The debate on the effectiveness of gun control measures to reduce firearm violence distracts attention from the real motive behind gun control. Nobody wants more gun violence, so focusing on gun violence shifts the debate in favor of gun control. What the proponents of gun control really want is control, and the gun violence argument is merely a means to the end that they actually seek–a disarmed population. Arguments that look at the facts to see whether gun control achieves those ends are ineffective persuaders, because gun control advocates want regulation, regardless of its effectiveness.

It should be obvious that proposals such as those to tax ammunition sales will be ineffective controls on firearm violence. Can anyone really think that someone intent on illegally using a firearm would be deterred because ammunition is so expensive? For people who know little about firearms, limiting the number of rounds a magazine is capable of holding may sound promising, but magazines can be swapped out in seconds.

Focusing the debate on gun violence rather than on individual rights gives a debating advantage to gun control advocates, because nobody wants more gun violence. The argument shifts to whether regulations are effective rather than on preserving the rights of citizens. Arguing that proposed gun control measures would be ineffective cannot persuade gun control advocates, because that’s not their big concern. Their ultimate objective of gun control advocates is not safety. They want control.

The post The Name Says It All: Gun Control Isn’t About Reducing Firearm Violence; It’s About Control appeared first on The Beacon.

After all, I am a martial-arts trained self-defense coach, a faculty member at a public university whose office sits just a few hundred feet from the site of a deadly school shooting, and mentor to students who have lost friends in other mass shootings (including the Parkland high school and the Tallahassee Hot Yoga shooting). School shootings and their trauma are not fantasy.

The movie, as expected, hit a raw nerve. But the story is well-crafted, and the content is tailored to contribute to an important contemporary social issue. It’s grounded in certain uncomfortable realities that should be in the forefront of current discussions on school violence and how to respond to active shooters. In short, Run Hide Fight hits notes sorely missing in public discourse on school violence.

The Uncomfortable Reality of School Shootings in the U.S.

Crafting a successful narrative film from such controversial content is challenging at best. For many students, and almost all parents, each real-life shooting becomes seared into our consciousness as a terrifying potential reality.

While school shootings have occurred for decades, national awareness and widespread concern coalesced around the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. Two high schoolers in Colorado planned and implemented a systematic attack that killed twelve students, a teacher, and injured 21 before the two perpetrators committed suicide. The helplessness and brutality of the murders shocked the nation.

Since then, large scale shootings on school campuses, including colleges and universities, have made headlines with disquieting regularity. Most school shootings are small and contained, involving one shooter and a handful of victims.

But after about 2005, the number of school shootings and their scale ticked up significantly. Over the past 15 years, school shootings averaged about 17 per year according to data compiled on Wikipedia. Fifty-five school shootings happened in 2019 alone. Three quarters of these shootings occurred on a high school, middle school, or elementary school campus.

The potential for mass casualty shootings are now a considered part of school policy. In Florida, a school “guardian” program allows trained non-law enforcement teachers and staff to carry guns for defensive purposes. More and more school districts (and colleges) are instituting active shooter training. Given their rising prevalence, the unwillingness of narrative filmmakers to grapple with these events could be considered a sign of cultural neglect or denial.

Writer-director Kyle Rankin along with producers Amanda Presmyk and Dallas Sonnier deserve credit for taking this issue seriously within a narrative film’s story structure. Moreover, they have done a credible job of addressing the issue forthrightly even though, as a narrative film, it indulges in creative embellishments to increase the drama and raise the stakes of the conflict.

Run Hide Fight Is a Good Action Movie

Most importantly, Run Hide Fight works as a movie. On many levels. The story itself focuses on an estranged teenager, Zoe Hull (Isabel May, Alexa & Katie Netflix series). Zoe is a senior in high school, struggling to accept the recent death of her mother (Radha Mitchell, Melinda and Melinda, Finding Neverland, The Crazies). She is angry, pushing people away, and has become distant from her concerned father (Thomas Jane, The Punisher, 1922, The Predator).

Zoe and her best friend, Lewis (Olly Sholatan), arrive at their high school on senior prank day. They make it halfway through the school day before the cafeteria is invaded by suspended student Tristan (Eli Brown) and three cohorts determined to make names for themselves to the outside world. They implement a well-organized and thought-out plan, which includes the murder of fellow students, staff, and teachers.

As adults attempt to stop the violence, they run afoul of the cruel reality that Tristan doesn’t have real goals or objectives other than avenging perceived slights and the indifference he experienced from teachers, staff, and students. This nihilistic worldview is also critical to the plot and forward momentum of the story. (It’s also reflective of real-world teenage shooters.)

Zoe, meanwhile, finds herself desperately trying to save her own life as her friends are shot. As she flees, however, she is confronted with a horrifying moral dilemma: She can do what her instincts tell her for self preservation, or she can confront her fear and muster the courage to help her fellow students escape near certain death.

A Well-Crafted Story

The story is well-crafted, playing off weaknesses in school protocols during active-shooter scenarios, the inevitable ignorance of law enforcement trying to assess the seriousness of a threat (on senior prank day, no less), naive responses from adults who are woefully unprepared for the reality their protocols are designed to address, and the disturbing ways social media plays into the narcissism of the perpetrators.

Isabel May provides a compelling performance as Zoe. She effectively conveys the sheer terror someone faces when literally staring down the barrel of a gun and then being hunted down by killers. When faced with life threatening events, humans run, fight, or freeze. Zoe goes through each of these stages in a moving and engaging performance.

As a parent, this movie is not easy to watch. If someone has experienced this scenario first hand, they should probably avoid the movie altogether.

But Zoe’s character arc is important for more than creating the foundation for a good action film. It hints at the disturbing realities behind effective responses to active shooters.

Run Hide Fight Gets Most Content Right

Active shooter training has evolved as experts have examined the deadly details of each event. The movie’s title is an explicit reference to current thinking about effective responses to active shooters based on this research and analysis. In addition, the filmmakers have done their homework. Their story includes elements of real-life school shooting scenarios which are easily identifiable to those who follow these events.

School shootings, particularly on the scale of Columbine or Parkland, are planned. Shooters don’t broadcast their intentions or timelines. The result is that people physically near the shooter are most likely to die. (This brutal reality is shown viscerally in the film.) It’s those lucky enough to avoid being the initial targets who are likely to survive.

But survival also most likely means they will have to fight. Run Hide Fight gets this right on a broad level if not the details of the character’s actions.

While running is the most effective way to get to safety, hiding is a second best strategy. But this choice creates its own risks, another element of the action that Rankin gets right. Active shooters are just that, active. They hunt down targets. Ultimately, when someone has been found, or no escape is possible, survival depends on fighting back against the attackers.

The nature of this “fighting” can take on many forms. While Zoe eventually does obtain a firearm, most of her work saving the innocent comes through her own courage and willingness to put her own life at risk through cleverness, individual actions, and decisions. To Rankin’s credit, and relevance, the story never depends on Zoe becoming Rambo or John Callahan (Die Hard). Rather, she is an ordinary kid who is able to overcome her own terror and gather the courage to do the right thing at tremendous risk to her own life.

Run Hide Fight’s Message Is Important

The film’s message of courage and conviction is crucially important to today’s public discussion on how to address school violence. Indeed, it is important to any discussion of how to stop a full range of interpersonal violence.

The violence, and Zoe’s actions, are scaled to a remarkably realistic level, despite its dramatic embellishments. Some movie critics have dismissed Run Hide Fight as “Die Hard for high school.” This is a mischaracterization and shows a failure to seriously consider both the craft embedded in the movie, the intelligence with which the filmmakers have approached a controversial and relevant social issue, and the core message underlying the story.

The post A Well-Crafted Action Movie, <i>Run Hide Fight</i> Contributes to Larger Discussion of School Violence appeared first on The Beacon.

They bought them from independent gun dealers, licensed to sell firearms and ammunition. That is even the case with so-called “assault weapons,” which despite their menacing appearance are no different than any semiautomatic rifle, and less powerful than many bolt-action hunting rifles. Candidate O’Rourke is also on record that, “Hell yes we’re going to take your AR-15,” which he has emblazoned on campaign T-shirts. No word whether the legal owners of the AR-15 committed any kind of crime. Agents of the government will show up at private residences and “take” legally purchased private property. No word whether, as in other takings, the legal owners will be compensated for the seizure.

Like the scheming Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles, one thing stands between candidate O’Rourke and the property he wants: “the rightful owners.”  His plan also falls afoul of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, but give the candidate credit for candor. Gun owners may be forgiven for believing the ultimate goal is to disarm the people, a certain prelude to repression.

As Stephen Halbrook noted in Gun Control in the Third Reich, the German National Socialist regime disarmed the Jews and disfavored groups in order to more easily repress and kill them. In Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France, Halbrook shows how the National Socialist occupiers even confiscated hunting rifles, not just the “assault weapons” of the time. 

Law-abiding gun owners have every reason to resist the forced confiscation of their legally obtained property, and resist the violation of their rights under the Second Amendment. Meanwhile, few law-abiding citizens would likely object to the confiscation of stolen guns from violent criminals. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be what the current crop of candidates has in mind. 

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Both city and state measures treat law-abiding citizens as though they had committed a crime. Those concerned about their Second Amendment rights, and who can get a pizza to their house faster than the police, might wonder what other places have imposed similar measures on ammunition. As Stephen Halbrook noted, Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied France strictly controlled both guns and ammunition for groups they disfavored. So did the Ottoman Turks, as Peter Balakian showed in The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response. In California, where many Armenians fled, one city is going another way.

As the San Bernardino Sun reports, this month the city of Needles “declared itself a ‘Second Amendment Sanctuary City,’ a message that city leaders say is partly about support for gun rights and partly a desire to get an exemption from state law so out-of-state gun owners can travel through town and for residents to purchase ammunition.” As Needles mayor Jeff Williams explained, “It’s a conservative town with a streak of libertarianism.” With other cities giving shelter to violent criminals and even helping them escape, why not shelter law-abiding citizens who only want to exercise their Second Amendment rights? It’s a no-brainer, and Needles has also authorized the legal sale and manufacture of cannabis to generate revenue. Let freedom ring. 

On July 1, meanwhile, California’s new gasoline tax kicks in, adding 5.6 cents per gallon of gas. The state will average $4 a gallon in the state, almost $1.20 more than the national average. A full 70 cents of that difference is due to California’s regulations, and of course the new tax. That arrives just in time for July 4. Happy motoring everybody!

The post Town with a “Libertarian Streak” Is California’s First “Second Amendment Sanctuary City.” It Shouldn’t Be the Last. appeared first on The Beacon.

Law-abiding Californians found relief in the ruling, but not state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who complained directly to Benitez. Incredibly enough, the federal judge responded by reversing his own ruling.

“The court understands that strong emotions are felt by people of good will on both sides of the constitutional and social policy questions,” Benitez wrote, citing “an immeasurable societal benefit of maintaining the immediate status quo while the process of judicial review takes place.”

That is a far cry from his noble rhetoric about the Second Amendment, individual liberty, and the right to self-defense. That right stands in peril across the country.

Last week, Colorado became the fifteenth state to allow firearms to be seized from people determined to pose a danger. Gun-grabbers loved it, but not Eagle County sheriff James van Beek, who flagged a violation of the Second Amendment. As the sheriff explained, “Removing the guns in a constitutionally questionable manner, without notice, denying the accused the ability to defend charges, then requiring medical services that are not available, in order to reinstate private property rights, afterward, is like putting a Band-Aid on the probability of a wound, and not allowing its removal until an injury has occurred. In other words, the entire process is ludicrous.”

For further reference, law-abiding citizens should see Stephen P. Halbrook’s Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and “Enemies of the State,”  Those concerned about their liberties should also consult Halbrook’s Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance.

The post Federal Judge Shoots Down His Own Second Amendment Ruling appeared first on The Beacon.

But shouldn’t London be one of the safest cities in the west? According to the BBC: “The UK has some of the toughest gun control laws in the world. If you want to own a gun, it is very difficult to do so. In short, it has been designed to put as many barriers in the way as possible and to assume the worst, rather than hope for the best.” Such laws are being demanded by school children and leftists as the answer to school shootings and violence in America. What gives? What is the real problem?

Of course, the issue in both countries is complicated. However, we can’t ignore the breakdown of natural associations such as church and family and the aggrandizing of involuntary/artificial associations such as the State. Indeed, in the U.S., The Atlantic has reported that”[C]ontrolling for income and all other factors, youths in father-absent families (mother only, mother-stepfather, and relatives/other) still had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those from mother-father families.” No amount of government benefits can compensate for the two-parent home and the civilizing effect it has on children. For thousands of years such homes have been the norm without Government assistance or meddling. In recent years, Government has done an excellent job of dismantling this basic institution of civilization and the result has been much violence. (See this report from The Heritage Foundation). Fatherlessness has been identified as a commonality in many recent mass shootings.

Moreover, individuals bent on engaging in violence will do so whether a gun, knife, or stick is the weapon of choice. London is an example of this. Also, we should think of prison violence where inmates are prohibited from possessing guns, knives, or other weapons, but are successful in harming their rivals and guards.

Taking weapons from law-abiding citizens who have a duty to protect themselves and their property is not the answer. Reformers ought to look at the growth of the state and how its displacement of church, family, and other associations has effected society for the worse.

The post What Gun Control Advocates Can Learn from London’s Knife Attacks appeared first on The Beacon.

Many have even absurdly claimed that the organization, devoted to preserving individuals’ inherent and constitutionally protected right to self-defense, was a “terrorist organization,” and that it had “blood on its hands,” because one disturbed young man used a gun to cause a horrendous tragedy (notwithstanding numerous opportunities and failures of federal and local government authorities to intervene, and possibly prevent such an attack). Moreover, despite the media hysteria and predictable drumbeat for more gun control surrounding each and every school shooting, the number of kids getting shot and killed in schools has actually declined significantly since the 1990s, as have crimes rates (including gun crimes) generally.

While the boycott effort did succeed in convincing some businesses to abandon their corporate partnerships with the NRA, it also spurred a backlash that has seen a surge in membership at the NRA and other gun rights groups. Among the first companies to cave in to these tactics was First National Bank of Omaha.

As it happens, I had been a longtime customer of FNBO with an online savings account (which I had established back when they paid an interest rate of 6 percent, before the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy pretty much destroyed savings accounts as an investment vehicle). And, since political activism in business relationships works both ways, I decided to voice my displeasure with the company’s cowardice by demanding that it close my account. Below is the letter that I sent to FNBO.

Dear Customer Service Representative:

It was with great sadness and frustration that I read First National Bank of Omaha’s statement that it would not renew its contract with the National Rifle Association to offer its NRA Visa Card. As a result, after being a loyal customer for nearly 11 years, I request that you immediately close my FNBO Direct online savings account.

As a private business, FNBO certainly has the right to make business decisions based on political stances. Of course, as a customer, I, too, have the right to make decisions based on the political positions taken by those with whom I currently, or may potentially, do business.

Banks have long sought to project an image of stability in trying to attract or retain customers. Yet, it hardly projects strength and stability when a company can so quickly be cowed into endorsing the views of those who would infringe upon on a fundamental right, as a result of a social media campaign waged by those reduced to emotional – not rational – arguments, and the special-interest organizations eager to exploit them to advance a pre-existing political agenda.

As for the substance, such as it is, of the gun-control advocates’ arguments, the contention that the NRA somehow has blood on its hands is ludicrous. Would these same people likewise blame the truck used to kill 86 people and wound hundreds of others on Bastille Day in Nice, France, in 2016 – or the AAA, which advocates for motorists and their “vehicles of war”?

The AR-15 “assault weapon,” which has been the focus of so many in favor of gun control, is not, as many have alleged, a “military-style weapon of war.” Contrary to some uninformed claims, AR-15-style rifles are commonly used both for self-defense and hunting; in fact, it is their versatility that has made them so popular with the gun-owning public. As a semiautomatic weapon, the rifle fires a single round every time the trigger is pulled, just like a typical revolver.

Fully automatic rifles, which fire multiple rounds per trigger pull, manufactured after the passage of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 are illegal except for the military, law enforcement, and dealers with a special license – and civilians have been prohibited from owning imported machine guns since 1968. Machine guns made prior to 1986 may still be owned, but they require an extensive application process that includes a special tax, registration with the federal government, the submission of fingerprints and photos, and, of course, a background check. Their ownership may be further restricted or banned by state laws. The fact that no new machine guns have been able to come onto the civilian market for more than 30 years also means that they are quite rare, and thus quite expensive, oftentimes exceeding $10,000, or even $35,000. Since the imposition of the National Firearms Act of 1934, there have only been two or three murders involving legally owned machine guns (one of which was committed by a police officer against a drug informant), and even deaths from illegally obtained machine guns have been vanishingly rare. In short, they are very expensive, fairly rare, heavily regulated, and are not being used to commit crimes in any noticeable numbers – if at all – much less the kind of mass shootings depicted in the news.

Incidents of gun violence are tragic, but the solution is not to deprive all of society of the most effective means of exercising their inherent right to self-defense and the defense of their property – including the armed security that protects bank customers’ deposits and other bank assets, for example – thereby guaranteeing many more future victims of those unwilling to obey gun laws anyway (not to mention laws prohibiting murder!), no matter how strict. There is no single solution to the problem, as there is no single cause. Mental illness, side effects from powerful prescription and recreational drugs, lax security, the establishment of “gun-free zones” which ensure large numbers of targets incapable of defending themselves from attack, and cultural/societal factors all contribute to it, and these cannot be adequately addressed through knee-jerk, “There ought to be a law!” proposals (especially, as noted previously, without violating the fundamental liberties of millions of Americans). In fact, added government restrictions tend to only make these problems worse.

In any event, if FNBO is to weigh in on hot-button political issues, I would have hoped that it would come down on the side of reasoned discourse and protection of the unalienable individual rights that have allowed the United States to remain one of the freest and most prosperous nations the world has ever seen. I am profoundly disappointed that it has failed to do so in this case, and so I must terminate my long business relationship with the company.

Sincerely,

Adam B. Summers

The post Making a Statement on Gun Control appeared first on The Beacon.

Since the tragic Valentine’s Day mass shooting at Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a number of proposals have been made for arming teachers as a way to prevent future tragedies like this. Could they be effective?

Some recent ideas would make armed teachers first responders who could confront and perhaps neutralize a school shooter. Some proposals would require teachers to take firearms training to be certified as qualified to use firearms at school. Sometimes teachers would retain possession of those firearms; other proposals would lock them in a box that would be accessible to certified teachers in the event they were needed.

There are many issues that might be raised regarding the details of the various proposals, but they all have two serious drawbacks. First, they assume that teachers would be competent responders who would be able to neutralize a school shooter. Second, they shift teachers’ roles from protecting themselves and those around them to seeking out and confronting someone who is a serious threat.

Teachers are not law enforcement officers, and as civilians under attack, they should not be expected to confront a shooter, and would almost surely be ineffective if they tried.

Expert advice on how to react to an active shooter is first, to run. If that is not possible, hide. If that is not possible, fight. As people who are not law enforcement officers, this should be the instructions we give to our teachers. They are not qualified to confront an active shooter, even if they receive additional training. They are civilians, not law enforcement officers.

Would these proposals to arm teachers have any effect? To the extent that the answer is yes, it is because someone considering a shooting like this might be deterred by the thought of meeting armed resistance. They might think twice about pursuing an attack in a location where they know some people would be armed, rather than attacking in a gun-free zone.

That points directly toward eliminating gun-free zones and allowing anybody who has a concealed carry permit to bring a concealed handgun to school. Many teachers would be likely to do so, but a potential school shooter would not know how many, or who they are.

People with concealed carry permits already carry firearms in shopping centers, grocery stores, restaurants, and other places that are not designated as gun-free zones. We almost never hear of any misuse of a firearm by a concealed carry permit holder. Would teachers with concealed carry permits be more irresponsible where they work than in a grocery store or shopping mall?

Removing the gun-free designation from schools would allow armed teachers. Because people must be 21 to obtain a permit, K-12 students would not be allowed to be armed. This would provide the deterrent effect of making potential school shooters aware that they might meet with armed resistance, with the uncertainty that they would not know how many people are armed or who they are.

Proposals such as providing more training to armed teachers so they could confront a shooter, or locating firearms in locked boxes accessible to trained teachers, amounts to hoping that teachers, whose main job is teaching, will be more effective responders than the law enforcement officers who were on-site at the Parkland shooting, and whose job it is to confront the bad guys. That is wishful thinking.

If the gun-free designation is removed from schools, it would still be sensible to advise teachers to first run, and if not possible, hide, and if not possible, only then fight. But they would be in a better position to fight an armed assailant if they also were armed. Teachers are not law enforcement officers, and we shouldn’t hope that they could act as if they are in situations that are still, thankfully, very rare.

The big advantage to arming teachers would be that potential school shooters might be deterred by the thought that there would be some armed individuals who could not be identified ahead of time, and who might confront them. This can be accomplished simply by removing the gun-free zone designation from schools. Expecting more from people whose main job is teaching is unrealistic.

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