Well, I went to the debate. I met Al there (iampacking) for the first time and had a good chat. (Incidentally, we both agreed that a barbeque get-together amongst forum members would be a lot of fun.)
The panel was heavily stacked with anti-gun speakers. A couple of the speakers might be called neutral, but there was only one pro-gun speaker, Janalee Tobias (of
Women Against Gun Control).
The single, clearest message that came from the anti-gun side was that we need to
feel the emotion of the stories of the suffering that people go through when they are shot or they lose a loved one to gun-violence. That's the strongest argument that the gun-control proponents have, since the statistics that they cite are easily debunked. Don't get me wrong. It is terrible to lose a loved one to any accident or violent act, and my heart goes out to those who have gone through such an ordeal.
However, just like with Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), the wrong lesson is learned by some when a violent criminal goes on a killing spree. The criminal that killed her husband and wounded her son on a commuter train in a suburb of New York in 1993 committed that act in an already-established "defense-free zone", where no law-abiding citizens were allowed to carry the means to protect themselves. So, the gunman was able to stroll along, shooting passengers at random.
A very different lesson was learned by
Texas State Rep. Suzanna Hupp who lost her parents to a crazed gunman at Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas. She decided to run for state office and was a main proponent of Texas' shall-issue CCW law. She recognized what many others don't -- that establishing "defense-free zones" (which the gun-banners call
gun-free zones) only enables murderers to commit their crimes without fear of meeting armed resistance.
Anyway, back to the debate. As I said, the gun-banners threw out the stock (and thoroughly debunked) statistics about the effectiveness of gun-control, including the so-called Assault Weapons Ban. Of course, they always ignore the government studies which show that gun-control laws are ineffective, such as the CDC study released last year or the NIJ study mandated by the AWB (see links to those studies in another
thread). Chief Dinse even told the story of how the North Hollywood shootout was committed by bank-robbers with "
Assault Weapons", conveniently leaving out the fact that they were firing fully automatic machine guns that were already illegal. It wasn't until the last part of the debate when audience members were able to go to the microphone that our own W. Clark Aposhian called him on that fact, pointing out that the bank-robbers would have had to be licensed to possess Class-III destructive devices to have legally had machine guns. Oh, how convenient are the omissions of fact by the gun-banners. Chief Dinse had to admit that the weapons used by the bank-robbers were illegally modified to turn them into fully automatic arms, but then he went on to claim that this is a very easy thing to do, and that's why the AWB needs to be renewed. Sorry Chief, but it takes very specialized knowledge, tools and equipment to do that. Not so easy to do, and already against the law. The Chief also made a comment about how powerful these assault weapons are and that they can defeat bullet-proof vests. Hey Chief, so will my old 30-30 Winchester Model 94 hunting rifle, but only if I choose to commit a crime with it. And that's the point. It's not the gun. It's the heart turned to darkness behind the hand holding the gun which causes someone to commit a murder. Murders and assaults are committed with all kinds of weapons, including knives, bats, tire irons, golf clubs and cars. It just so happens that guns are generally the most effective means of self-defense against those who would do us harm.
Although the panel was heavily weighted against us, I thought that it was an interesting event. I especially liked the comments presented by the audience members, most of whom spoke in favor of the right to self-defense. It was well-worth attending.
