“A complicated issue”

Thanks to Chris Tame of the Libertarian Alliance Forum for flagging up this story by Marc Morano of CNS News:

A man who turned the tables and fatally shot a would-be carjacker in Nashville this week deserves a “good citizenship” award for fighting crime, according to a national gun advocacy group.

According to published reports, Billy J. Brown stopped at a convenience store in South Nashville at around 1:00 a.m. on Dec. 29 to get a snack. When he got back into his car, he was surprised by two carjackers demanding that Brown start driving.

Instead of following orders, Brown pulled out his gun and shot and killed one of the carjackers who had jumped into the backseat, according to police and press reports. The other carjacker fled the scene, but was later apprehended by police and reportedly admitted to the attempted carjacking. Brown has not been charged with any violation of the law, but the local district attorney is expected to review the case.

“I hope there is some agency at the state level that is prepared to reward this guy or give the guy an award appropriate to the circumstances,” said Joe Waldron, executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, in an interview with CNSNews.com.

“[Brown] deserves some kind of a good citizenship award,” Waldron said.

But this is the bit of the story that I particularly liked:

But a group favoring restrictions on gun ownership cautioned that this one incident should not be used to draw conclusions on gun laws or to heap praise on any individuals.

“Anecdotal stories like this don’t necessarily make up good policy. To say that because one individual may have used his gun in self-defense in this case doesn’t necessarily mean anything about gun policy. It tells you very little,” said Matt Bennett, spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety.

“Gun laws should not be based on one event, either tragic gun shootings or instances of self-defense like this,” Bennett said.

“There are 250 million guns in private hands. It is a much more complicated issue,” he added.

When a propagandist tells you that you shouldn’t rely on anecdotes and that it’s a more complicated issue, that means that the people he’s arguing against are winning the anecdote war and have succeeded in simplifying the issue in a way that he doesn’t like. He’s trying to complicate it by adding his argument to the one that is winning.

Over here, I’m afraid, we’re the ones who, bombarded by enemy anecdotes, are trying to complicate things. The simple argument that rules over here goes: guns kill people so ban them.

Never mind. We soldier on. Following our mention here of Michael Peach on guns, Mike has more on this subject in connection with more reported shootings in Birmingham. Reported to him, that is:

I was away from the area over Christmas so it came as a surprise to me when I was told today that just near me, in south Birmingham there were no less than five drive by shootings. In one instance a mother and her eight week old daughter were hit.

The really surprising thing is that none of this reached the local or national newspapers.

All of this is totally inverifiable by me but I am sure of my sources as they say.

So, all you American anti-anti-gunners must just carry on saying: “you have only to look at Britain now to see that …”, every chance you get, until you turn our idiot guns laws into an American anti-British cliché, to set beside your contempt for our hideously miss-shapen teeth. Maybe then even the BBC people over with you might deign to notice this and beem the news back here. Nothing we say to these people about guns seems to make much difference.