Saturday, January 24, 2009

Saturday Morning Reading..

...from across the pond, Stephanie Gutman's blog in the U.K. Telegraph:
(Carolyn) McCarthy's tone of righteous indignation and utter horror at the Gillibrand choice stems from the fact that McCarthy's political career was launched, as things so often are these days, by high-profile victimhood. In this case, McCarthy, a political novice, lost her husband in 1983 to one of those horrific random-shooter-massacre incidents that occur far too often in America. She was elected to the state senate on a gun control platform.

One can identify with the burning need to do something, anything, after such an untimely loss, but what has always been so wrong-headed about McCarthy's political career is that the Long Island Railroad Massacre would be many peoples' nomination for an incident illustrating the basic injusice of many gun control laws. The Long Island Massacre is certainly not a slam-dunk illustration of why gun control works.

On an evening in 1983, tired commuters were dozing on their way home from New York City. Suddenly a respectable looking man in a business suit rose from his seat, pulled out a 9mm pistol, got up and began strolling down the aisle shooting. With no one to oppose him, he was able to reload three times. When he stopped to reload a fourth time, three men were able to wrestle him to the floor. By the time this happened, however, 25 people had been shot; six would die from their wounds.

Colin Ferguson, for that was his name, turned out to be a complete lunatic, but the kind who masks his lunacy very well. The gun was purchased legally in California and he had undergone a fairly stringent gun control process to buy it, even waiting for a fifteen day so-called "cooling off period" between the time he applied to buy the gun and the time he picked it up. It's hard to think of ways to keep a Colin Ferguson from getting a gun short of a massive federal effort to outlaw guns everywhere and search people virtually every time they step into a public place, but if a few other passengers had had concealed handguns, Ferguson wouldn't have been allowed to stroll calmly the length of the train car, selecting targets like some kind of connoisseur of killing.

As I have seen living in Israel where 18-year-old men and women slung with M-16 rifles are everywhere, more guns do not necessarily make for more random mass murder. Each time a crime like this has been attempted in Israel (last year, for instance when a man began attempting to run people over with a massive Caterpillar digger), it is shut down within a few minutes by armed bystanders. The average number of dead coming out of these incidents in Israel has been 1 to 3 (including the murderer.)

And now Carolyn McCarthy is set to come sweeping back. I hope this time people will take the time to review what happened on that commuter train on that evening in 1983.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:24 PM

    McCarthy lost her husband in 1993, not 1983. I also have happen to know that her husband used to go home drunk on Friday nights (and either beat her or scream at her) and the cops would be called to her house to break things up. Guess she wants everyone else to feel as helpless as she did. She needs to be retired from office. Sorry, gonna have to sign myself anonymous here.

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  2. Anonymous1:38 PM

    While it's too bad what happened to her husband, look to Suzanna Gratia-Hupp. She's got it right! Unfortunately there are millions out there with a "protect me" mentality that are pandered to and I think that will take intense "PR" and repetitions of the truth - at an 8th grade level - to sink in. Michael - you've got the skills. Somehow our message has to penetrate to the main stream media.

    As I go to Joe's Stone Crab tonight to celebrate my anniversary, I WILL have the means to adequately protect my wife and me.

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  3. On the fourth reload this maniac was stopped. The sheeple just sat in their seats waiting for slaughter? Even if every one of them had a pocket pistol, with the sheep mentality they would still have been shot dead in their seats. A firearm is not a weapon. The mind is. A firearm is a tool.

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  4. Anonymous5:54 PM

    To Anonymous at 1:38 pm (the 2nd commenter) It's not up to Michael.
    While he may have a wider audience, it is up to YOU and all the rest of us to get the message out that no amount of anti gun laws are going to protect gutless people. For anti BS ammunition go to www.gunfacts.info, this 92 page fact book was posted with the intention that people print it, read it, and pass it around. The writer avoided using NRA based info so that no one could say "Oh, that's just NRA propaganda", he goes to the source documents, Justice Dept, CDC, etc. Send the link to your friends with the same instructions, print it, read it, and pass it around. Send it to your elected officials at all levels of Govt. as well, some of them can be swayed by the truth.
    Tom Bogan

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  5. Anonymous4:59 AM

    McCarthy was "Estranged" from her husband at the time. They were Catholic so divorce was out of the question. Her son was shot also but survived.

    Her CD in NY has the highest number of pistol permit holders in NY State, yet they keep sending her back to congress despite an abominable record of doing absolutely nothing worthwhile there.

    I rode those trains for a year working in the Big Apple. People on them are nearly comatose coming home from a day working in the city, no surprise they just sat there and got shot. The trains are usually packed to standing room only, we used to call them "Spam Cans". Perfect place to do a massacre.

    And Ferguson was jumped when his mags went dry and he attempted to reload his mags from a bag of ammo. Several passengers woke up and jumped him as he was stuffing rounds into a mag.

    You could still do the very same thing today.

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  6. Anonymous8:50 AM

    I will drop my usual id for this one also. I live in McCarthy's district. So others can better understand the place, this is one of the wealthier districts in America. Yes it has poverty and run down areas. I live right next to such an area. But she gets her most fervent support out of Garden City. A very affluent area and VERY liberal. Lots of multi million dollar homes, entertainment and sports folks etc. This is even though there are segregated country clubs there (actually pretty funny. One doesn't allow jews, the other is for jews). But demographic wise her CD is 70% white, upper middle class and culturally left.

    While Republicans held this CD for 40 years prior to her coming in, the Republicans here are pure RINO. It is a tiny minority that hold to any conservative ideals. As the prior commentor noted she will be returned to the Congress until the day she dies or retires and moves to Miami. The county that this district resides in is currently run by Democrats and same applies. She is protected by the NYC press and they love that she is attacking the new NY Senator from upstate.

    The other commentator is also right in that the LIRR during late commuter runs has most folks sound asleep. It only took a few moments for Ferguson to do most of his dirty work. The isle between the seats on the train is only a couple of feet wide. And the seats are so close together its hard to get up and out even without a shooter. To charge him while he was shooting would have been utterly useless. The guys who did tackle him deserve immense credit.

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  7. Anonymous12:03 PM

    McCarthy is a vindictive woman who wants to spread the LIRR massacre to the rest of America by ensuring that all law-abiding Americans are as defenseless as people in NYC. That's the kind of dangerous sociopath we're dealing with. Ferguson's derangement was self-limiting; McCarthy's is self-perpetuating. She's more dangerous to more people than he ever was.

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