My neighbor would like to write this op-ed, but she is too afraid.
A mother of three young children, she responded to a recent Facebook post by Ulster County Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum in which he urged “citizens of Ulster County who are licensed to carry a firearm to PLEASE DO SO.”
“You are encouraging people to carry their guns in light of recent events?” she wrote on Facebook. “How can this be a real post? Disgusting. Utterly.”
Perhaps even more disgusting than a public official essentially deputizing his citizens – virtually begging vigilantes and drunken bullies to have their day – was the stream of invectives immediately directed at my neighbor, culminating with, “Maybe ISIS will come to your house and we’d all be better off.”
“As a mother, I felt utterly threatened, and not only blocked all of these users but also deleted my comment immediately,” my neighbor told me. “I do not want to have my name out there and simply felt afraid. Now isn’t that a shame? Sheriff Van Blarcum claims to want to protect people, but his supporters are bullying and threatening those who wholeheartedly disagree with his statement.”
Yes, it’s a shame – a shame that a mother fearful for her children’s well-being can’t voice her opinion without receiving hateful comments and threats – ironically, taking a page from the way terrorists try to strike fear in our hearts with their threats of harm.
It’s also a shame that an elected local official would encourage people to carry firearms despite a body of evidence showing time and time again that the result of more people carrying guns is more violence and death. A Harvard University study earlier this year found that homicide via firearm is nearly three times more likely in states with the most guns compared to states with the least, while firearm assaults are nearly seven times more likely.
In the U.S., there are about the same number of guns in civilian hands as there are civilians – a whopping 310 million, according to recent figures, many times more than in any other developed country. In Germany, by contrast, there are 25 million civilian firearms and 15 times fewer gun homicides – that’s 1.9 homicides per million people compared to 29.7 per million people in the U.S., according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Yet people like Sheriff Van Blarcum, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, and his legions of followers – his post on Facebook had drawn nearly 3,500 “likes” by press time – are unfazed by the facts. Ulster County District Attorney D. Holley Carnright tried to smooth over the issue, writing in a blog post, “I am not convinced more guns in the hands of untrained or unskilled civilians is the answer and nor do I believe does the Sheriff. I discourage anyone from misreading the Sheriff’s comments.”
There is nothing to misread here. The sheriff’s call to arms by ordinary – and, by definition, untrained – citizens is clear. About 10,000 Ulster County residents – more than five percent of the county’s population of 180,445 — have a permit to carry a firearm. It’s not enough to hope they don’t take the sheriff’s advice too literally. It’s time this country — and this county –caught up with the rest of the world.
This article appears in December 2015.
The Harvard study was greatly flawed as it compared statistics by state and not by zip code. There is much gun violence in New York City where there are theoretically few guns but there are many guns upstate where there is little gun violence. They also cherry picked states where their hypnosis could be proven and ignored states like Vermont.
To characterize all concealed permits holders as untrained is quite unfair. Many of them are better trained than police officers. And studies show they are more law abiding than police officers. To promulgate the spurious stereotype of gun owners as drunken vigilantes is also unfair . Of course in an op- ed your are entitled to your opinions but not to make up facts.
Well then, let’s allow the CDC to study gun violence, shall we? Then we will presumably have better data.
To characterize all 10,000 carry permit holders as uniformly cool-headed and law abiding is unrealistic. To get a permit, as I understand the process, you need a background check (some of the most dangerous folks anywhere are the ones who just haven’t been caught yet) and four character references. They aren’t all drunken bullies or vigilantes by any means, but neither are they fully known quantities. (Nor are police; thanks for pointing that out.)
The ones you know, or Sheriff Van Blarcum knows, may be wonderful, but that tells us nothing about the other nine thousand and some. Some people get carry permits because they’re embroiled in a dispute with someone, others because they tend toward paranoia, others because it lends a feeling of empowerment. And now every last one of them feels that it’s a civic duty to carry everywhere they go.
The chances that someone will misread a situation and escalate the level of violence in it by pulling one of those 10,000 guns to do something other than stop an active shooter are unfortunately huge. We all want to believe that “people like us” don’t make those mistakes, but the countless cases of needless escalation and people being shot for no good reason say otherwise. Emotion, self interest, and anxiety are variables that aren’t permanently stabilized by training or revealed by a background check, nor are they ruled out because four people think someone is OK and convince a judge.
Sadly, the less stable the weapon holder, the more likely he or she may be to mis-hear the sheriff’s words (which I believe were well intended) as a dispensation and a call for semi-deputies. I know it was not his intention, and I know CCW holders don’t want to hear it, but this statement does make Ulster County a more dangerous place.
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Considering how violent and abusive so many of his supporters have been in the wake of this controversy, a responsible Sheriff would have issued a press release urging people to act responsibly, and suggesting that people who are threatening people who disagree with them are not the sort of people that should be carrying guns. That’s not what happened. We need to get rid of this guy. We really do.
A civilian is by definition an untrained person. It is not necessary to compare by zip code to measure gun violence. The data holds up when compared by state and even by country. One state with little violence and lots of guns doesn’t change the basic premise. When a vigilante, whether drunken or not, or anyone else has a gun, he/she becomes a much more dangerous person. That’s the point.
Here’s what happens even when trained people get ahold of guns:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/02/justice/georgia-police-chief-wife/ (Georgia police chief accidentally shoots his sleeping wife in bed)
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/26/us/arizona-girl-fatal-shooting-accident/ (trained instructor gives girl Uzi with which she then accidentally kills him)
Legally registered gun: http://www.aol.com/article/2015/12/05/police-say-michigan-girl-shot-and-killed-by-a-family-friend/21278928/?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl3%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D-83662978
By making this public statement, the sheriff has place all permitted gun owners under the umbrella of “responsible”. It becomes a very subjective definition, each owner now allowed to condone their skill-level, judgment and rational/irrational decision process. This call to arms is, according to my understanding of the Constitution, the role and responsibility of our county sheriff. However, it is also his/her primary responsibility to ensure the safety of the citizenry, even to the degree of defending all of us against our government, should it come that!
I agree with Robert Pucci: to characterize all concealed permit holders as untrained is unfair. As is the characterization that all permit holders are better trained and more law abiding than police officers. The training required to deal with a mass shooter is quite beyond the scope of the training needed to fire a gun at a non-moving target. One needs to hone the ability to think clearly in times of stress and to overcome adrenaline and the body’s fight or flight reactions. One of the worst things about this local conversation about gun legislation that is coming out of Van Blarcum’s request is the bias people so easily show, which is what I think this Op-Ed is really talking about. Licensed gun owners are individuals who should not be characterized as a group. To assume that they are more responsible and better able to act in a stressful situation is just as bad as assuming they are all crazed mass shooters-in-waiting. The problem with Van Blarcum’s request is that he puts more faith in a group of citizens he doesn’t know than in the trained police force that he does. It is incredibly upsetting for parents and Ulster County residents alike, and expressing those concerns should not invite death threats at their doors. If only the people who tout the second amendment cared as much about the first.
You people all make me sick. Maybe if you had half a brain cell of knowledge about guns and the differences and the ACTUAL PROCESS to get a permit, your views would be different. I’ve said it once before, and I’ll say it again. While y’all are quivering in the corner begging and pleading for your lives, I’ll be over here protecting my family and friends. No, not like some crazy gun toting redneck, but like a highly trained, and extremely serious gun owner. A gun is a TOOL and nothing more. Not everyone that owns one is a dumbass like you jackasses make it out to seem
Notice how the most rabid gun-rights supporters, like Mr. Brain Cells above, rail on about how stupid the other side is while showing ZERO EVIDENCE to support their views — which completely undermines the point they are trying to make. If you’re going to criticize the intellect of your adversaries, at least show some yourself.
Notice how the most rabid gun-rights supporters, like Mr. Brain Cells above, rail on about how stupid the other side is while offering ZERO EVIDENCE to support their views — only serving to undermine the point they’re trying to make. If you’re going to criticize your adversaries’ intellect, at least show some yourself.
It’s a lot like trying to reason with climate-change deniers who trot out one poor, pathetic, partisan, discredited study that supports their views while ignoring a huge body of evidence that contradicts them. People like this will always lose the war of reason.
Do none of you realize citizens with permits to carry a fire arm more then like have been carrying their firearm EVERYWHERE they go anyway, you just haven’t noticed? My mother in law has a carry permit. She keeps her fire arm on her at the store, on trips, even while she is working her weekend job at a local bar. She has NEVER pulled her gun out. She regularly takes saftey classes, goes to the shooting rnge, and also has liability insurance incase she ever needs to use it. This is not the first time there will be guns in public. Just the first time you are obviously aware of it. I’m this day in age you need to protect yourself and your family. A gun man starts shooting up the mall? You may get away and you may not. But maybe just maybe your gun may give you that split second to get away or get your children away. Walking to your car in a dark parking lot alone and someone attacks you? Well that carry permit will save your life. The majority of these people aren’t gun toating lunatics. They just want some comfort and protection. And they may just save your life. No need to judge everone of them. And like I said that have probably had a gun on their waistband or ankle every single day. It was just never broadcasted.
Once again, the point is that the tens of thousands of gun fatalities and injuries — both intentional and accidental — that take place every year in this country are not worth the one in a gazillion chance that a civilian with a gun will lawfully take action to save someone’s life.
And further, because it has been shown time and time again that more guns in more civilian hands equal more death and more injury, it is irresponsible of a public official to advocate that people carry guns in public.