Whipped Cream Difficulties

Here’s an interesting essay I’ve been meaning to bookmark for a while, and finally got around to.

“Chesterton: Patron Saint of Handgunners” by Patrick Toner, from “Crisis” magazine.

The jumping off point is a Chesterton quote, talking about his preparations for his honeymoon:

It is alleged against me, and with perfect truth, that I stopped on the way to drink a glass of milk in one shop and to buy a revolver with cartridges in another. Some have seen these as singular wedding-presents for a bridegroom to give to himself, and if the bride had known less of him, I suppose she might have fancied that he was a suicide or a murderer or, worst of all, a teetotaller.

Mr. Toner uses this to discuss the idea that defense of one’s self or those one loves is an obligation. More to the point, it is an obligation one has to assume on their own, rather than delegating to other people.

If a thing is worth doing, Chesterton tells us, it’s worth doing badly. (What’s Wrong With the World, 175) Defending one’s wife is worth doing, and hence worth doing badly. But more, it must be done principally by oneself. “These things, we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly.” (Orthodoxy, 250) Chesterton’s examples are things like writing one’s own love letters or blowing one’s own nose, but the incident of the revolver shows that he would include the husband’s duty to protect his wife. It’s simply not a job that should be subcontracted out. Of course, we band together in communities that provide mutual support and defense, and the forces of law and order can do their best to provide the safest conditions possible, in general. Our laws and policies and so forth can and should serve to keep the pirates at bay to a great extent. (Whether they, in fact, accomplish this, or whether our policies create criminals like moisture creates mold is an extraneous question.) None of this runs contrary to my point. We ask for doctors, researchers and public health officials to try to create as high a general level of health as possible—but that doesn’t mean we ask them to wipe our noses for us.

He goes on to propose that Chesterton be named the patron saint of handgunners, though he doesn’t shy away from the two major problems with this idea:

• Chesterton wasn’t a saint at the time. He was under consideration, but the latest information I’ve found indicates that the effort has been abandoned.
• There already is a patron saint of handgunners. Sort of. It’s complicated.

Slightly more seriously, this month’s essay by Tiger McKee in “American Handgunner”, “3 Questions To Stay Alive“, is worthy of your consideration. I think this is especially relevant if you are a new gun owner, but I’d argue that even experienced ones could benefit from asking these three questions. I’ve asked some of those questions myself in the past. I particularly like his “kitchen fire/building fire” analogy.

What are you willing to risk your life for? Only you can answer this question. But, I recommend asking it in advance. Remember, fighting is problem-solving at high speed. The more questions you can answer in advance the more efficiently you arrive at a solution.

I think we’ve all heard the Creepy Joe quote about how police officers should be trained to just shoot people in the leg. Everyone who is a person of the gun (and a lot of people who are not) should realize this is obviously bolshie bushwa. (If you don’t understand why: try hitting a small target like a leg under extreme cognitive and physical stress. This is why police officers are trained to shoot “center of mass” aka “the biggest part of the body”.)

I’ve had this video in the back of my head for a while now, and I thought I’d post it as another reason why “shoot ’em in the leg” isn’t such a good idea. This is from Iran: the suspect in this video allegedly robbed a bank.

As best as I can tell, the police officer shoots the suspect in the leg at about the 30 second mark. Two points:

1. The suspect is still conscious and capable of putting up a fight for another 45 seconds or so after he was shot. How much damage do you think someone can do with a knife in 45 seconds?

2. The suspect bled out and died. Shooting someone in the leg does not mean “not lethal”. If you hit an artery, the person you shot can bleed to death before the ambulance gets there.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2020 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Bookmarks, Guns, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.