The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Politics & RKBA => Topic started by: ericire12 on September 24, 2009, 02:09:41 PM
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Ninja-riffic! :D
!http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/gregory-kane/Get-a-handgun_-save-a-life-8283450-60670932.html
Gregory Kane: Get a handgun, save a life
By: Gregory Kane
Examiner Staff Writer
September 24, 2009
With one swift slash from a samurai sword, John Pontolillo made a convincing case for ... private ownership of handguns?
Oh, you betcha.
Pontolillo is an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University. Before Sept. 15, that's all he was: One of the many JHU students who have to bust their humps studying so they can graduate from one of the most challenging and academically competitive campuses in the country.
But nine days ago, Pontolillo went from being a simple college guy to being in the center of the maelstrom that developed after he slashed a burglar in the backyard of a house he shared with fellow JHU students.
Pontolillo used a samurai sword to defend himself after the burglar lunged at him. With one swish he nearly severed the burglar's left hand and pierced his chest. The man bled to death before paramedics could arrive.
The alleged burglar - and I'm using that word "alleged" guardedly here - was a career criminal with more than 20 arrests to his credit, based on what I was able to learn from the Web site www.courts.state.md. Donald Rice was 49 years old and had been charged over the years with assault, resisting arrest, drug possession and theft.
On Aug. 16 of last year, apparently Rice went completely bonkers. Baltimore County police charged him with 28 offenses stemming from one incident. Most of the charges were dropped, but Rice served at least six months anyway.
He'd only been out of prison three days when he met his tragic but predictable end in that backyard. Rice sounds much like the character Vernon Johns notoriously eulogized. (Johns was the immediate predecessor of Martin Luther King Jr. at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala.)
The deceased was, like Rice, a career miscreant. Those expecting a sympathetic eulogy didn't know Johns very well.
"He lived a trifling and useless life," Johns said. "He walked around Montgomery daring someone to slit his throat. Last week somebody obliged him. He lived like a dog; he died like a dog. Undertaker, claim the body."
Rice seemed cut from the same cloth, which may be why some in the Baltimore area cheered his death. But, inevitably, some cast him as a victim too. A Baltimore Sun editorial lamented the killing, claiming that "even burglars don't deserve to be killed with a razor-sharp sword." (That leaves us all to ponder this question: What, exactly, DO burglars deserve to be killed with?) Later, in the same editorial, the writer pondered what would have happened if Rice had been armed.
And there, dear readers, you have a classic example of what I call lib-think. I take it you noticed the underlying assumption: Criminals are supposed to be armed. It's kind of in their job description. But law-abiding citizens being armed? Oh, perish the thought.
Let's suppose how the scenario would have played out had Pontolillo been armed, not with a samurai sword, but a handgun.
Would Rice have been so quick to lunge? Or would he have turned tail and skedaddled, which is what criminals tend to do when confronted with gun-toting, law-abiding citizens?
I can see the scenario: Pontolillo says to Rice, "Mr. Burglar, I'd like you to meet two of my best buddies ever, those esteemed Americans Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson. You might want to stay put until police arrive."
And Rice would have done so. Or fled. Bottom line: He'd be alive today to tell the tale. So private ownership of firearms actually saves lives, and could have saved Rice's.
That's not just my opinion. Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, has done research to show that Americans use firearms one million times a year to defend themselves.
According to the book "The Seven Myths of Gun Control" by Richard Poe, Kleck found that "in 98 percent of those cases, no shots [were] fired. The criminal [fled] at the mere sight of the gun."
If there's a lesson for Pontolillo to learn, it's to give up that sword and buy a handgun.
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What, exactly, DO burglars deserve to be killed with?
Anything from a chopstick to a cannon............ in short, anything I can get my hands on if necessary.
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Anything from a chopstick to a cannon............ in short, anything I can get my hands on if necessary.
Plus 10 Peg. I am the sort, as my posts will bear out, to de-escalate a conflict if possible. Late at night, inside my home? All bets are off and you better either run or surrender, or shoot first. I don't think Jeb Bush was much more than a fair to middling governor, but I do like the castle doctrine law in Fl.. How does a burglar die? By breaking into my damn house!
FQ13
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WWMD?
What would MacGyver Do?
Anything it takes to stop the threat to myself or family. Anything & Everything.
Like the Ninja Story. Whatever it Takes.
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He lived a trifling and useless life," Johns said. "He walked around Montgomery daring someone to slit his throat. Last week somebody obliged him. He lived like a dog; he died like a dog. Undertaker, claim the body."
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To answer the question posed: Anything that gets the job done. I'm now thinking about a katana for home defense... actually just kidding.
This brings up an issue that has bothered me for a while. Just this week, Plaxico Burress started serving a two year sentence for the privilege of shooting himself in the leg. While I understand that the Glock in the gym pants waist band isn't a way to violate the abject stupidity of New York gun laws, it brings into focus a problem that has reared its ugly head several times for NFL players. For the most part, professional football players are large, in-shape, intimidating type people. They, however, are not bullet proof. To bring it full circle, Sean Taylor was shot and killed in his home using a blade for home defense. He had gotten into trouble a couple of years earlier with an incident involving a hand gun. IMHO he died so that the "evil gun" could maintain its place as one of the most demonized and mis-represented inanimate objects ever to share space with humans.
So, blades are nice, but a 200+ grain piece of metal launcher is always better.
P.S. For those of you who are unfamiliar with who Sean Taylor is, I have included a video (albeit a crappy one) of the man's competitiveness at a meaningless game in Hawaii.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF4QJwfKaeU&NR=1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF4QJwfKaeU&NR=1)
Rant and thread hijack off.
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with any luck the broken glass from the window they came in... hopfully when I'm not home. Finding died burgler in the living room in a pool of blood= I get hard wood floors in the living room. Finding a burgler alive still in your home= bad things.