Commercial Appeal monitoring TFA?

[johnharris]

It seems that the Commercial Appeal - www.communistappeal.com - is monitoring TFA's member network alerts....

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/20 ... /#comments

Those sneaky rabbits!

[falcon1]

I posted this comment:



Posted by falcon1 on June 6, 2009 at 1:29 p.m.

Reply to this post | Suggest removal

in response to gboller

Actually, those who do not have permits to carry and who do not carry firearms do still derive benefit from handgun carry permit laws. Both U.S. and international studies have shown that there is a "halo effect" for non-firearms owners. When criminals do not know who is armed, all of society benefits. Criminals fear armed citizens, not the police. If the risk of encountering an armed victim goes up, they switch to property crimes. In countries such as Israel, where firearms are openly carried by the law-abiding on a regular basis, terrorist attacks by mass shooting declined dramatically (terrorists did switch to bombs, bur that is something a common criminal is unlikely to do).

As for securing collective safety, I must infer that you are talking about law enforcement. I have the greatest respect for members of that profession; they go into harm's way virtually everyday for low pay and lower praise. But if one believes that police protection is a service that one call upon and expect to have delivered in a timely manner, one fundamentally misunderstands what law enforcement is charged to do in this country. The police are not personal bodyguards. The ratio of police officers is too low to the numbers of citizens for them ever to be everywhere at once. Police serve as a general deterrent to crime by arresting criminals after the commission of crimes and also due to their general presence in an area. Criminals take great pains not to commit crimes in front of the police. The corollary of that, however, is that should you ever be confronted by a criminal, there will likely NOT be a police officer nearby to assist you.

Numerous court cases have held that law enforcement has no particular duty to protect anyone, such as Warren v. District of Columbia, Riss v. City of New York, Keane v. City of Chicago, Morgan v. District of Columbia, Calogrides v. City of Mobile, Morris v. Musser, Davidson v. City of Westminster, Chapman v. City of Philadelphia, Weutrich v. Delia, Sapp v. City of Tallahassee, Simpson's Food Fair v. Evansville, Silver v. City of Minneapolis, and Bowers v. DeVito. Please feel free to search for them via your favorite search engine.

One of the best articles I have ever found on this subject is this one: http://rkba.org/comment/cowards.html. It is old (1993), but it still has good points. Please read it with an open mind; after you have done so, I fully understand that you still may feel as you do now, and that is most certainly your prerogative. You will, however (I hope), have a better understanding of the reasons many of us who differ with you feel as we do.

ETA: And evidently, they took it down. I am awaiting a response as to why they did so.

[redbarron06]

Well I know that most will not see it this way but I think that what they have published is a small victory for us. By this I mean



They finally stopped calling it the freaking ""

[johnharris]

The extreme, uninformed, misinformed, or intentionally misleading efforts of individuals and entities such as the Commercial Appeal and other news outlets across Tennessee have no doubt helped in our efforts to pass pro-Constitutional legislation for Tennessee's gun owners this year. We have seen few stand effectively in opposition to our efforts in the Legislature once we displaced the Speaker. The votes show that we have largely had the votes to pass these issues for many years were it not for abusive exercises of power.

[C. Richard Archie]

Looking across the board, that discussion actually has shown more common sense than most threads of this type. I would suspect it is somewhat of an embarrassment for the CA.

Not that I would have joined in, you understand. Low key, rational discussion sheds better light on our viewpoint.