Letter from 1981

[12GA]

This might just as well have been written in 2002 - it's a great read.

Letter from 1981 (http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=3499)

[Larry Ashcraft]

I almost didn't read it all because it's so long, but I'm glad I did.

Excellent, thanks!

[Drjones]

Uh, well, it had some good points, and some good advice, but most of the "anecdotes" sound like they were written by the ultimate mall ninja/armchair commando.

I pulled the automatic, leveled it at them and said very clearly, "You must be dreaming."

COME ON!!! That's ridiculous!!! :rolleyes: And then he just walks straight home afterwards??? And didn't get crucified for shooting a black man in what surely would have been labeled a "hate crime"???

And he makes L.A. sound like a complete war zone or something.... Is he SURE he wasn't living in Compton or South Central??? Sure sounds like it!!!

Anyhow, worth skimming for some good points.

Drjones

[Bogie]

I think that the world was a lot simpler 20+ years ago...

[WizeGuy_]

That is an excellent read...I shall print it out and take it to class. I have a few professors that need to read that.

[Kharn]

Drjones: 20 years ago, the mugger wouldnt think of calling it a hate crime, cause he would have been laughed out of court and then sent to jail for the mugging. In my opinion, its better to just walk/run away than wait for the police in some areas of most cities. Especially if you're outnumbered.

Kharn

[Scott Conklin]

It's interesting how quickly some wacked out ideas permeate our thoughts. "Hate Crime". So far as I know the term didn't even exist in '81. You might get branded a racist for certain things, this possibly being one of them, but the merits of the situation still outweighed racial overtones back then. Most of what we're accepting today is very, almost incredibly, recent.

[Russ]

I read this when it first came out a long time ago. Sounds pretty cool and all but I doubt it happened. In reality, the ganster or his buddies would have had a gun (Raven .25) and they would have probably shot his butt off.

[ReadyOnTheRight]

Great article!

There were a lot of silly ideas around in the 70's and 80's, but "Hate Crimes" and many other reasons lawyers have discovered to keep us from defending ourselves did not exist in 1981.

I remember hearing that "there are as many students in law school today as there are lawyers" every year for most of my life. If that's the case, and we assume that 1/4 of those students graduate each year and practice law (assuming 3 years of law school and that some drop out, take longer or do something else), we double the number of lawyers out there every 4 years. Assuming that some laywers retire or die each year, let's say that the number of lawyers doubles only every 5 years. Since this is compound growth, we have 16 TIMES AS MANY LAWYERS in 2001 as we had in 1981. Many lawyers do other things, but it still probably means we have at least 10 times as many trial lawyers as we had in 1981.

Only a small % of the population engages in true criminal behavior. Once the lawyers run out of criminals to make money off of, it makes sense that they create new classes of "criminal behavior", like owning guns, protecting yourself, smoking, driving, improving your land, speaking your mind, manufacturing products, succeeding at business (Microsoft), failing at business (Enron) and soon -- selling hamburgers to fat people.

"Regulation by Litigation" is a big business.

:barf:

[KSFreeman]

:rolleyes:

It was as phony as a gun rag article then, it's phony now.

[LoneStranger]

KSFreeman,
I must have missed something in the last few years so I apologize. But I am real interested in when "Esquire" magazine became a gun-rag? Even more important is when it stopped being one?

As for the truth of this article, it, like any of the anecdotal stories you see about people using firearms for self defense, can never be PROVEN.
In fact IIRC the gubmint never PROVED that Al Capone was a gangster. All they ever showed was that he didn't pay enough taxes on his income.

I don't like smilies cause they never allow me to express the way I truly feel!!!

[Blackhawk]

KSF,

You were what in 1981, about 12?

I guess you would know for sure! :rolleyes:

:D

[KSFreeman]

Lone, please note that I used "as" to analogize the Esquire article to a gun rag article. Both are phony, but not the same.

Black, I was 11 or 12. However, even still I remember Uncle Jeff's words when he commented upon it, "We have an idea that this version of the affair was prepared for the police blotter, since in every case we have ever heard of a knife-wielder confronted with a pistol has turned off. We feel that few of us will ever have the luxury of some knife-type charging at us from outside knife range. Nobody is that lucky." Jeff Cooper, The Gargantuan Gunsite Gossip 8 (1990).

All I know is that the credibility of such silliness contained in the article is dubious (guns shooting like lightning, cannot tell if a self-loader has cartridges in it) was written by someone who does not know about firearms and has not been in a fight. Phony as a French goat test.:rolleyes:

[Scott Conklin]

Having a knife wielding attacker keep coming in the face of a firearm isn't even that uncommon. I have personally had it happen to me and seen it happen one other time. Ol Jeff dropped the ball on that one. In both cases the attacker was stoned out of his mind but that's not really relevant here.

You can tell a semi is loaded or unloaded at a glance? I can't. If you were a neophyte, as the article was expressly addressing at that point, you'd know how? I didn't. And you dismiss something based on a turn of phrase? "Lightning" is a bit of hyperbole and probably, considering firing a semi SA as opposed to a wheel gun DA, accurate enough.

My point is that nothing you said in any way disproves the article. We'll never know whether it was all true or not but I DO know I've seen and lived and told a lot stranger tales and I know they happened.

[KSFreeman]

2nd Amendment, well, I can't prove a negative, but I can call into question the credibility of this author just as I do French goat tests or anything else in a gun rag. Just because we may like the conclusion does not mean we have to blindly accept it as true. If only academia did this with a certain "award-winning" book!:)

BTW, self-loader or revolver, even a neophyte "gun owner" knows Rule #1!!! Later he can learn what a "systems check" is.;)

[ReadyOnTheRight]

"...I used to believe that these people had some justifications on their side. I used to feel that I ought to have some compassion for them, and I did. I used to believe that a job and some credit would put them on the right path. It isn't true. I also used to believe that much of the human wreckage—the millions upon millions of people with emotional damage—could be repaired. That isn't true either. They can't be, for the most part, because the effort necessary to straighten out a single one of them is enormous: four or five years perhaps of therapy, in an age when there is no time for anything but emergency medicine..."

"...The guns themselves don't cause all this. What causes it is that people think they can have the American dream by sticking someone up for it. They think that there ought to be a huge equal society out there. Equal shares for everybody. Forced equal shares if necessary..."


"...You have a right to carry on merrily with what you're doing..."

These words and others from this article ring true. Although rather long-winded, this guy is writing about turning himself from a subject of cutthroats into a citizen. And I like it.

[Blackhawk]

KSF,

The author's story wasn't about shooting a knife armed mugger with several cohorts. It was about becoming transformed from an unconscious blissninny to becoming aware that guns had to become part of his life.

The more incredible color he used included the swaying house, the considerate rival gangs, the multiple robberies, and the naked man in the window with a gun.

Point is, the story has a lot of color -- for its intended audience. It's effective writing, plausibly based on truth refocused by time.

I'm sure you've encountered conflicting accounts where everybody was absolutely sure that things happened exactly the way they said, just as I'm sure you've conceded that somebody else's rendition of what happened was better than your own.

Whatever Jeff said is conclusory hearsay, and your conclusions based on that are...? :rolleyes:

BTW, the intended audience read Esquire, which was never a gun rag to my knowledge....

[KSFreeman]

Blackhawk, if you view the article as an opinion piece, then O.K. However, even as opinion, the errors and obvious fiction detract from it and weaken the point he is making.

Uncle Jeff's observation are not hearsay, but rather speculation.:D Experts are so allowed. My conclusion is based on expert testimony! (as if it matters).

I never said Esquire was a gun rag, but that the article was AS PHONY AS a gun rag article.

[Larry Wright]

Is the story true or fake? I don't know! But it's a nicely written parable with a good point in my everso humble opinion.

[Blackhawk]

KSF,Uncle Jeff's observation are not hearsay, but rather speculation. Experts are so allowed. My conclusion is based on expert testimony! (as if it matters). Naw, you can't get away with that either. :D

Experts are allowed to opine based on the facts of a matter. Any article in any medium of that sort is hearsay. An opinion based on hearsay is still hearsay. Jeff's or anybody else's speculation doesn't meet the level for "expert opinion." Velly solly.... :D

[Byron Quick]

KS Freeman,

So no knife wielder will charge from outside of knife range and continue his attack against a gun? Every single one will automatically stop, right?

If you care to pay the charge, access the Augusta Chronicle archives for February 26, 1981. Search for Michael W. Williams. Mike died on the 25th attacking a man with a knife. The man shot Mike with a a 20 ga. slug to the abdomen. The man had the shotgun in his hands before Mike began his charge.

Mike lies in Memorial Gardens about two miles from here. I knew him from 1959. He grew up about four houses down from me. Same age as me.

[Scott Conklin]

OJ, KS, I just don't see any "errors and obvious fiction". I see things that can be interpreted in different ways by different people because of the style of the prose. I see things some might not say in a particular way or might have never experienced but nothing that is obviously "wrong".

Sometimes things do happen in a persons life exactly the way we wish they would to support a cause and sometimes(though even more rarely) that person has the skills to tell of it well. Unless we can find something certain to prove this a lie why not accept that this might be one of those times instead of picking for the sake of picking? Once in a while things do go our way, ya know? :D

[KSFreeman]

Now, Blackhawk, that's not right. An expert can so. Of course, you may be going on Texas law about which I know little. I only know the dress code that is required with CHL.:D

2A, why do we think the media is always misrepresenting firearms, but in this case they are correct?:confused:

I don't believe a word of it anymore than I believe a gun rag. However, if it has any impact, then I hope it is for the good.

[Blackhawk]

KSF,

Not in Texas courts and not in federal courts in Texas. Of course that presumes that the opposing lawyers are awake and perhaps even paying attention.... :D

So am I to presume that Indiana courts allow opinions based on hearsay...? :eek: