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Bombs Away

February 11, 2021

Wayne—BoomBoom—LaDerrière, the head of the National Bomb Association, lobbed a verbal grenade at critics following the bombing at the Boston Marathon and calls for tougher bomb-control laws. We have included an excerpt of LaDerrière’s speech here:

"As spectators, we do everything we can to keep our athletes safe. It is now time for us to assume responsibility for their safety at sporting events. The only way to stop a monster from killing our sports heroes is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a bomb is a good guy with a bomb.

"Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you'll print tomorrow morning: 'More bombs,' you'll claim, 'are the NBA's answer to everything!' Your implication will be that bombs are evil and have no place in society, much less in our sporting events. But since when did the word 'bomb' automatically become a bad word?

"A bomb in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn't a bad word. A bomb in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn't a bad word. And when you hear the glass shattering in your living room at 3 a.m. and call 911, you won't be able to pray hard enough for a bomb in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

"So why is the idea of a bomb good when it's used to protect our President or our country or our police; but bad when it's used to protect our athletes in their sporting events?"

"I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put police officers armed with explosive belts or suicide vests at every major sporting event - and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of Semtex is in place when our athletes return to their next game, match, or race."

"Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else, as soon as our sportsmen and sportswomen return to the field, court or pitch, we need to have every single stadium, gymnasium, court and racetrack in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work - and by that I mean security armed with grenades, mortars, and plastic explosives, embedded with nuts and bolts and nails.

"Right now, today, every stadium, gym and aerobics club in the United States should plan meetings with instructors, coaches, administrators, team owners, and local authorities - and draw upon every resource available - to erect a cordon of destruction around our athletes right now."

"There'll be time for talk and debate later. This is the time, the clock is literally ticking, this is the day for decisive action.

"We can't wait for the next unspeakable crime to happen before we act. We can't lose precious time debating legislation that won't work. We mustn't allow politics or personal prejudice to divide us. We must act now, never forgetting that bombs don’t kill people, people do."

In Crime in America, US Politics Tags NRA, Wayne LaPierre
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Second Amendment Lite

March 28, 2018

 

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Steves has written an op/ed for the New York Times in which he calls for a repeal of  the Second Amendment. Five years ago, I wrote the following:

On December 15, 1791, the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted, along with the other nine amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. It stated, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”.

Considering that James Holmes, who shot fifty-two people at a movie theater on Saturday night, 12 of whom died, reportedly bought all four[1] of his weapons, ammunition and ballistic gear legally[2], it seems to me that now is as good a time as ever to remind Americans what the Founding Fathers had in mind when it came to arms and a well-regulated militia.

At the time the constitution was written, the most common rifle was the flintlock musket, a muzzle-loaded five-foot long rifle. The gun fired a single lead ball about 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Between each shot, gunpowder and lead had to be dropped down the barrel. A flint struck the part called the frizzen, which caused the gunpowder in the barrel to ignite, propelling the lead ball. Muskets had an effective range of about 100 yards, but because it took so long to reload, many soldiers would have to rely on the bayonet once the enemy got too close.

Another fairly common weapon at the time was the flintlock pistol. A good soldier could only get off two or three rounds a minute. These pistols, which were used primarily by officers, had a reliable accuracy of only about fifteen feet. According to the Revolutionary War Antiques website, “Pistols were also used as a dueling weapon during early American History. Duels relied on the inaccuracy of these flintlock pistols for survival.”

As for the “well-regulated militia”, the Economist magazine published an entertaining and enlightening article on July 1st, 1999, featuring the findings of Michael Bellesiles, a professor at Emory University.   

According to the article, “Most militias were a joke. Describing a shooting competition at a militia muster in Pennsylvania, one newspaper wrote cruelly: ‘The size of the target is known accurately, having been carefully measured. It was precisely the size and shape of a barn door.’ The soldiery could not hit even this; the winner was the one who missed by the smallest margin. No wonder the militias of Oxford, Massachusetts, voted in 1823 to stop their annual target practice to avoid public humiliation . . .

A well-tailored militia    "Militias, it seems, were neither adept nor well-armed. In 1775 Captain Charles Johnson told the New Hampshire Provincial Congress that his company had ‘perhaps one pound of powder to 20 men and not one-half of our men have arms.’ The adjutant general of Massachusetts complained in 1834 that only ‘town paupers, idlers, vagrants, foreigners, itinerants, drunkards and the outcasts of society’ manned his militias . . . In the 1830s, General Winfield Scott discovered the Florida militia to be essentially unarmed—and this was during a war against the Seminole Indians.”

The article is worth reading in its entirety.

By the way, 55,846 people have been shot so far this year in the United States, 226 people have been shot today.[3]

The NRA will argue, of course, that the solution to gun violence is to have more law-abiding citizens packing heat. As crazy as that sounds, the argument was convincing enough to the many Colorado residents who flocked to their local gun shop to purchase firearms.

According to the Denver Post, “Background checks for people wanting to buy guns in Colorado jumped more than 41 percent after Friday morning’s shooting at an Aurora movie theater, and firearms instructors say they’re also seeing increased interest in the training required for a concealed-carry permit. ‘It’s been insane,’ Jake Meyers, an employee at Rocky Mountain guns and Ammo in Parker, said Monday.”

It is insane.


[1] “[Holmes] chose the [Remington 870] shotgun, which you know the expression the ‘shotgun effect’—it’s blasting out. That is one weapon, but he transitioned neatly from that to the AR-15 [semi-automatic assault rifle], which had that drum magazine of 100, which we believed jammed. And then he transitioned from that to the [two Glock] pistol[s] until he was out of that ammunition,” reported CBS News senior correspondent John Miller.

[2] There is currently no system in the U.S. tracking whether an individual is stockpiling weapons and ammunition. The only restriction in the U.S. is on the sale of armor-piercing bullets.

[3] For more gun facts visit the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

In US Politics Tags Aurora Massacre, Brady Campaign, James Holmes, NRA, Second Amendment, Early American Militias, Gun Violence in America, Revolutionary Era Firearms

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