Read this and weep

[seamusTX]

Morons are going to be the death of us. What can we do about this? Bueller? Anybody?

http://blog.cleveland.com/westlakepolic ... ember.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim

[Elvis]

Stupidity and firearms are a self correcting problem...

[seamusTX]

True, but too often innocent people get hurt.

And as I said in another thread, the public demands that Somebody Do Something, and government is altogether too happy to comply.

- Jim

[CainA]

Breathalyzer incorporated into the grip, yeah, that's the answer.

-Cain

[texasag93]

The tone of the "Captain" was very bad. I condemn alcohol and guns being mixed, but this guy may is just too jovial about it.

I had the pleasure of seeing Westalke PD running radar on the interstate (2 patrolman on each side of the highway) almost every time I drove through the area. I lived in Cleveland for 6 years and they were THE speed trap area on the West Side.

Very similar to Lewisville on 35W around the lake bridge.

texasag

[atxgun]

Breathalyzer incorporated into the grip, yeah, that's the answer.

-Cain

Then there's the night you've had a couple at home, get into bed and someone busts in. Do you want your firearm to be inoperable then?

[Excaliber]

Any useful tool will be used well by many and misused by some.

The knee jerk reaction of the thought impaired is to immediately demand legislation to ban the object, which some opine would be worthwhile "if just one life was saved." If they had their way, we'd all soon be living naked in rubber padded isolation cells so we wouldn't get access to things we might use to hurt ourselves or others.

What this approach overlooks, of course, is that the benefits of proper use of the object would be lost as well if the tool was removed from common use. In the case of firearms, the 2.5 million annual civilian uses to stop crimes would be turned into 2.5 million additional successful crimes - hardly a benefit in my book.

If you encounter someone who insists on pursuing this line of reasoning, ask him apply it to motor vehicles, which are routinely and repeatedly misused by idiots and criminals to commit felonies, drive drunk, and kill mutliple people in single incidents of reckless or intoxicated driving. They are the instruments of death in tens of thousands of deaths annually. By banning these engines of destruction, surely we could save some lives. Of course, walking to work would be a little inconvenient, and we'd have to go back to dragging grocery carts to get the goods home from the supermarket. Trips to the ER would take a little longer without ambulances, and fire department response would be a little slower without trucks. There are a couple of other minor drawbacks I'm sure you could point out as well to help folks see the wisdom of cost / benefit analysis.

In my book, the best word on this subject as it relates to guns came from the late Col. Jeff Cooper, who stated that no gun could be made foolproof. His solution was that fools should keep their hands off machinery.

Another logical fallacy to watch out for and point out when it occurs is the statement that someone was killed "by" a gun / assault rifle / semiautomatic pistol, etc. That's simply not true. The killing was done by a person who used a gun to commit the crime. The distinction is important because the first case implies that the gun itself was at fault, which would give credence to efforts to ban the tool. The second places the responsibility for the act on the person who actually caused it.

The muddy thinking here can be highlighted once again by applying the same logic to motor vehicles and using a news story to observe that a pedestrian was killed by a Chevy Tahoe SUV with an automatic transmission, and suggesting that SUV's with automatic transmissions should be banned because they cause more collision damage than Kia subcompacts and they're easier for alcoholics to operate when they're drunk than standard transmissions are. The fact is that the pedestrian was killed by a driver who used a motor vehicle to commit the act, and the brand of the vehicle and style of transmission are irrelevant to causation.

[seamusTX]

The tone of the "Captain" was very bad. I condemn alcohol and guns being mixed, but this guy may is just too jovial about it.

I tried to read more of this guy's blog, but I couldn't figure out how to navigate it and quickly gave up.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he just has a dark sense of humor, as many LEOs do after dealing with the dregs of humanity for years.

But the cop who thinks that "civilians" should not have firearms is not hard to find. Harris County has plenty of them. I don't doubt the other big cities of Texas do also.

These morons who abuse their freedom are providing ammunition to our opponents, and police officers (especially chiefs) who agree with them. This is not a hypothetical problem. Police unions and big-city police chiefs have influence in the Texas Legislature.

Excaliber, as usual, I agree with you.

- Jim

[Hos]

I read some of his other posts, I guess the Captain is trying to use humor in his stories to show how dumb some people are, not a good PR move but whatever. He doesn't seem to be picking on gun rights not that anyone here is saying that he is.

But for the sake of discussion, I would wish that those who are "thought impaired" would consider a knee jerk ban alcohol before a ban on guns for there's no constitutional right to bear alcohol.

[galvestonredneck]

I read some of his other posts, I guess the Captain is trying to use humor in his stories to show how dumb some people are, not a good PR move but whatever. He doesn't seem to be picking on gun rights not that anyone here is saying that he is.

But for the sake of discussion, I would wish that those who are "thought impaired" would consider a knee jerk ban alcohol before a ban on guns for there's no constitutional right to bear alcohol.

Galveston Redneck

(any Liberal would be quick to tell you how that was tried in the 30's and didn't work because the BG's had all the alcohol--LOL Funny they don't see the same thing would happen if guns were banned.)

[seamusTX]

...I would wish that those who are "thought impaired" would consider a knee jerk ban alcohol before a ban on guns ...

When it was tried, it resulted in an explosion of violent crime that rivaled Hiroshima.

The violent gang crime of Prohibition, some of it committed with then-perfectly-legal submachine guns, led to the National Firearms Act of 1934, which came this close >< to putting all handguns on the same terms as machine guns.

Thanks, Carrie Nation and Al Capone.

(I lost the typing race again.)

- Jim