I was specifically referring to a situation where it is known there is a gunman on the loose in the building, and the teacher has followed the prescribed protocol and is in a corner out of the line of sight of the door, waiting for the events to play out. Should the gunman decide to enter that teacher’s room, his only point of entry is the door. If you are already aiming at the doorway, you have the drop on him, because you know his position, but he won’t know yours until he’s already exposed himself in the doorway.

No, I’m not an expert, but the person who explained to me about doorways was the police officer who taught my concealed carry class. He is the one who described a doorway as a “vertical coffin”. Entering a room where an armed suspect is hiding is an extremely dangerous situation for police, which is why they train on how to “clear” a room. It only makes sense that the same situation would be to your advantage if you were the one hiding and your adversary was the one entering the doorway.

Come on J.M., I didn’t read every comment, but in a quick scan, I saw exactly two involving guns in the first 100. As I said before, the first 100 had nothing to do with guns. The gun angle didn’t take off until after Hillary brought it back up concerning teachers at #104 and then PP replied with something that had nothing at all to do with teachers and violence.

Actually, I don’t disagree with your overall point. Pretending that we know the motivation of an individual’s mind is never better than standing on shaky ground, at best, and even more so when it concerns a deceased individual. Pretending that we do can and often does exacerbate or at least obscure the real problem.

For the record, I’m not a fan of the NRA. I prefer to do my thinking for myself, and choose not to be openly ridiculed by my supposed peers for my dissent. I refuse to be a part of any organization that prefers I walk in lockstep with their policies/politics. That’s as deep as I’ll go on that subject.

Thank you for your kind words, sir.

As for my having made comparisons among those who use invective about “tyrannical” U.S. government plots to confiscate guns, what it says about this longtime gun owner is that I’m in the vast rational majority in how I regard such unfounded paranoid rhetoric, even as I’m willing to employ a more sharp edged style than others. To settle on a particular interpretation of what else it says about me is recognizable as speculation.

That said, when anyone tries to use another perosn’s having never fired a gun to impeach their positions on massacre control measures, it’s fair to wonder about the long list of relevant experiences they’ve never had. The spontaneous list I posted to JW bear on the massacre control debate because they were items that go to one’s sense of the consequences of gun violence beyond abstraction, of life’s fragility, of applying honest skepticism to what truly motivates the NRA’s policy positions, and so on. I’ve occasionally posted some of my own answers to the list, and invite others either to do so or try making the case that only technical knowledge of guns really matters, or is paramount.

Again, J.M.. I apologize if my post seemed unduly critical or inadvertently triggered emotions from your past. It was not my intention, and were I aware you’d take it as personal criticism, I’d have written it differently. There are models for doing so, just as there are models for maintaining acknowledgement of speculative forays without special fonts or constant qualifying. But the general point about the limits of assigning causation to cases like Lanza’s has new urgency in light of the NRA’s insistence that massacre control discussion not include the role of guns.

I never claimed to be a psychologist, but I am intimately familiar with feeling neglected and abandoned by my mother for things she was more interested in than me. I know intimately the unfettered rage that a teenage child can have in that situation. I also know intimately that my rage would’ve never been sated simply by destroying her alone if it had come to that. Other than the freedoms granted me by the 1st Amendment, I believe my personal experiences with my own unstable, very angry, adolescent mind give me enough standing to publish any theory I see fit.

That said, I’ll make sure that I satisfy your arbitrary requirements to the letter from this point forward so as to avoid any further confusion for you. I wouldn’t want you to start quoting me out of context and comparing me to terrorists… a fact that is very telling of your own psychology, by the way.

Too many discussions about making gun violence harder for the mentally ill do that. Amateur psychological explanations, made at a distance, are okay for introducing aspects for discussion, but not for settling them. When applied to gun violence, perhaps we can coin an apt phrase to alert ourselves to this phenomenon; perhaps “armateur psychoanalysis”?

One of the many areas that needs serious discussion and work.

I wasn’t trying to vouch for all gun owners, of course. I was just offering my own anecdotal evidence. My point was more that even though the ones I know are rabidly anti-regulation, that doesn’t mean we should live in fear of them. In fact, they’re all people who would stop to assist you if you were broken down on the side of the highway. I also know that you’re not trying to imply that all gun-owners are dangerous people. Sometimes when we get carried away with our positions on “hot” issues, that extreme stereotyping is what we inadvertently end up portraying. We could ALL put more effort into listening and evaluating instead of just talking at each other.

As far as gun ranges are concerned, I know that the two that I use in North Carolina have banned human silhouette targets at their facilities. From my understanding, many ranges around the nation have banned those types of targets. Utah even bans them at public ranges.

Warren was exactly right in that many of the things in mass killer manifestos DO correlate with the same arguments gun advocates beat us about the head with. Does correlation mean causation? No, it does not. We cannot accurately decide where the line is and when it is crossed and that is the horror involved.

I freely admit I have never been to a gun range of any kind other than the private property target shooting I mentioned growing up. But all of the ones shown on TV have human shaped targets.

I am pleased that you are the exception that I am certain John Wilburn, Jack, Dave Hicks and all of the other gun rights advocates are who post here, but surely you know that you cannot “vouch” for all gun rights advocates or gun owners.

I guess I would have more sympathy for gun rights advocates and gun owners, if I did not see that so many people in this supposedly free nation are more harassed, more regulated, more maligned, more watched, more heavily labeled, isolated and unwelcome just about every day of the week. I also find it amusing that they can so clearly see my arrogance, my condescension, and my disdain, but completely miss their own.

Comment by gdad — January 4, 2013 @ 8:57 am

What are you talking about, gdad? Comment #14 was the first mention of guns on this thread and it was penned by Scott M.

I’ll echo JM about accuracy. When I spend time at the range, that’s my focus. If I’m using a rifle, I’m initially testing the sights or scopes on them, and adjusting if neccessary. Once dialed in, I’m working on my accuracy and consistency…often competing with my wife to see who does better (she’s darn good). With handguns, we’re again focusing on accuracy and consistency. One of the things we like doing is picking a can or bottle, and trying to ‘walk’ it up the range as best as we can, by hitting it, re-adjusting to its new position, and hitting it again.

The reason we focus on small targets like a can or a 12″ paper target is that they’re small, and at a distance os usually 50-feet or greater. If we ever (and I hope it’s a never) find ourselves needing to defend ourselves, a person is substantially larger than what we practice with, and from the statistics I’ve seen, usually at a far shorter range. Like, if we ever were faced with a home intruder, the longest distance would be about 35 feet…the linear distance from the far end of our back living room near the fireplace, to the laundry room…on the other side of the dining room and kitchen. Practically anywhere else and it would be 20 feet, max.