Adam Weinstein
June 10, 2014
-snip-
The cultural effect of all these laws is to encourage a kind of hypervigilance that's simultaneously paranoid and arrogant. It encourages armed citizens to seek confrontations and escalate them, confident that they can end them definitively. That hypervigilance looks at my questions and scenarios and doubts and says, like a drill instructor in a true army of one: "Then don't carry a gun, you equivocating pussy. Leave the defending to us real men."
Fine. I leave it to you, the hypervigilant. Even though the statistics show mass shootings are on the rise, and not one has been stopped by armed good guys—armed civilian good guys. In fact, they've been shot more often than they've shot the baddies. Which is natural, since assault weapons are on the rise, and it's hard to conceal a weapon that can outshoot someone with a Bushmaster. I leave it to you, because I still puzzle in my mind over all the tactical difficulties posed by someone in civilian clothes carrying a gun during a shooting. (How do you telegraph your goodness to the cops and bystanders?)
I'd like to support you in your supreme confidence. I'd like to stand up for your right and trust that you take care in the responsibilities that come with it. But I can't be certain of that, any more than I can be certain that my aim is true, or that in the heat of the moment, another Amanda Miller isn't waiting for you or me.
read full article: http://gawker.com/its-really-hard-to-be-a-good-guy-with-a-gun-1588660306
= new reply since forum marked as read
