What is going on here? This is the third time I have remarked that the Los Angeles Times is right on about the second amendment. The other times were the Editorial Board's affirmation of the second amendment to protect their first amendment, and could foresee activists attacking the freedom of the press the way they had pried at the second amendment. That appears here. And the June 29 piece patting the Times on the back appears here.
Understand that I do not agree with the Times, the Times is agreeing with me. Where the Times agrees with me is in their understanding that the second amendment is not all about guns: our liberty and authority only begin with being armed. Without this, we have nothing, and it is this which the Times seems to acknowledge.
Today's Times article appears online as Openly bearing arms, beachgoers cite rights by Jack Leonard. The Times article was above the fold in the California Section in my doorstep edition, and I nodded that it was a good piece, more than fair. Leonard reported that Hermosa Beach saw an organized trash cleanup thanks to South Bay Open Carry, the purpose being to associate cleanup with contributing to a community in general. Gun owners are most interested in community and the self-rule that it requires if community is to work best. Bringing self-rule understanding as a totality to the layman has long been a function of gun ownership.
I've always explained that the armed citizen contributes much more to a community than gun control ever will. My appreciation for Leonard's report is in what gun owners know so well, something gun owners would like non-gunowners to know: His article reported that with so many persons armed at the beach city's popular spot, almost no one noticed them. This is a good thing. They don't notice armed citizens in Arizona, either. This is what I call a vote of a sort. Very subtle, but authentic.
The second thing Leonard reported was that there were no complaints, something also known so well by gun owners. A majority of Americans not only support the concept of the armed citizen in their community self-interest, but also back it with their nonchalance when they observe an armed citizen near them. No big deal. That's a vote of a sort.
And what is so helpful to the community is that Leonard took the time to look and to discover what we 90 million gun owners know. Thank you, Jack.
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Leonard rightly quoted people who said they were uncomfortable with someone with a gun, but this is not unsafer streets; no matter how uncomfortable someone feels about an armed citizen, it's the safer streets that count.
The key is that streets are made safer when thugs get the message, and nothing says it better than their awareness of the odds shifting against them. Don't think for a minute that thugs do not have their finger on the pulse of society. With enough citizens armed – with the thugs' knowledge that too many citizens are armed – thugs back down and move on. This is the experience of forty other states. It is Calfornia that is out of step when it comes to guns and safer streets.
In this assessment, it's what you don't see that tells the story. You see armed citizens, but so do thugs. And what you don't see is how they elect not to strike a target who may bring lethal force to bear on them where citizens are not intimidated, but thugs are.
Naturally, the South Bay Open Carry had notified the Police in advance, and the event was...uneventful. That's the way we like it.
For safer streets, that's the way we all like it.
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Comments
It is nice to see that California might be getting it right once ina while. Now if that community can keep it up it might spread and you would be right. The thugs will go someplace else and that place will have to stand up to them. This is about people taking responsibility for themselves and not trying to pass it off to the cops. The cops have a job but it is the citizens that have to stand up for their own right whether it is against the thugs or the cops in some rare cases. As you said some people might be uncomfortable but they will sleep safer and more comfortable knowing not only cops but other citizens can protect them if need be. And a nice hand to the cops who did not freak out and handled it as business as usual.
And another thing about this event: Nobody argued with the open carry people, but just remarked on camera for the videographers. The Open Carry participants held signs and carried trash bags as part of their cleanup event, but reports mention that they were not really noticed in any adverse sense. Nobody panicked. Nobody called anything in. Some people spoke on camera, but the cleanup, the signs and the interviews probably made the thing. That was well organized. But the guns were not actively rejected by the locals and the participants were able to make their point.
Even more astonishing is that the Los Angeles Times reporter is English.
Then you'd be pleased to learn how the armed citizen is desired around the world.. The Philippines, Mumbai, England . . .
Can someone explain to me the 90 million gun owner stats, it seems years ago that number was floating around along with 200 million guns. Well I would imagine with the population growing, the influx of new gun owners in the last three years, and those adding to their collection that the numbers should be somewhere around 100 million gun owners, and probably close to 250 million guns. I mean why, and how could the numbers stay static with what has happened in the last three years?
Taurus, since the election, gun owners have increased from a rough 80 million to about 90 million. We believe that there are about 300 million guns in the hands of some 90 million gun owners as of the latest rough assessment.
We believe also that these new 10 million do buy out of anticipation of looming gun confiscations (if they come for one gun, they come for all your guns) but because of adverse changes in our society.
Among those dynamics compelling new gun buyers are early release of thugs, changes in the capacity of courts to calendar and incarcerate anyway, funding and deployment of assets, changes in criminal law and procedure, and a general realization that you cannot depend on the system to look after your butt.
In the fight for Independence, the acquisition of firearm by another ten million is quite a vote, isn't it?
Make that "do NOT buy.."
But many different pro gun publications have been using the 90 million gun owners, and 200 million guns stats for years, don't we do ourselves an injustice by keeping the figures the same over the last three years? I would bet that most pro gunner's know many friends, or family that have purchased their first handgun(s), or long gun(s), or added to their collection recently, and in fact I know of at least five (5) myself. Plus some are as far left as you could imagine! Like I said, I hate to short change ourselves on the facts.
No, we do not. As far as I can recollect, the figure for gun owners has been a stable 80 million. This is an estimate and has to have a plus - or - minus in there. What is significant is that the figures jumped suddenly ten million by some estimates. Whether they level off at 90 million may not be as important as the fact that they have jumped 12.5% in a very short time.
Remember that gun owners have to be adult, they have to pass a background check, and they are subjected a unreasonable regulations which may discourage purchases improperly and not properly at all. It could be demographics in adults, as opposed to, say, people under-age.
It is also a function of new owners who are buying for the first time. 12.% of 80 million is a rather hefty vote of a sort, isn't it? It comes to ten million new owners.
Another way to see it is that out of 320 million people, what percentage are qualified adults? WHatever remains, 10 million is most significant.
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