Who Is The Fanatic?


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By Charles Heller
Executive Director, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

Copyright 2011, JPFO.


Colin Goddard, the misguided Virginia Tech shooting victim who has turned to the Brady Center to Promote Gun Violence for solace, said in a recent post about the Oslo Shooting: "Unfortunately, I was soon infuriated by the gun fanatics in America who immediately used this massacre to assert that strong gun laws, like Norway’s, don’t work."

Well, if you look at the case of Anders Behring Breivik, Norway’s ludicrous "gun control" laws don’t and didn’t work.

So, the first question is: Who, Mr. Goddard, is actually the fanatic in this case? Is it common sense self defense advocates, or emotionally convoluted knee-jerk hysterics?

It is a statistical fact that mass shooters nearly always capitulate to armed resistance. It happened in 2007 with the Arvada Colorado Shooting, when Jeanne Assam confronted and shot a heavily armed attacker. The attacker then shot and killed himself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Assam

It happened in 2002 at the Appalachian Law School Shooting, when two armed civilians stopped a killer on campus. http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/04/01/13/lang.htm

Further, when Norwegian Anders Breivik was eventually confronted with deadly force by a SWAT team, he immediately surrendered. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that he would have done any less for a determined armed civilian.

Let me explain why the Brady Center’s poster boy, Mr. Goddard, embraces methods that are fanatical: He advocates for victim disarmament, in the face of irrefutable evidence that said disarmament actually allows for greater harm to innocent people. http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/04/when-mass-killers-meet-armed-resistance.html

What he advocates is a decreasing of arms in the civilian population. That’s exactly what gives free reign to evil doers who use guns unlawfully. Is that not the advocacy of a fanatic?

I have met Mr. Goddard at a screening of his "Living For 32" movie at the University of Arizona in Tucson. A number of us from The Arizona Citizens Defense League attended his event.

Mr. Goddard was in the final room that The Virginia Tech Shooter attacked, and was present when Seung-Hui Cho ended the shooting spree by suicide.

Mr. Goddard described to us all in Tucson how his classmates at Virginia Tech heard the noise of the gun shots, and at first thought it was construction noise. They then heard the noise getting louder, and the teacher opened the door to look, suddenly slamming it shut and telling everyone to get on the floor and dial 911, that there was a man with a gun approaching. Mr. Goddard did so, opened his back pack, retrieved his cell phone, and got through to 911 before he was shot four times by Cho.

Just before the screening of his movie in Tucson, I asked Mr. Goddard: "If there had been a police officer, off duty with his gun sitting next to you, do you think he could have drawn and engaged the shooter with that amount of warning?" (Understand also that Mr. Goddard was an ROTC Cadet, familiar with arms and tactics, and experienced on the M-16 rifle.)

Mr. Goddard’s response to me was, "I have war gamed that over and over in my mind, and I just don’t know."

It simply has to be said: Mr. Goddard, this is a truly pitiful response.

You seem to be under a hypnotic trance. Do you now actually embrace the lie that holds you hostage?

Think about Mr. Goddard’s reply. He does not know if a police officer could neutralize a deadly threat with about 50 seconds of warning? This from cover, with the assailant coming through a known and restricted entry point?

Or does Mr. Goddard KNOW, deep in his heart, that something actually might have been done to stop Cho? Instead of facing this harsh truth, has he slipped into delusional fanaticism? Is he now so hysterically committed to victim disarmament that he cannot admit that a gun in the hand of a righteous man or woman could have saved innocent lives?

Goddard asserts that the "gun lobby" says that the gun laws in Norway "did not work"?

Well, we at JPFO, a twenty-one-year-old civil rights advocacy group, and proud of it, point out that the gun laws in Norway worked all too well … in lunatic Anders Breivik’s favor. These deluded laws disarmed the victims, and completely enabled the perpetrator. That is what ALL "gun control" laws do.

Mr. Goddard asserts that the "gun lobby" is, in essence, dancing in the blood of the victims. The truth is that’s exactly what he, and his cohorts and handlers at the Brady Center To Promote Gun Violence, are doing. Just like their victim vulture response to the Giffords shooting in Arizona, it’s to their advantage to do so.

The strategy is called "transference," a defense mechanism in which the user ascribes to his opponent the exact strategy which he, himself, is using.

Unknowing or unthinking readers, taking those statements -- blatant lies -- at face value, will believe them, without questioning the framing bias of the person making the statement.

The fact is that Norwegian gun laws completely enabled Breivik’s agenda. Not one armed adult, moderator, or chaperone, was present with a gun to stop the unlawful violence with deadly force. Had the Norwegian socialist utopians not had their way, and there had been just a single armed protector on that island, that murdering monster might have been dead after getting off only one shot.

As it was, Breivik had NINETY MINUTES to work his blood lust. Now the Norwegian authorities have the gall to actually praise the bumbling efforts of the police? This is utterly upside-down thinking that verges on insanity!

Armed self defense works.

It worked in 2008 at Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva, where a part time student and off duty soldier stopped a mass killing with a handgun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercaz_HaRav_massacre.

It worked in 1997 in Pearl, Mississippi when Assistant Principal Joel Myrick used a gun at a school to stop a killer. http://www.davekopel.com/2a/othwr/principal&gun.htm

We would also like to point out that the clamor for background checks has been heard far and wide. Well, Norway’s Anders Breivik had a very thorough one.

So did Jared Loughner, the Tucson madman who shot Congresswoman Giffords and seventeen other people January 8th of this year.

So did Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech attacker who put four bullets in Mr. Goddard.

Do we see a pattern here? Background checks don’t work. Madmen and criminals, no matter what gun laws exist, will ALWAYS be able to arm themselves.

We don’t think that Mr. Goddard of Virginia Tech has evil intentions, just wrongful methods. It is perhaps right to remind ourselves of the terrific trauma he suffered from both his wounds and the event itself. It would be absolutely normal for a thinking person to feel misplaced guilt at the horrific impotence of not being able to do anything in such a ghastly situation.

But how he was "turned" by the Brady Bunch, and made their poster boy, befuddles me. One would think that a man contemplating a military career (ROTC), and familiar with firearms, would have come out of that horror completely enraged at the impotence inflicted upon him by idiotic and dangerous "gun control" laws. As he was taken to the hospital, he must have been screaming to himself: "If I’d only had a gun!"

So there remains but one question, Mr. Goddard: Are you going to allow lawful citizens to shoot violent criminal actors, or are you going to continue to bury dead children, gunned down unchallenged because of "gun control"? A curious world awaits your answer.

Respectfully,

Charles Heller
Executive Director, JPFO.

© Copyright Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.


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