FOXNews.com: Good Samaritan Gun Use:
Wilson, a licensed concealed handgun permit holder, heard Arroyo’s shots and saw the commotion from his apartment window. He grabbed a handgun and headed toward the attacker. Arroyo had already wounded several police officers and there was no one left to prevent his rampage.
As CNN reported, “Everyone here agrees, Wilson saved lives.” Fox News' website quoted the sheriff as saying "if it hadn't been for Mr. Wilson, [Arroyo's son] would be dead."
In the book, The Bias Against Guns, Bill Landes of the University of Chicago Law School and I examine multiple-victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1999 and find that when states passed right-to-carry laws, these attacks fell by 60 percent. Deaths and injuries from multiple-victim public shootings fell on average by 78 percent.
Many people find it hard to believe that 18 national surveys by academics as well as national polling organizations show that there are 2 million defensive gun uses each year. After all, if these events were really happening, wouldn't we hear about them on the news? Yet when was the last time you saw a story on the national evening news (or even the local news) about a citizen using a gun to stop a crime? ABC’s and NBC’s news coverage continued this pattern, but at least some CBS and CNN news reports provided some balance and Fox News’ website also gave the full story.
This misreporting actually endangers people's lives. By selectively reporting the news and turning a defensive gun use story into one that merely says "police shot him dead," the media give misleading impressions of what actions saved the lives of people confronted by violence. As Wilson's case demonstrates, defensive gun use is not a guns-rights myth. Guns have been and are used by law abiding citizens to protect and save their own lives and the lives of others.
Via MissPatriot.
Glenn Reynolds on Lebanon, Syria, and the War on Terror:
The French weren't able to protect Saddam, and they aren't even trying to protect the Syrians. And Bush speaks with the authority of a man with lots of troops stationed right along the border, troops that make it unlikely the Syrians will pull a Tiananmen Square in Beirut.
Back in 2003, some people were warning that Bush was more interested in spreading democracy through the Mideast than in simply toppling Saddam. But as we Microsoft employees are fond of saying, "that's not a bug -- it's a feature!"
In fact, it wasn't just a feature, but the plan all along. The Bush Administration has been taking the "root causes" talk seriously, instead of using it as an excuse to do nothing. It's addressing the root causes of terrorism by uprooting the Arab tyrannies that have encouraged terrorism to flourish.
More, at NRO:
Charles Krauthammer made the point last night that Lebanon supports the Syrian economy, and if Syria can no longer prop itself up with the resources of Lebanon, then the economic instability coupled with the loss of face to Assad makes it very likely that if Syria is kicked out of Lebanon entirely, the Syrian Regime will fall soon after. That would most definitely be a benefit to US interests even beyond what you have already rightly pointed out.
Of course, as Prof. Reynolds pointed out a few days ago, it's apparently not self evident to the lefty bloggers that the toppling of dictatorships is a good thing for the USA.
Glenn's post linked in that excerpt just made me realize something. A month or two ago I had a discussion with an ultra-liberal friend of mine (she even worked for the Kerry campain) and she asked me "Why attack Iraq?" I started going into strategic reasons involving Iraq's central location in the region, and the fact that it was the easiest target. She stopped me and said "No, why attack Iraq?", and explained that if France was located where Iraq is the strategic reasons would be irrelevant. I said that of course if France was there we wouldn't have had a problem, and simply responded to her original question by saying that I don't see any case against the war.
What I just realized was that it was not self-evident to her that removing Saddam Hussein, toppling his tyrannical and terrorist regime, and freeing 25 million people was a good thing, and worth fighting for.
She also went on to disagree with me that the war in Iraq would help create freedom in the region.
Anyway, this image Glenn linked (in that same post) brought a tear to my eye:
You ever stay up and waste time just because you don't want to wake up and have to deal with whatever you have to deal with the next day? As soon as you go to sleep, BAM it's tomorrow.
Incidentally, I could have sworn I'd seen "Lucy" somewhere other than tonight's Smallville, but I must be mistaken because she's been in almost nothing.
Thursday, March 3, 2005
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Spider solitaire
To answer an earlier question, I amalmost certain every game can bebeat. ...
Jared: Jul 16, 2:20pm