Category: Carrying / Self-Defense

Instapundit points us to a demo of the Taser C2 over at popular mechanics.  I have always been a big proponent of pepper spray as the best option for less than lethal force, and I still believe that.

Electrical weapons are replete with problems.   For one, you only get once chance to hit.  There’s the issue of the probes being able to get through clothing to the attacker.  What do you do once you run out of the 30 second charge?  Remember, that was a demo.  A real attacker will be hopped up on adrenaline, drugs, or both.

If my friend Jym is reading this, he can tell you the story of the time he volunteered to get nailed by his friend’s stun gun and felt he would have been completely able to fight through it if he had to.  The big problem with less than lethals is that any force that’s powerful enough to incapacitate someone to the extent that they are no longer a threat to you is quite likely to kill that person.  The root problem is not that technology hasn’t advanced enough, it’s that the human body is surprisingly resilient.  Perhaps someday electrical weapons will advance far enough to be able to reliably disable someone for a sufficient period of time to make a safe exit from a deadly encounter possible, but that weapon will probably also be liable enough to kill, that it’ll be treated legally as a deadly weapon.

So I’ll stick to my assertion that Tasers and stun guns are poor substitutes for an effective pepper spray, which are poor substitutes for firearms, when talking about deadly encounters with criminals.  Less than lethals have their place, certainly.  Definitely in police work.  But I wouldn’t rely on them to get myself out of a deadly encounter.

A court challenge to New Hampshire’s concealed carry laws fails:

The case arose from an incident at Dover City Hall on March 16, 2006, during which Bleiler, a resident of Isaac Lucas Circle, displayed a handgun in the office of City Attorney Allan Krans. The gun was used as a prop to tell a story, and though Krans said in court that he did not feel threatened, he did call Fenniman immediately afterward to report the incident.

If the firearm was at any point drawn from the holster, even if it wasn’t brandished, it’s definitely stupid. You don’t use a loaded firearm as a “prop”. Period.

…He also argued that state law allowing municipalities to revoke concealed weapons permits for “just cause” is too vague and allows for arbitrary enforcement.

The Supreme Court ruled state law does in fact give someone of “ordinary intelligence” notice of what conduct could lead to a revocation.

According to state law, no permit is required to own a firearm but one is required if the firearm is going to be concealed…

There’s a good rule of thumb if you’re going to litigate on constitutional rights like this: take a case before the court that’s actually an example of abuse of discretion! This case would not appear to be it. Most people, including myself (though I am opposed to discretionary clauses like this), think that if you believe using a loaded weapon as a prop in a conversation is smart behavior, you should probably rethink carrying a firearm in public.

UPDATE: Another case along a similar vein from New Hampshire.

It’s been a common misconception among the gun blogosphere that Full Faith and Credit should apply to carry permits.  Eugene Volokh talks about why that isn’t necessarily the case.

Conservative Scalawag links to a guide written for the NYPD on [how to spot a concealed pistol]*.   Take a look.  I have to admit, about keeping the hand close to the shirt, and not swinging the other arm, I do that.  I have to keep the shirt from blowing open.   I do that even when I’m not carrying, just out of habit.  The rest of the things they mention can be solved by using a quality holster.   Studies have shown that bad guys almost universally don’t carry in holsters; just stuffing it in their waistband.   I don’t get this.  Why don’t criminals use a holster?

* Dead link removed

One thing I hate about carrying in Virginia is the stupid restaurant ban.  You can’t carry into any place that’s licensed to serve alcohol while concealing your weapon, even if you don’t intend to order a drink.  If you want, you can go all VCDL and unconceal it, but I’m pretty sure that would get me kicked out of a lot of the restaurants in Alexandria.

Contrast to Pennsylvania where you can carry into restaurants and bars.  You can even belly up to the bar and order a beer while carrying.  Not that I recommend carrying while intoxicated, but the law makes the presumption that people are going to be reasonable; I like that.

So how about it Virginia?   Can we get rid of this crap?   Probably not, because the meme will be “The NRA and VCDL want drunks to carry.” which is crap, but that’ll be the meme.   There’s also the fools at the other NRA, the National Restaurant Association, who will come out against it.  So perhaps we can at least restructure the law here.   How about off limits violations are a summary offense rather than the current penalty, which I believe is carrying without a license?   Or go the Missouri route, and make violation no penalty at all, but getting caught more than once puts your license at risk.   To me, these all seem to be reasonable alternatives if you can’t outright eliminate the restaurant ban.

Virginia’s carry laws are pretty good except for the restaurant thing.   Certainly better than a lot of other southern states, who have overly restrictive off-limits places.  Tennessee, for instance, bans carry in all parks and National and State Forests, which seems highly silly.  Or Georgia, which has a general public gathering exception.  Or the various southern states which prohibit carry into polling places.  Come on guys, you can’t let a bunch of damned Yankees beat you on this one ;)

I feel bad for this woman from Tennnesse who was arrested in Chicago for carrrying a gun with a TN license, being apparently unaware that Chicago’s laws were any different. I think the Chicago DA did the right thing in charging her with three misdemeanor counts rather than a felony count; this isn’t someone to throw the book at.

Still, I have to wonder, even if you were under the delusion that your Tennessee permit were valid in Chicago, why would you put your gun toting purse on an x-ray belt? I wouldn’t even do that back home in Pennsylvania, even if it was a place I had a legal right to be armed. Oh yeah, and if I, um, carried my gun in a purse.

In my five years of being licensed to carry a gun, I’ve never once been “made” or had someone notice that I was carrying a firearm in public.  So today we spent with Bitchy Mom and Bitter’s six year old nephew.   We took him to the Air and Space Museum Annex right next to Dulles first.

Bitter’s sister-in-law is a nutty anti-gun type who doesn’t even let the kid make a gun out of his finger, so we thought his next stop should be the NRA’s National Firearms Museum in Fairfax.   Bitchy Mom thought a nice “pop” gun would be a fine souvenir for him to take him and show mom *grin*.

After we dropped them off so they could head back to Roanoke, he gave Bitter a big hug goodbye, and then came over to hug his new uncle.  I wasn’t expecting what was coming next:

“Why do you have a gun in your pocket?”

I look around nervously to make sure no one from the nearby wedding party was around to hear that.  I had my Makarov at 4:00 in a leather holster, with an unbuttoned button up shirt covering it.  Does a great job of concealment from people looking at it straight on.  Not so good a job from someone of rather short stature who’s looking up at you.   I’ll have to remember to untuck the t-shirt next time children are about, or I’m packing at a midget convention.

“I keep it in my pocket so I can get to it if I need it”

I was hoping that would be enough to answer the question.

“Why do you have a gun in your pocket?”, he asked again.

How do you explain these things to a six year old?  There wasn’t time anyway.   Earlier we had seen the Enola Gay, the B29 that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima.  It was a special B29, but also something you can’t really explain to a six year old.

The funny thing is, I was embarrassed that I had been “made”.   Maybe I should suggest to Michael Nutter, you don’t need the whole “stop and frisk”.  Just get some six year old to go up to gang banger looking types and give them a hug.  “Have you hugged a drug dealer today?”  It’s the kind of touchy-feely crap that’s right up their alley!

You all remember the case up in New Hampshire of the Marine who shot dead a perpetrator that had previously shot a police officer and run him over. My friend Jason dug up the video (he also dug up that Pat Brown video from the other day, but I forgot to credit him). The video serves as a reminder to us that pepper spray is not always effective. This perp takes a blast in a confined space of a car and still manages to come out shooting, hitting the officer 4 times in the torso, and then run him over:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p4FK6Eq-ZA[/youtube]

For those that can’t see the YouTube, here is a link to QuickTime video. Officer McCay was foolish to turn his back on the perpetrator. At best, pepper spray is useful for getting out of fist fight situations, but I wouldn’t rely on it to overcome deadly force. It has a place, but I’ve always thought of it as a double edged sword, both tactically and legally. Aside from the tactical issue of blowback at you, and different people’s ability to fight through it, I’d hate to be in a situation where a prosecutor asks “You had pepper spray. Why didn’t you just use that?”

Maybe this is a response to the letter I sent!  But maybe they are getting a lot of them.   The Pennsylvania AG has clarified the residency requirements:

It has come to the attention of the Office of Attorney General that there has been confusion over the applicability of Pennsylvania’s reciprocal privileges with regard to the residency status of an individual who has been issued a valid license/permit.  It is the position of the Office of Attorney General that recognition within Pennsylvania is based on the issuance to an individual of a valid license/permit by the reciprocal contracting state, and not on the license/permit holder’s place of residence.

So there you have it folks.  If you’re a carrying on a non-resident, reciprocal permit, you’re legal.