[Vision2020] Arms and the Duck

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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August 24, 2012
Arms and the Duck By GAIL
COLLINS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/gailcollins/index.html>

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[WhaRtm]>We
had a shooting near the Empire State Building. An aggrieved
ex-employee
of an apparel company killed his former co-worker, and was himself killed
by police. Except for the famous-landmark location, it was not actually a
very big story. Remember the mass shooting at the lumberyard in North
Carolina earlier this year, or the one last October at the California
cement plant? No? Neither does anybody else except the grieving families.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[NpwIAB]>Nine
passers-by were also wounded, and it seems almost certain that some or
all were accidentally hit by the police. This isn’t surprising; it’s only
in movies that people are good shots during a violent encounter. In 2008,
Al Baker reported in The Times that the accuracy rate for New York City
officers firing in the line of duty was 34 percent.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[AtaTmi]>And
these are people trained for this kind of crisis. The moral is that if
a lunatic starts shooting, you will not be made safer if your fellow
average citizens are carrying concealed weapons.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[TinTch]>This
is not the accepted wisdom in many parts of the country. (Certainly
not in Congress, where safety was cited as a rationale for letting
vacationers take loaded pistols into federal parks.) Shortly after the mass
murder at the movie theater in Colorado, I was waiting for a plane at a
tiny airport in North Dakota, listening to a group of oil rig workers
discuss how many lives would have been saved if only the other theater
patrons had been armed. “They could have nipped it in the bud,” one man
told another confidently.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[PttOaa]>People,
try to imagine what would have happened if, instead of diving for
the floor, a bunch of those moviegoers had stood up and started shooting
into the dark. Or ask a cop.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[WanWan]>We
are never going to have a sane national policy on guns until the gun
advocates give up on the fantasy that the best protection against armed
psychopaths bent on random violence is regular people with loaded pistols
on their belts.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[ItaBit]>Is
there anything the other side can concede in return? Well, gun control
advocates have to be careful not to say anything that demeans hunting.
Virtually every politician in America has already gotten that message.
(See: Senator Chuck Schumer holding dead pheasants.) But it’s true that
some city-dwellers can be snotty on this point.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[YdmAlo]>“You
don’t mess with hunting and fishing because that’s part of who we
are,” says Kathy Cramer Walsh, a professor at the University of Wisconsin
who specializes in civic engagement. “A lot of times, talk about regulating
guns and ammunition is seen as the outside trying to change who we are.”

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[IbtIbt]>I’ve
been thinking about guns and Wisconsin lately, especially since Paul
Ryan, a big fan of the arm-the-world theory of public safety, was picked to
be a vice-presidential nominee.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[WhsIwa]>Wisconsin
has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country. (The
Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence gives it 3 points out of a possible
100.) It was also, of course, the scene of a terrible mass shooting this
month by Wade Michael Page at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[PhaTCm]>Page
had a high-capacity magazine, which allowed him to shoot at least 17
bullets before reloading. Those magazines tend to be a common theme in all
our worst mass shooting incidents. The gunman at the shopping center in
Tucson where Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot had one that held
more than 30 bullets. The Colorado movie theater shooter had a 100-bullet
magazine.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[TmuIfm]>The
magazines used to be illegal before Congress let the assault weapons
ban elapse. Getting rid of them again would not stop mass shootings, but it
would limit the number of victims. And you do not need a high-capacity
magazine for hunting. In fact, many states outlaw them for hunting because
they don’t want one person mowing down an entire flock or herd.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[UflEtm]>Under
federal law, you only can use guns with a maximum three-bullet
capacity if you’re hunting migratory birds. Even the most completely
mindless faction in the National Rifle Association appears willing to give
that a pass.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[HadTsi]>“Hunting’s
a different thing,” said Jeff Nass, the president of Wisconsin
Force, an N.R.A. affiliate. “The ducks and geese can’t shoot back.” Mass
shootings, Nass contended, do not occur because crazy people have access to
weapons that allow them to hit a large number of people in seconds. “Mass
shootings come into play because nobody’s there defending themselves,” he
said. “The solution is self-defense.”

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[StgMto]>So
the guy driving toward the Sikh temple with the high-capacity magazine
on his gun was legal until he started shooting. The guy sitting in the duck
blind, no. Mull that one over the weekend.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825&pagewanted=print#p[JNiJNi]>Joe
Nocera is off today.




-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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