our Greek cop carried his pistol in a really slick, not very secure quick-draw holster. He sold those holsters to several local officers, over my objections.

One afternoon we were in the office before shift. One of the locals had his Glock in the Greek speed holster. As the local officer conversed with coworkers, I walked up behind him, slapped the holster snap with my left hand and yanked his pistol out with my right. He spun around in shock. I handed his pistol back and told him, “that’s why you shouldn’t use those piece-of-crap holsters.”

Then I felt a tug on my weapon. I turned around. The Greek officer had seen me disarm his customer, got angry, and tried to do the same thing to me. But he didn’t know the sequence of movements necessary to remove my weapon. My gun was still secure in the holster.

So what does this have to do with open carry?

The average non-LE belt holster has, at best, a single snap. Many holsters rely on only friction and a tight fit to keep the weapon in place. For a concealed weapon, that’s generally regarded as an acceptable risk; it’s hard for someone to go for my gun when they have no idea it’s there. But if you’re walking around with an exposed weapon in a typical holster, especially in a crowd, you’re at risk of being quickly disarmed.

Photo credit breitbart.com

If you’re willing to spend the extra money on a security holster (they’re not cheap), and willing to put up with the extra bulk (they’re not small), then I’m a little more with you on open carry. But if you think, “I’m going to be so alert all the time, nobody could possibly disarm me,” you’re wrong. Nobody is switched on 24/7. We all get tired sometimes, we all get lazy, we all get complacent. We can all be overpowered by someone bigger and stronger. If you’re open carrying with a regular holster, you can be disarmed, period.

EDITED TO ADD: A reader shared this video in the comments.

This wasn’t a holster issue, but it illustrates an important fact. Not every criminal is afraid of a gun. If you open carry, you may just make yourself a target.

2) IT’S BETTER TO BE THE AMBUSHER THAN THE AMBUSHED

When I’m in public, I don’t advertise that I’m armed. I don’t wear anything that says police, I rarely wear anything related to the military. One of my goals is to be the “grey man”, the guy nobody notices. Cops or military guys may pick up on clues and ping me as one of their own, but almost nobody else will. And that’s a good thing.

If I’m ever unfortunate enough to find myself in the middle of a crime in progress, I doubt the criminal will immediately ID me as the guy who needs to be shot first. I won’t wear tactical pants (anymore), or t-shirts with huge Glock or Colt symbols, or anything else that screams “I’m probably armed”. Instead, I’ll be just another face in the gas station, bank, mall or theater. In most cases, this gives me a distinct advantage.

Criminals get tunnel vision just like everyone else. Watch videos of convenience store robberies; you rarely see a robber watching his back, or securing customers. Most robbers quickly scan their surroundings for cops or other immediate threats, go to the counter, produce the gun, get what they want and run. If I’m regular Joe in the background, I can draw and make my move when I have the element of surprise.

If I don’t think the robber is going to hurt anyone and I don’t want to risk opening fire around innocent bystanders, my “move” may be to be a good witness. But if the robber is threatening enough or starts shooting at the clerk, I can engage him from an advantageous position, like right behind him. There’s nothing immoral about shooting a bad guy in the back.

If the worst ever happens, and I wind up in the middle of a robbery while my wife and kids are with me and I have no choice but to fire, I’d much rather be involved in a “shooting” than a “shootout”. Ideally, the robber will figure out I’m armed right after he yells “Ow, something bit me!” like Forrest Gump and falls to the floor with multiple gunshot wounds. That’s a much better outcome than having the robber walk in, see me openly carrying, and shoot at me first.

EDITED TO ADD: These two videos give examples of what I mean.

If you’re in a place targeted by a criminal, carrying concealed could give you an extremely important advantage.

3) OPEN CARRY ATTRACTS A LOT OF ATTENTION

This is one of the more contentious points about open carry. The anti-gun side thinks anyone who open carries wants to scare and intimidate people. Even if the open carrier is doing nothing threatening, doesn’t say anything and behaves in a totally benign manner, people around might still freak out. Earlier this week I wrote about the recent incident in Forsyth County, Georgia, where a man was legally open carrying at a park. This generated twenty-two 911 calls, sparked hysterical reactions from local media, and was the subject of really stupid reporting from the Daily Kos (https://chrishernandezauthor.com/2014/04/28/open-carry-the-daily-kos-and-mass-hysteria-in-georgia/).

Photo credit 11alive.com

People at the park got so scared of this man, they herded their children into a baseball dugout and stood guard in front of it. One woman broke down crying for the camera, saying her son asked, “Did that man want to kill me?” This incident has received national attention, been blown way out of proportion, and is being used by the anti-gun side as yet more proof that pro-gun people are insanely violent (“That crazy man was carrying a gun in a park! Around children!”).

So what did the open carrier accomplish?

If his goal was self-defense, I guess it worked. No criminals attacked him while he walked through the park, probably because they were too distracted by the stampede of terrified parents rushing their children to the dugout. And criminals definitely weren’t going to try to rob the guy as police screeched into the park in response to the twenty-two 911 calls. So he achieved safety, at the cost of being the center of tons of unwanted attention from the local public, police, and eventually much of the country. Keep in mind, this was in gun-friendly Georgia, not some liberal paradise like California.

And some open carriers deliberately try to inflame the public and provoke a police response. This goes back to what I wrote earlier this week: I support open carry as a political statement. I don’t support it as a tactic. If your goal is to rile everyone up and force them to accept your right to carry, fine. Walk around with an AR-15 across your back and a Colt 1911 on your hip, and have your friends follow with cameras. You will get the public’s attention. You will provoke a police response. In an open carry state you should be simply questioned (not detained) and allowed to go about your business, which apparently is to make as big a scene as possible. And maybe to put a video on YouTube, showing how you were hassled by freedom-hating cops for no reason.

Is that why we want to be armed? To force people to react to us?

Carrying to provoke a reaction and then complaining about that reaction is pretty dumb. It’s right on par with a woman walking around topless in New York City because it’s legal there, then complaining “people were staring at my boobs”. Many gun-rights advocates loudly claim they want the government to leave them alone, then some of them take actions calculated to get police officers all up in their grill. Human nature is human nature. Guys will stare at any exposed boobs that happen by, and people uncomfortable with guns will freak when someone openly carries a gun around them. Open carriers and topless women can be as legal as the day is long, but they’ll still have to deal with the unreasonable and unwanted attention their actions bring.

Some of you will undoubtedly say, “I don’t have to change my behavior because of other people’s stupid reactions.” I agree, in principle. But we should also be free to walk in the woods without being eaten by bears. Unfortunately, bears attack and eat people because, well, they’re bears. Liberals and the media overreact, distort, inflame and try to spread panic about armed citizens because, well, they’re liberals and the media. My reason for carrying a weapon isn’t to prove anything, it’s to defend myself, my family and innocent people around me. I can do that better if I don’t have a crowd of panicked liberals calling 911 on me, police questioning me and TV cameras following me to report the Manufactured Outrage of the Week.

Again, as a political statement, I get it. This is America, please speak out about what you believe. But if you’re trying to provoke a response, don’t act like your goal is to be just a regular guy, no different from everyone else except that you happen to be armed. You can exercise your 2nd Amendment rights without making a scene, which in my opinion works out better for all of us on the pro-gun side.

4) WE GET BETTER RESULTS BY ENGAGING ANTI-GUN PEOPLE IN CONVERSATION THAN BY BEING CONFRONTATIONAL

This is going to be another contentious point, because not all open carriers are trying to be confrontational. I’d guess most of them aren’t. But many have been, and I think that confrontational stance works against us.

As a writer, I travel in some pretty liberal circles. The modern writing culture is basically overrun with extremely left-leaning people. As a conservative soldier and cop, I’m the fringe element. And because of this, I’ve had quite a few conversations about guns and gun control with liberal friends.

We on the pro-gun side often justifiably feel that debating the other side is pointless. We want to tell people preaching “reasonable” gun control to shut up, slap them with a copy of the Bill of Rights, show them our openly carried pistols and walk away. Unfortunately, while slapping them and walking away might be satisfying, it doesn’t help. And actually does more harm to our side.

I had a conversation recently with a very intelligent, very reasonable liberal friend. This guy is knowledgeable as hell on many subjects, and discusses everything rationally. Except guns. On that subject, he checks every irrational, emotion-driven box there is.

When we had the gun control conversation, he broke out the usual arguments (“the kind of people who want to carry guns are the ones I’m afraid of”, “if someone drops their gun it’ll go off”, “guys with guns will get mad and shoot it out over minor arguments”, “if everyone’s carrying guns how can the cops tell who the bad guys are”, etc). We had this conversation at a coffee shop, and he thought I wasn’t armed. When I told him, “You’ve never seen me without a gun”, he was taken aback. He seemed to think guys who carry guns can’t be trusted, have no self-control, and will spray and pray at the drop of a hat. When he found out I’m always armed, he had to reconsider.

My friend and I have been attending writers’ group meetings for over a year, we’ve hung out at bars and restaurants, and he’s never seen me do anything stupid. Being armed doesn’t make me cocky and impulsive like he thought it would; on the contrary, because I’m armed I’m much more likely to avoid confrontations. After the conversation, my friend had a new perspective. Chances are, next time he’s around his liberal friends and the topic of gun control comes up, he’ll totally screw up their mojo by saying, “I was convinced that only wackos carry guns. But then I found out this totally normal friend of mine always carries a gun. He calmly explained why he thinks I’m wrong about gun control, and he made a lot of sense.”

Photo credit whitewolftactical.com

Call me crazy, but I think that kind of interaction is worth a lot more than the shock tactic of, say, walking into Starbucks with an AR-15. Had I been openly carrying, our very productive conversation would probably have never happened because my friend would have been scared to talk to me (since, you know, I might have gotten angry and opened fire). Even if my friend doesn’t change his stance on gun control, he still learned that armed citizens aren’t the racist, redneck, Tea Party insurrectionists and child-eating NRA members some liberals think we are.

I know the anti-gun side’s tricks. I know many of them engage in irrational, overtly emotional attacks on us. I get sick of it too. But there are intelligent, reasonable people on their side who will listen to us if we make the effort, and some of them do change their views. We gain a lot more traction when self-described “New England liberal” author Justin Cronin writes an essay titled “Confessions of a liberal gun owner” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/opinion/confessions-of-a-liberal-gun-owner.html?_r=0) or Anthony Bourdain tries to convince his liberal friends to stop demonizing us (http://anthonybourdain.tumblr.com/post/62424540749/guns-and-green-chile) than we do by telling everyone who disagrees with us to fornicate themselves. Or by openly carrying a pistol, just to piss off the people we know are scared of guns.

Again, guys, I’m not saying open carry is flat-out wrong and nobody should ever do it. If you’re in a place where open carry is normal and accepted, and you think it’s worth the risk of being disarmed or spotted by criminals, do what you think is best. There undoubtedly are places where open carry doesn’t raise an eyebrow and criminals know better than to cause problems, just like there are places women can walk around topless without being ogled (or so I hear, but my wife won’t let me confirm that).

But in a whole lot of America, legal or not, open carry is going to cause problems, and it’s going to put you at more risk. Which is why I think it’s a bad call. Not that it’s evil, not that it’s immoral, not that it should be illegal. In most cases, it’s just a bad call.

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Weapons of war

chrishernandezauthor — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:13:51 +0000

I have a message for my pro-2nd Amendment friends: guys, we don’t have to pretend our ARs aren’t military weapons.

One topic central to the gun control debate is whether or not AR-type rifles are “weapons of war” with no purpose in civilian hands. The anti-gun side points out the obvious similarities between an AR-15 and an M-16, and insists citizens have no right or reason to own either one. Gun rights advocates stress an AR’s inability to fire on full automatic and insist that makes them wholly unsuitable for military service.

In my experience, the anti-gun side typically engages in more snarky, insulting rhetoric than the pro-gun side. Gun control advocates call gun owners stupid, say we’re all paranoid, and accuse us of being violent hicks (or even worse, say we own guns to compensate for our [gasp!] small penises). But that reverses when the question of whether or not “assault rifles” are military weapons arises. Then we gun owners become the snarky, insulting ones.

Last week I watched an interview with a gun rights advocate on Fox News. He insisted that an AR has almost nothing in common with a military rifle because it’s not fully automatic. He laughed at Megyn Kelly’s suggestion that they were almost the same, and claimed nobody he knew in the military would ever carry an AR in combat.

I call BS on that one. I carried a semiauto-only M14 in Afghanistan as my primary weapon. I’ve fired my personal AR in a military marksmanship and close quarters combat competition, against other shooters armed with issued M4 carbines. I’ve trained with my personal AR at close and medium range targets, against moving targets, and against multiple targets. The entire reason I bought an AR was because it’s a military weapon. I wanted to train with almost the same weapon I might carry in combat. If I was downrange and armed with my personal AR instead of an issued weapon, I wouldn’t feel the least bit uncomfortable with it.

When someone says, “But the AR isn’t fully automatic,” I respond, “So what?” In a rifle, full auto fire has limited tactical worth. It’s not often that we fire our weapons on burst (currently issued M16s and M4s fire 3-round burst, not full auto) because it’s inaccurate and burns a lot of ammo. We emphasize carefully aimed fire, not “spray and pray” like the Taliban. We often make fun of our enemies, and sometimes our allies, for their tendency to dump rounds on full auto every time they pull a trigger. A fully automatic rifle certainly can be a useful tool, but isn’t a drop-dead necessity in combat. And among poorly supplied fighters, it quickly depletes meager stocks of ammo.

As far as I’m concerned, ARs are for all practical purposes military weapons. But before any of my gun-rights brothers accuse me of betraying the cause, let me follow up with this statement: there’s nothing wrong with the fact that they’re military weapons. It’s a good thing.

Despite what the Huffington Post or Mother Jones publishes, the 2nd Amendment isn’t about hunting or sport shooting. It’s about the citizens’ right to resist tyranny. About five seconds of Googling turns up this quote, among many others, on Wikipedia:

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.” – Noah Webster (writing under the nom de plume of “A Citizen of America”), An Examination Into the Leading Principles of the Constitution (October 17, 1787)

Noah Webster and his fellow founding fathers wanted us to be armed in order to resist government tyranny should the need arise. Therefore, it follows that we have the right to possess weapons capable of resisting tyrannical government forces. An AR gives the citizen that capability.

Anti-gun people typically say at this point, “You think you can fight the government? Well then you’d have to own tanks, airplanes, machine guns and nuclear bombs. If you just had rifles, you wouldn’t have a chance.”

No we don’t need to own tanks, fighter planes and nuclear weapons, and yes we would have a chance. Insurgents who are often armed only with AKs have been giving us a pretty good fight for more than ten years. Even with our overwhelming air and indirect fire assets, we haven’t rolled over the Taliban. They operate among the population, travel light, strike quickly and melt away, just like rebels in America would. Air strikes and artillery don’t do much good if you can’t figure out where to put them.

We should also consider the lengths our military goes to in order to avoid civilian casualties. Whenever someone in the anti-gun camp insists our military would respond to a single rifle shot with a brutal onslaught of weaponry, I remind them we don’t even do that overseas. I’ve been in a couple of firefights where the Taliban were shooting from houses, and we couldn’t use supporting arms to hit those houses. In Afghanistan, and here, killing civilians only strengthens resistance against us. We tried to avoid killing civilians from another culture in another country, so why does anyone think our military wouldn’t care about civilian casualties in America?

Besides that, rebels or insurgents in any conflict don’t always have to win. Sometimes they just have to delay or inhibit government forces. Sometimes they only have to make a point.

I’ve read a lot of comments and articles from the anti-gun side, and I’m fairly certain the next comment coming from many of their mouths is, “This guy is a paranoid psycho who thinks the government is coming for his guns.” No, I’m not. As a cop, I know better than most how impossible that would be. I don’t accuse the current administration of tyranny and have never referred to our President as a tyrant. A review of my blog posts will prove that. I think many on the pro-gun side are too quick to throw out words like “dictatorship”. Our government is far from becoming a dictatorship.

An unknown, very intelligent man said we can resist tyranny with the soap box, ballot box and ammo box. We’re nowhere near the ammo box, and I can’t see us reaching for it for in my lifetime. But I understand the Bill of Rights wasn’t written only for the 1700s, or only the 1800s, or 1900s, or 2013. It was written to address immutable human nature. Noah Webster and his friends knew that once humans have power, there is always a danger that they’ll abuse or illegally expand that power.

“Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.” – Tench Coxe, Federal Gazette, June 18,1789, A friend of James Madison, writing in support of the Madison’s first draft of the Bill of Rights

We Americans have a right and duty to resist tyranny, should it arise. We keep military weapons in order prevent our government from becoming tyrannical, and to fight back if it does. Those who wish to remove military weapons from our hands, on the pretext that “you don’t need them for hunting or home defense”, are woefully ignorant of the basis for the 2nd Amendment. Or more likely, they think the 2nd Amendment is stupid and obsolete, and maybe even wish for total gun confiscations but know better than to admit it publicly. Either way, they’re no friend to our freedom.

If someone angrily tells one of my pro-2nd Amendment friends that an AR is a “weapon of war”, I’d ask them to proudly respond, “You’re damn right it is.” When law-abiding, sensible citizens buy and shoot ARs, they’re not presenting a threat to the public or the government. They’re exercising their rights exactly as Noah Webster and Tenche Cox hoped they would.

That’s not something we should be ashamed of.

Chris Hernandez is a 20 year police officer, former Marine and currently serving National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com and Iron Mike magazine and has published two military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve and Line in the Valley, through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at [email protected] or on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ProofofOurResolve).

Seven rounds

chrishernandezauthor — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 16:00:35 +0000

The controversy surrounding New York state’s new gun control laws mystifies me. What’s the big deal about limiting a pistol’s magazine capacity to seven rounds? Nobody needs more than seven rounds for self defense. After all, when you shoot someone even once, they fly through the air and drop dead, just like in the movies.

I arrived on a robbery call one night. A robber had shot a man through the sternum with a 9mm hollow point. He looked dead. I got on the radio and notified dispatch that we had a murder. Thirty seconds later, the victim started moaning and squirming. Less than a minute later he was fully conscious and complained, “This is the fifth time I’ve been shot.”

But nobody needs more than seven rounds. One round is usually fatal. And nobody could possibly still be a threat after being shot more than once.

The same robbers shot another victim that night. One round in the ankle, one in the face and one in the forehead. 9mm hollow points. This victim turned and ran about 500 yards through an apartment complex, pounded on a door to beg for help, and passed out. Last I heard, years after the shooting, he’s still alive.

But nobody needs more than seven rounds. When you shoot someone, they fall to their knees, pledge their soul to Jesus, gasp dramatically and die.

I answered a disturbance call one night. A teenage girl calmly told me that she had gotten into a fight with her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. Several minutes into the story she informed me she had been shot through the thigh. I looked down and saw a bullet wound through her leg. She was completely unconcerned about it.

I responded to a burglary in progress. A teenager on PCP picked a random house and started kicking the sun room door in. The homeowner stood by the door with his 9mm pistol, called 911 and warned the teenager he was armed. The teenager kicked the door in. The homeowner shot him in the leg, then retreated into the house. The teenager forced his way into the kitchen. The homeowner shot him in the stomach. When we arrived, we had to wrestle the teenager into handcuffs. Had the teenager been armed, he still could have fired a weapon.

But nobody needs more than seven rounds. Seven rounds are more than enough to stop any criminal threatening you. When a criminal gets shot, their body’s entire blood supply sprays onto all the walls and they die within milliseconds.

I answered a call about a man with a gun. When I knocked on an apartment door, a drunk inside pointed a gun at me through a window. I jumped out of the way, drew my weapon and screamed at the drunk to drop the gun. He kept moving the gun, trying to get me in his sights. Another officer in a different spot shot him.

When we got inside the apartment, we found the suspect wide awake, flailing around on the floor. Fortunately a family member had disarmed him. He could still have shot us. The officer had hit him under the left arm. The round went all the way through his upper body and stopped just under the skin below his right arm. Last I heard, years after the shooting, the drunk was still alive.

But nobody needs more than seven rounds. When someone is trying to kill you, all you have to do is fire slowly and carefully to make sure you don’t run out. You can even count your rounds as you shoot. It’s easy.

When investigators asked the officer who saved my life how many rounds he fired, he said, “Two or three, I think.” But when they counted rounds in his magazine, it turned out he had fired eight. He had been a cop for over twenty years, and was a survivor of several shootings. Under stress, he lost count of his rounds. Because that’s what happens when you’re shooting to save your life, or to save someone else’s life.

But nobody needs more than seven rounds. You can just shoot the bad guy in the head. It’s easy to make a head shot under stress, right? And they’re immediately fatal.

I answered a stabbing call at a nightclub. When I arrived I found two women standing at the open door of a truck, telling the driver, “You’ll be okay.” When I shined my flashlight on the driver, I was stunned; he hadn’t been stabbed, he had been shot in the head with a .38 from close range. About a third of his skull was blown away. And he wasn’t just alive, he was awake. He nodded to the women, wiped his face, did his best to stay calm. When paramedics arrived, the man got out of the truck with minimal assistance. He died hours later.

I arrived on a shooting/riot outside a club. One man was dead in the street, another had been taken to the hospital by private car. As we tried to control the crowd, a severely beaten young man walked up to me and slurred, “Hey man, we need an ambulance.” I answered, “Yeah, we have one on the way.” As I spoke, I noticed a bloody dent on the side of the young man’s head. I thought, Is that a bullet hole? The man collapsed at my feet. A 9mm Black Talon hollow point had bounced off his skull. The wound didn’t put the man down until several minutes after he was shot. He survived.

I assisted on a rollover accident. The driver was an older woman who lost control of her truck. At the emergency room, a CAT scan revealed a bullet in her head. The woman died. Her husband was unconscious. Days later, when the husband awakened, investigators asked who shot his wife. The man answered, “Oh yeah, that. She told me she got shot in the head about ten years ago, before we got married. She never went to the doctor or nothing, though.” An autopsy showed it was an old wound. This woman got shot in the head, and never even bothered to get medical attention.

But nobody needs more than seven rounds. If little bullets don’t work, get a pistol that fires bigger bullets. Nobody could still be a threat after being hit by a big round.

In one of our firefights in Afghanistan, three French Marines were hit by gunfire. One died from a head wound. The other two were hit in the upper body and badly wounded. Those two Marines got back to their feet, kept their weapons ready and made it to safety with help. And they were hit by either 7.62×39 AK-47 rounds or 7.62x54R PKM machine gun rounds. Those are far more powerful than what any typical pistol fires.

These stories are all from my personal experience. Secondhand, I know of a man who was shot in the forehead, sneezed and blew the round out his nose. I know of a gang member who had half his head blown off by an AK round, then told the first responding officer, “They shot me, dog.” I know of a robber who ran into a restaurant with an Uzi and was immediately shot twice by an off-duty officer, then ran to a payphone and called 911 to report he had been shot.

Historically speaking, I know of the suspect in the Miami FBI shootout who sustained a non-survivable wound in the first few seconds of the fight, but still managed to kill two FBI agents and wound several others. I know of a drunk suspect who shot an Arkansas deputy twice, then took seventeen 9mm rounds in the torso without effect before the deputy finally shot him twice in the face. I know of the young Georgia mother who shot a burglar five times in the head and neck. He asked her to stop shooting, cried, and drove away. I know of many Soldiers and Marines who sustained horrible wounds and stayed in the fight.

When I’m on the street, I carry a pistol with a fifteen round magazine and three spare mags. Off duty, I carry a weapon and magazines that hold many more than seven rounds. I carry that much ammo because I understand what pistols are capable of, and what they’re not capable of.

The people who are pushing new gun control laws seem to think they understand weapons and lethal force encounters. They don’t. One of them thinks someone armed with a double-barrel shotgun is better off than someone armed with an AR-15, even if the person with the AR knows how to use it. One of them thinks people have been shot with unloaded guns. One of them thinks women can’t use an AR-15, even though women in the military have been using M-16s and M4s for decades. The same person didn’t know the difference between a barrel shroud and a folding stock. Some in the media think a rifle’s sling swivel is used to mount a bayonet and fire grenades. Some of them pay $200 for an expended anti-tank rocket launcher tube, which can’t be reloaded and is nothing more than a piece of fiberglass, proudly hold it over their heads at press conferences and proclaim they’ve protected the public from a “weapon of war”. They think cops who have body armor and backup need high capacity magazines, but private citizens without those things only need seven rounds.

Make your own decision about whether or not to defend yourself, and what you should use to do so. But learn the reality of a gunfight. Understand that you’re likely to only hit with a small percentage of the shots you fire, and those hits may not have much effect.

And most of all, remember that many people who say nobody needs more than seven rounds don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

Chris Hernandez is a 20 year police officer, former Marine and currently serving National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com, Iron Mike magazine and has published two military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve and Line in the Valley, through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Choices and Principles

chrishernandezauthor — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:40:01 +0000

Quick cop story. I remembered this recently, and I think it’s pertinent to the current national situation. I’ll explain why later.

Years ago, I met a police officer from a “commonwealth” state. I didn’t have a good grasp of what that meant. We had a conversation about commonwealth laws, and to this day I’m disgusted that any American cop would say what he said.

At one point in the conversation, the officer said that under his state’s commonwealth laws any type of sex other than regular “missionary position” was illegal. He didn’t understand why. His only explanation was, “It’s a really old law.”

I asked him, “Does anyone in your state expect you to be the sex police? Do any cops enforce that stupid law?”

He answered, “We have to enforce it. There’s a law against a police officer not enforcing a law. So if I don’t enforce it, I get charged with a crime.”

I thought the officer was BSing me. So I presented him with a hypothetical, based on an incident that happened near Houston a year or two earlier.

“How about this. You and your partner get a burglary in progress call at a house. A neighbor thinks he saw two strangers go in the front door. You get there and find the front door open. You enter the house and hear noise in a bedroom. In the bedroom you find a man and woman performing oral sex on each other. You detain them and find out they’re married and it’s their house. The neighbor had made a mistake. Would you arrest them for having illegal sex?”

The officer shrugged and said, “Yes.”

I gave him a you’ve got to be f’king kidding me look. “Dude, come on. Are you telling me you haven’t had oral sex with your wife? In your house?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Of course I have.”

“But you’d still arrest this couple for doing the same thing?”

The officer shrugged again. “I’d have to. If I didn’t, I’d go to jail.”

This irked me. Not because I couldn’t believe it, but because I could. Officers have done stupid crap like that before. The incident near Houston I referred to earlier involved a fake burglary call at an apartment. When two deputies entered they found the male renter and another man having consensual sex. The deputies arrested them both, under a very old and very stupid “homosexual conduct” law that has since been removed.

So how is this pertinent to our current situation? Here’s how.

Police officers nationwide are about to be put in a very bad position. Many of us, probably most of us, are avid supporters of the 2nd Amendment. Despite public statements by mostly urban police chiefs, who uniformly speak out against gun ownership and citizens’ rights to armed self-defense, many street cops are passionate believers in both of those things.

Individual sheriffs in several states and a coalition of sheriffs in Utah have pledged not to enforce any laws restricting 2nd Amendment rights. Police officers on social media sites aren’t just saying they won’t enforce new gun control laws, but in some cases are saying they won’t personally comply with them. It’s not a small number of police officers making these statements.

People who look to the UK and Australia as great examples of successful mass firearms confiscation don’t appreciate the huge difference between our cops and their cops. Their cops apparently went along with confiscation. If it comes to that point, many of ours won’t. A law that few comply with and fewer enforce isn’t going to be the success that Senator Feinstein and Governor Cuomo think it will be.

But. . . then there’s my old buddy, the commonwealth officer. The guy who says, “I’ll arrest you for doing absolutely nothing wrong, for doing something that I myself do, even if you’re in your own home. Because a law says I have to.” There are cops like the one I wrote about in My Life as A Tyrant, who literally stole property from innocent people because a communist law said he could. There are cops who knew he did that and said, “It’s legal, so I don’t have a problem with it.” There are cops who say, “If it’s a law, no matter what it is, I’ll enforce it.”

If a law is blatantly wrong, then we’re blatantly wrong for enforcing it. A law that makes criminals out of a husband and wife for having “unorthodox” sex is wrong and shouldn’t be enforced. A law that makes criminals of law-abiding citizens, who own weapons they are guaranteed a right to possess, is wrong and shouldn’t be enforced. A law that orders me to forcibly confiscate property, from people who have committed no crime and are no threat, is blatantly wrong and shouldn’t be enforced.

I don’t care if the law is popular with part of the country. I don’t care if some people think “This will make us safer.” They’re wrong. It won’t. I don’t care if highly placed “leaders” who think the Bill of Rights no longer applies want the law enforced. They can enforce it themselves.

I didn’t take an oath to mindlessly obey any laws or orders placed in front of me. After the Benghazi attack and anti-Muslim movie fiasco, a few voices insisted that “Nobody should be allowed to insult a religion.” If they had somehow passed a law banning “offensive speech against religion”, I’d go to jail before enforcing it.

I took an oath to defend principles. Those principles are enshrined in our Bill of Rights. I firmly believe this is the best country that has ever existed in the history of humanity, because of our fanatical defense of those rights. And the day that someone orders me to violate those rights, the day I have to be that commonwealth officer, is the day I fling my badge into the mud in disgust.

A Culture of Entrenched Cowardice

chrishernandezauthor — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:36:32 +0000

Everyone knows of Flights 11 and 175, which hit the Twin Towers on 9/11. We understand that passengers on those flights thought they were facing a “normal” hijacking. They expected the hijackers to land somewhere and make demands, then release hostages. They followed the old advice of, “stay calm, cooperate, don’t fight back and nobody will get hurt.” They did what they reasonably believed was right, which wound up being wrong.

Everyone in America knows the story of United Flight 93, the flight that fought back. Everyone knows of the brave passengers who refused to die as helpless victims. Everyone knows they charged the cockpit and fought for control of the aircraft, forcing the hijackers to crash into an empty field instead of the Capitol. Those passengers are justifiably regarded as heroes.

But how many Americans consider the actions of passengers and crew on American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon? As far as we know, the plane was hijacked, its crew forced to the rear, then the aircraft began descending over Washington D.C. – and the passengers and crew did nothing. They apparently sat quietly in their seats, fully aware that they were about to die a horrible, fiery death. At least one passenger knew hijacked airliners had hit the Twin Towers (and to me it’s inconceivable that she didn’t tell the others). But even though they knew they were doomed, even though they literally could not have made the situation worse by resisting, they didn’t lift a finger to stop it. They died as cooperative, unresisting victims.

I’m not blaming them for their inaction. We as a nation learned a hard lesson about trusting those with evil intentions that day. Instead, I’m blaming a widespread mindset that’s poisoned the United States over the past several decades. I think this mindset is directly opposed to traditional American values, and would have been ridiculed by braver generations.

This mindset advocates passive acceptance of victimhood. This mindset tells people, “it’s better to stand by and do nothing as you and other innocent people are brutally murdered.“ And worse than that, it elevates such cowardice to a virtue.

The debate over gun control sparked by the Newtown shooting has partly devolved into a debate about whether citizens should defend themselves from mass shooters. Much of America believes private citizens can and should use weapons to protect themselves and their families. But a very vocal portion of the population considers this idea to be total stupidity.

Since I began writing about mass shootings and armed citizenry, I’ve read many comments to my articles. While most have been positive, I’ve also seen a number of readers who don’t just disagree but can’t seem to think of armed citizenry in anything other than derisive terms.

Here are a few examples, from various internet forums:

“And I think that’s a perfect example of the egoistic hero fantasy BS that fuels this whole problem. . . . everyone with a gun thinks they’re going to be John Mclane.”

“I describe these scenarios as hero fantasy because that’s precisely what they are.”

“’Super good guys with guns to save the day’. Check.”

“I don’t think some overconfident chippy with a pistol in her handbag is going to be of any use whatsoever to anyone. Tell me, Miss Annie Oakley, precisely how you determine who the good guys are and who the bad guys are when everyone pulls out a gun?”

This quote from an article in the Huffington Post directly equates armed teachers with “movie hero fantasies”: “Bruce Lee’s son died in a gun accident on a movie set, but I’m sure that won’t happen in your classroom. Your classroom isn’t a movie set. Well, not until some gun-toting lunatic barges in, in a slow motion climax after about two hours and a classic three act structure, scored by whatever composer Michael Bay uses for his films, and probably while he eats breakfast, and does his laundry, and sits on the toilet.”

A blog post from last year was titled, “NRA gun-toting-Rambo-citizen-hero ‘theory’ soundly disproved in New York at Empire State Building Shooting”.

These sentiments, often expressed by people with little to no experience, training or apparent understanding of lethal violence, are all over the internet. Those who hold this belief view every private citizen who carries a weapon for self defense as a delusional, wannabe superman who is capable of only creating more problems and mistakenly killing more innocent people. They see armed citizens as simply another threat to the public, maybe a bigger threat than the statistically insignificant number of mass shooters.

I don’t claim to know the true motivations of everyone who opposes armed citizens’ response to mass shooters. But I do know that this mindset certainly can be a cynical, self-serving way to disguise blatant fear of taking action as “good sense”. I fear that this mindset is changing us from a brave culture, a culture where people are expected to defend the defenseless, to a culture of deeply entrenched cowardice. A culture where outright refusal to defend even one’s own family is celebrated as a mark of high intelligence.

The realities of sudden violence against private citizens always point to an inescapable conclusion: the only way to protect citizens from violence is to let them protect themselves. I say this as a police officer who spent years training for and teaching other police officers how to respond to mass shootings. Anyone who thinks we police can be everywhere, or can respond within seconds to any public place under attack, are fooling themselves.

We’ve experienced a long string of tragic mass shootings. The Killeen Luby’s, the Amish School shooting, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, Newtown, the New York subway massacre, the Sikh Temple shooting, the Aurora Colorado theater shooting, the Giffords shooting in Tucson, the Colorado Springs church shooting, and on and on. In every one, police arrived too late to stop the massacres.

But remember that one shooting, where police arrived in seconds and managed to stop the shooter immediately? No? Me neither. It never happened.

We have a well known, easily understood set of facts regarding mass shootings. We know, without question, that a mass murderer who faces no resistance will kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. We know most mass shooters will keep killing until they’re forced to stop. We know police won’t respond in time. And yet, some people take that set of facts and conclude that no private citizen should act to defend themselves.

I understand if someone makes the personal decision not to defend themselves. I don’t agree with it, but a reasonable, intelligent person can decide not to carry a weapon. Some people know they wouldn’t be able to control their fear, or can’t handle a firearm, aren’t prepared for the responsibility, or could never shoot another human being. That doesn’t make them bad people, and the majority of our population is probably made up of people who feel that way. Their attitude might be summed up as, “I’m not the right person to carry a weapon, so I’m glad other people have them.” My comments aren’t directed toward people who make that honest, rational assessment of themselves.

My comments are, however, directed at committed victims who deem themselves morally and intellectually superior to those who would fight back. It’s not enough for them to make a personal decision not to act; for some reason, they have to try to stop others from doing what they themselves won’t.

We’re not talking about intervening in a robbery, or jumping in when a crip shoots a blood over dope-deaing turf. In most of these cases, the best thing to do is be a good witness. We’re talking about the closest thing to black and white, no question, pure evil we’re likely to see in America: a coward brutally gunning down as many innocent, helpless people as possible. If that doesn’t demand an immediate, lethal citizen response, nothing does.

When pacifists advocate passive resistance to violence while smugly assuming armed citizes are stupid and violent, they accomplish two things. First, the pacifists don’t have to accept the true cowardice inherent in their decision. After all, how can any honorable man or woman refuse to act when innocent people, especially children, are being murdered in their presence? And second, these pacifists actually enable violent criminals who specifically seek a mass of unarmed, unresisting victims.

I would like to offer a deal to those who refuse to carry a weapon, yet insult and deride those who do. I won’t hold your decision, which has no bearing on how I should live, against you. I won’t speak badly of you. If I happen to be near you and the unthinkable happens, I will risk my life to defend you. If I’m mortally wounded and have time to recognize my impending death, I won’t feel anger over dying to defend someone who wouldn’t defend himself.

Your part of the deal? Shut up. Stop speaking out against those who would face mortal danger to defend themselves, their families and you. Stop telling good, intelligent people not to fight back against evil. Stop trying to convince people that if police can’t protect them, they therefore shouldn’t protect themselves. If you have zero experience in the subject, stop spreading your tactical wisdom, gained through years of sitting in classrooms and discussing with likeminded friends how stupid gun owners are, about what a gunfight is really like. Stop citing Mother Jones “studies” and 20/20 “videotaped experiments” that were specifically engineered to convince people not to defend themselves. Stop telling me that cowardly mass shooters with no skill or training are unstoppable monsters who no citizen should even attempt to fight, but brave law-abiding citizens with training and good sense are powerless. Stop telling me it’s better to let a childish coward keep shooting at me than to shoot back. Stop projecting your passive timidity onto others. Stop hiding your cowardice behind a veil of smug superiority. People see through it.

When faced with the horrible evil of Newtown, Columbine, or Virginia Tech, we all face a decision. Are we the passive victims of Flight 77, who sat quietly in helpless acceptance of their impending murders? Or are we the men and women of action who took responsibility for their own lives and those of the intended innocent victims below, banded together and charged the cockpit of Flight 93?

You victims made your decision in advance. Just like the Flight 77 passengers, you know the end result of that decision will be tragedy. But I respect your rights, and accept what you’ve chosen not to do.

I, along with many veterans, police officers and armed citizens, have rejected your culture of cowardice. At the very least, you should respect our decision. And if the worst case happens, all you should do is duck out of the line of fire, shut your mouth, and let the rest of us follow the path that we, not you, have chosen.

Gun control: making a statement, not an impact

chrishernandezauthor — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 18:45:05 +0000

Don’t worry. We’re going to be safe. Jaime Foxx, Beyonce, Gwyneth Paltrow and other celebrities have joined forces with New York City Mayor Bloomberg to “Demand a Plan” for new gun control. They helped make a video, then left the studio in the company of their armed bodyguards, to go to mansions surrounded by armed security. Gosh, what a powerful statement.

As a nation, we learn nothing. Individuals see obvious, workable solutions to the problems of mass murders, such as allowing more private citizens to carry. But the nation as a whole stumbles from one weak, passive, worthless gesture to another. We see horrible crimes committed against the most innocent, most vulnerable members of society, and we pass new laws that make a statement, not an impact. Then another massacre happens, and another, and we refuse to accept that empty statements, even those made by celebrities, don’t stop massacres.

Someone killed twenty people at a school? Ban guns at schools (but don’t actually check to make sure nobody has a gun). Someone killed twenty people at a theater? Ban guns at movie theaters (and enforce that ban by putting a sticker – a sticker! – on the door that says No Guns Allowed). Someone used an “assault rifle” to commit a massacre? Ban assault rifles (but don’t actually remove them from society, because it can’t be done; more on that later). Empty, worthless statements. No impact at all.

Yesterday, columnist Leonard Pitts published an article titled “America must find courage to confront its love for guns”, and said this: “And Bob McDonnell, Virginia’s Republican Governor, suggests the teachers should have been armed (as if the problem is that there were too few guns in that school).” Well yes, Mister Pitts, once Adam Lanza shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary, one serious problem was a lack of other guns in that school. One more gun, in the hands of a trained teacher, could have put an end to that massacre long before the 26th victim was murdered. More guns, wielded by good people, put an end to the Luby’s massacre. And the University of Texas massacre. And the San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre. And the Utah Trolley Square Mall massacre. And the Portland, Oregon attempted mall massacre. But let’s ignore that, and demand new gun control laws. That’ll work.

Wayne LaPierre, since stating the painfully obvious truth that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” has received more hate and vitriol from the media than Adam Lanza. The loudest voices in America are so opposed to the very concept of armed self defense that they can do nothing but heap derisive scorn upon those with the audacity to suggest good people use guns to defend themselves from bad people. “You think regular people should be allowed to carry guns? In public? That’s ridiculous! We need to ban guns, stupid!”

This takes me back to an argument I had years ago with a childhood friend who was vehemently opposed to any private gun ownership. After hitting her with a few hypotheticals about using guns for self defense, which she refused to budge on, I asked her point blank: “If you knew, for certain, that someone was coming to your home to kidnap, rape and murder your daughter, would you get a gun to defend her?”

Her answer was, “No! I will not have a gun in my home for any reason!”

My friend’s attitude accomplished two things: it convinced her of her moral superiority over people like me, and emboldened anyone who wanted to victimize her and her family. At the moment, her attitude is rampant across America, and its adherents are accomplishing the same two things. They’re expressing their scornful, arrogant, condescending superiority over the rest of us. And they’re emboldening future mass murderers.

Let me be clear about something: I don’t think everyone who supports gun control is an evil idiot intent on destroying the United States. Some people I respect and care for very much, like my father, reacted to the Newtown shooting by demanding new gun control. One of my best friends told me that when he heard the news, his first thought was, “This is too much. We need to ban all assault rifles, right now. Nobody should be allowed to own one.”

My father is an Air Force veteran who has been shooting since he was a child. My friend is a two-time Iraq vet who owns several assault rifles, has paid thousands of dollars to attend advanced training courses from civilian tactical trainers and has a concealed handgun license. Neither is an “anti-gun liberal”. My father backed off his call for gun control after talking to me about the realities, my friend realized his reaction was pure emotion and also backed off. But much of the emotional, inflammatory reaction from the public isn’t toning down.

I should point out that I’m not one of those line-in-the-sand, never give an inch, “I’d rather die than see one new gun law” gun owners. Most of us accept that there is such a thing as reasonable, effective gun control; if not, we’d be clamoring for unrestricted ownership of fully automatic weapons. If a law accomplished the two goals of reducing crime and protecting our 2nd Amendment rights, I could support it. The problem is, I can’t imagine any new legislation that would accomplish those things.

Now I’m going to make a statement that will anger many people: new gun control legislation is inevitable. I don’t see any way the anti-gun portion of our government will back down without having “won” something that they believe will reduce gun violence. With a democratic president and majority of the federal government run by democrats (and especially the attorney general’s office), it is more or less unthinkable that we won’t see new gun control laws enacted. The first thing we should expect is a rebirth of the expired “Assault Weapons Ban” (AWB). This law is a perfect example of how new gun control makes a statement, not an impact.

The vaunted AWB of 1994 didn’t ban ownership or trade of assault rifles. It simply outlawed the sale of new guns with certain features such as bayonet lugs, flash suppressors, integral grenade launchers and two piece stocks (plus it restricted pistols and shotguns with certain features, but the ban is less well known for that part). The effect on people like me who already owned an assault rifle was negligible. I didn’t have to turn mine in, or even hide it. I could take it to any public shooting range, show it off to a cop on the firing line, then take it back home. There was no penalty for having or legally using one. If I wanted to buy a new one from a dealer, it wouldn’t have a bayonet lug or the other features I mentioned. Other than that, I could own all the AK-47s or AR-15s I wanted.

The law was amazingly effective though. For the entire 10-year length of the ban, there was not a single massed bayonet charge in the streets of America. Rifle grenades were not used, even once, to commit a massacre. Criminals who used “post ban” rifles, with no flash suppressors, made a brighter flash and louder noise with each shot used to murder someone. The law mandated a one piece stock, rather than a separate shoulder stock and pistol grip; this undoubtedly saved the lives of hundreds of millions of innocent Americans. The proof is that hundreds of millions of innocent Americans are still alive.

I hate to joke about this, because it isn’t funny. It’s depressing. The law did literally nothing to remove assault weapons from society (which was, I think, what supporters of the ban wanted people to think), didn’t stop their sales, and didn’t prevent any crime at all. An empty statement, with no impact.

And even if the law had totally removed assault weapons from society, consider these facts: the worst school shooting in the history of the United States, Virgina Tech, was carried out by a coward armed with two pistols. The 1991 Luby’s massacre in Killeen, Texas was carried out by a coward armed with two pistols. The Fort Hood shooting was carried out by a coward armed with two pistols. The Sikh temple shooter was armed with one pistol. Even Charles Whitman, the University of Texas Tower shooter who was a former Marine and actually had extensive training, didn’t use an “assault rifle”. The only military-style weapon he had was a World War II-issue M1 Carbine, not exactly what people picture when they think of assault weapons.

What I’m getting at is this: if you think a new assault weapons ban will stop mass shootings, you’re wrong. But a new law proves that, by golly, the government is doing something. “Assault weapons have been banned. You’re safe now.” Meanwhile, millions of assault rifles remain in the hands of law-abiding owners and an unknown number are illegally owned by criminals. The ban makes no impact. Just a statement.

Perhaps you agree with what many people had to say about the past AWB, that it was “too watered down” to be effective. Maybe your reaction is to say, “This time we need to ban and confiscate all guns, not just assault weapons.”

Good luck with that. By some estimates, there are enough guns in America for every last man, woman and child. Aside from the constitutional violations required to remove them from society, how can it be practically accomplished? Even totalitarian dictatorships, with massive secret police forces, no constitutional protections and leaders willing to imprison or kill their citizens on a whim, have failed to fully disarm their populations.

I’m going to give you a hypothetical. Let’s say a law is passed that bans the possession of any firearm that could be used to commit a mass murder. Let’s also say there are 200 million guns in the U.S., which is a very low estimate.

This new law excludes certain guns like single-shot rifles, pistols and shotguns because they’re not suitable to commit mass crimes. Let’s give a very high estimate and say those guns make up a quarter of all firearms in the U.S. That leaves 150 million guns to be confiscated.

Now let’s say the owners of 50 million of those guns (again, a pretty high estimate) decide to comply with the new law and voluntarily turn in their weapons. That still leaves 100 million guns.

Police agencies now begin their campaign to find and confiscate those remaining 100 million guns. This duty is in addition to working accidents, responding to crimes, enforcing traffic laws, deterring crime through random patrols, arresting drunk drivers, breaking up bar fights, putting bank robbers in jail, providing security at public events, all the things that regularly occupy our time.

Now let’s suppose that not a single police officer in America would refuse to confiscate these weapons. Considering that many police officers are themselves gun enthusiasts who regard the 2nd Amendment as the bedrock of our other constitutional freedoms, this isn’t likely. But let’s go with it for the hypothetical.

Now the police will try to remove 100 million guns through gun buybacks, consent and warrant searches, and the normal seizures of weapons used in crimes. How long this would take is anyone’s guess. But considering the recent proud announcement by the city of Boston, that its police had seized over 500 guns this past year, I imagine it would take centuries.

But we’ll be optimistic and assume that police across America seize one million guns per year. It will still take a hundred years to get those last 100 million guns. During this hundred years, law-abiding citizens will be disarmed (except for weapons unsuitable for defense) but others will still have access to millions of weapons. Does this sound like a workable solution to anyone?

Again, I don’t oppose all gun control. But if we’re going to implement some (and we inevitably will, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth) it should be effective, not just a symbolic offering. And it must not, for any reason, leave the public defenseless in the face of a mass murderer. Thus far, I haven’t heard any ideas for gun control that immediately disarm criminals, and that don’t erode the rights and safety of the very people who need to be protected.

A new ban on assault weapons isn’t a solution. Neither is telling people not to defend themselves. Any “solution” that compels citizens to “run, hide, or just keep getting shot until the police show up” isn’t a solution at all. It’s simply another means of providing more and easier targets to murderers. If we’re going to find a real solution to the problem of mass murderers (and we need to), it must include provisions for more qualified citizens to carry weapons in public, and in schools. Nothing else is an effective deterrent. Any new law that doesn’t recognize this fact is just another empty statement, with no impact.