University of Washington Students Armed, Out Looking for Thugs
After being attacked while defenseless some University of Washington students decided to get concealed carry permits and take responsibility for their own safety. I commend them for taking responsibility for their own safety, but I have a few safety tips for them:
-- I can't really recommend "walking around as bait, fishing for robbers," although if a thug is unlucky enough to attack a student prepared to defend him or herself, too bad for the thug, I'm not going to cry for him or her.
-- Don't sweep your friend (or anything else you'd prefer not to destroy) with the muzzle of your gun.
-- Buy a holster, stashing your gun in the front of your pants fails to protect the trigger & is not a secure way to carry it.
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I for one am completely on the side of these students. And the fact that this is making national news will probably deter at least one bad guy from prowling the alleys around there. My guess is that there will also be increased police presence around the campus due the combination of the attacks, the news coverage, and the students.
Caelum, a gun tucked in the pants, while not being the most expedient method of carry, can still be drawn quickly and used in defense. I know from experience that you can draw from concealment and fire accurately in as little as 1.5 seconds with relatively little practice. I'd personally go for the holster option, whether in our out of waste band, but as long as you practice with it, you can be very effective even carrying they way they do.
I would think the moment they see you reach for something they would just shoot you assuming you were going to grab a weapon. Again, it might be a bluff and they don't really want to face the murder charges, but it seems risky. Perhaps I'm wrong about their speed though, I may be overestimating the criminals reaction time and attention. They would likely be more afraid to commit murder rather than "just" robbery so that might buy you a moment of hesitation. Though, looking at the Seattle data though, it appears that relatively few of the robberies are committed with a firearm. Most are done by what they describe as "strong arm" (using hands, feet etc) - so I guess a gun could work there.
Just looking at the data, it looks like these guys probably do need weapons though. Crime is up in Seattle (the police cite increased narcotics traffic); but more importantly the allocation of their resources looks messed up. Looking at the statistics, not only are they understaffed given their population and urban density, but they are allocating the exact percentage of officers per crime percentage in each precinct. What you should be concentrating on is the extremely high crime areas to bring those down to comparable levels with the rest of the city and then allocate your resources more evenly to fight crime overall. You obviously don't let the rest of the city go to hell, but if you are having a high-crime problem in two precincts (like Seattle) you go beyond the basic %crime = %police force formula. The people of Seattle can protect themselves if they choose too, but the only way to bring down crime rate overall is to get a more effective police force. When those guys get some free time, they might want to go have a chat with their mayor or police commissioner.
As a side note, if I were being robbed at gun point I'm sure I'd be so nervous that if I tried to grab a gun I would drop it in the process.
The opportunity to present turbulence for the criminal is there. You can deter the criminal from further criminal action, if they are indeed not the stone-cold killers that exist out there. But many of the criminals out there do not care about your life and will simply draw a gun to shoot you, not rob you, just to watch you die.
Look at the article posted after this one, concerning Rudolfo Sandoval. They antagonized a man just so that they could use a shotgun to kill him.
If armed, mobility will be your advantage against an armed assailant. The point is to train, so that the criminal's training with his weapon does not exceed what you are capable with using your own. In a study which involved 4,100 self-defense cases, 5% were wounded and less than 1% died from their wounds. Every death is tragic, but many more deaths could have been prevented if citizens would simply take responsibility for their own safety.
1.5 seconds is an eternity when you're already held at gun point, but that's not always the case, as you pointed out.
"[B]ut the only way to bring down crime rate overall is to get a more effective police force."
Not so. Concealed carry laws have been shown to be effective in reducing crime, along with increases in the number of people carrying. Kennesaw, GA is the Utopian example, with many other locations being less extreme yet very effective ones.
It costs about $60 for a concealed pistol license in Washington state. You typically have to make an apointment to get fingerprinted. Washington law requires the license to be issued within 30 days, but if the FBI is slow on the background checks, it can take closer to 60 days. I sincerely doubt there is a single active duty police officer in the state who isn't competent to conduct a class on firearm safety and I can't imagine it would be a huge burden to hold a one or two hour class at least once a week at every police station in the state.
While I'm not in favor of making firearm courses mandatory, I'm darned sure in favor of making them available. These clowns so obviously don't know how to handle firearms it's scary. I wouldn't be surprised if they've never even fired the things. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to learn how to handle a gun safely, but at the same time, the things you should and shouldn't do with a firearm aren't necessarily intitutive.
Why is it easier to bring in a fingerprint expert several times a week than it is to bring in someone to conduct basic classes in safety?
How is it possible for a pistol in a holster or tucked in your pants under your shirt to reasonably protect you from any sort of robbery ?
You obviously don't expect a particular individual to try and rob you and unless every time you see a person coming you whip out your gun, how can you protect yourself? The criminal will pull out his weapon against you first in attempts to rob you and if you make a motion to get your gun, he'll likely just kill you. By the time you've grabbed your gun, the robber has likely already shot / stabbed you. I suppose their is the possibility the robber is just bluffing and doesn't want to take the risk of killing you and so you can scare him off, but I wouldn't really take that gamble.
If the students carrying do not already know the tips listed above, they should not be carrying firearms . In the words of Peter Parker's Uncle Ben, "With great power comes great responsibility."