The (Arizona) House of Representatives voted Tuesday to let people carry weapons - including guns, grenades, rockets, mines and sawed-off shotguns - into schools, polling places and nuclear plants if they claim they're only trying to protect themselves.Ahem.
Mines? MINES?!?!?
Since when the hell are friggin Claymores used for self defense?!?! It's not like someone can pull a gun on you and then you can ask them to wait five minutes so you can run down the hall, turn a corner, set up a trip wire and ask them to then come and shoot you.
I suppose people are thinking more in a Columbine sense (i.e. "Schools") with this inclusion so that people elsewhere in a building may defend certain areas from armed intruders. But such tactics would not guarantee that only the intruders would be hit. In this sense, only guns are logical as true self defense weapons with the ability to specify individual targets as the others have a high probability of inflicting excessive casualties. Not that I agree with this legislation at all, mind you, but I will acknowledge that at least part of it makes a certain amount of sense.
As for Nuclear Power Plants, for crying out loud, if they don't have sufficient security already in place in this post 9/11 world, then the boss needs to be dealt with and the security needs to be heightened. That would also go for any power plants as well as reservoirs and dams. If the employees don't already feels safe in places like that, then there are bigger issues that need to be addressed.
And as for the weapons themselves, the same arguments that were used with airline pilots applies here only more so. In such a volatile environment as an airplane fuselage or a nuclear plant, do you really want people carrying around guns, rockets and grenades that aren't paid and trained to do so? I can just see the modified signs for some of the more secure areas:
DANGER!NO SMOKING OR OPEN FLAME!(GLOCKS, HOWEVER, ARE A-OK!)
The article and Demagogue mention that the bill's sponsor, Rep. Doug Quelland, had no idea that the language in the bill was so broad. He hopes to scale it back when it gets to the Senate, as well he should. The last thing we need are a bunch of Richard Marcinko fans lobbing grenades to and fro just because they heard a car backfire.
1 comment:
I never leave home without my landmine. I mean, what if some mugger cornered me and I didn't have it handy in a quick-release holster?
It's a slippery slope. Once they outlaw mines, then next, they'll outlaw tanks, strategic bombers, and personal nuclear weapons. When will the insanity end?
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