Originally published on this website August 1, 2000

Letters to the Editor
The Connection
1600 Scotts Crossing Road
McLean, VA 22102

Re: July 20th HCI letter entitled "Gun Permits Without Training?"

To the Editor:

Killeen, Texas 1991- While enjoying a lunch with her parents, State Representative Suzanna Gratia Hupp’s lawful life is interrupted by a mentally deranged man who crashes his truck through the front window, and proceeds to shoot several patrons, including both of her parents. Although Ms. Hupp legally possesses a sidearm and is well trained in it’s use, in obedience to 1991 Texas State law, it is locked ineffectively in her glove compartment where it remains while Ms. Hupp’s parents and 21 other innocent diners are exterminated. It would have been ILLEGAL for Ms. Hupp to be able to save 23 lives that day, despite the fact that she was in a position from which she could have stopped the gunman.

Pearl, Mississippi - October 1, 1997 - After murdering his mother that morning, Luke Woodham attempts to duplicate the Columbine shooting. He ‘succeeds’ in killing two female students with his rifle before Assistant Principal Joel Myrick ILLEGALLY holds the deranged child at gun point for police rather than allowing him to continue killing his classmates. Mr. Myrick is not forced to fire to stop the assault.

While Ms. Hupp’s ordeal made more news and eventually led to more reasonable Concealed Carry laws in Texas, very few people ever heard of the shooting in Pearl. Of the comparatively few who have heard of it, even fewer people seem to ask WHY the Assistant Principal had to carry a firearm illegally in order to stop that assault on the children entrusted under his care. Instead, time and again, I am told how people like myself, those who put up with the already cumbersome and expensive requirements for Carry of a Concealed Weapon (CCW), are STILL really, at heart, evil no-good cretins who leave their sidearms lying around for untrained kids to obtain and abuse.

I’m tired of being told to ‘ride in the back of the bus’ or that I am a second-class citizen for guarding not only my family’s life, but the lives of the complete strangers around me. Further, I am truly insulted and disheartened when on July 20th, an otherwise respectable paper publishes, in direct denial of their own disclaimer, Handgun Control Inc.’s Ms. Filler-Corn’s filibuster cram-packed with all the factual untruths and inanity one can pack into seven short columns. As is sadly standard operating procedure for HCI’s agents, Ms. Filler-Corn filibusters with apparently no real knowledge of what she writes about in her letter titled "Gun Permits without Training?" As I am merely an ordinary citizen without corporate funding behind me, I hope that The Connection will indulge me with as much venue as HCI’s corporate prepared bigotry, and publish this response in full.

The truth is concealed carry (CCW) permits often require MORE training with firearms than the local police receive. This is the LAW. As someone who recently renewed my CCW permit, I can tell you that Form SP-248, "Application for a Concealed Handgun Permit" clearly states not only the obvious prohibition on permits for the mentally unstable or incompetent, drug abusers, and convicted criminals, but also states that you must prove competence with a concealed weapon before a permit will be issued. Competence is most often proven by a ten to twelve hour, hands-on, live-fire, certificate issuing course (that means "TRAINING"). In fact, when my wife applied for her CCW, ostensibly due to her previous formal training being three years ago, the reviewing judge required her to take ANOTHER twelve hour course, at considerable additional expense. But like the majority of firearm owners, her response was "Another ten hours can’t hurt."

In flagrant factual contradiction to Ms. Filler-Corn, there IS a legal requirement for HEAVY training with EVERY CCW permit issued. Even without such a LEGAL REQUIREMENT FOR TRAINING, most people who seek to carry a crisis intervention device also enjoy shooting as a sport. Unlike many police whose only shots are fired (hopefully) to "qualify" a few times a year, many CCW holders compete in high-skill competitions. That kind of accuracy requires (say it with me, kids!) MORE TRAINING. But wait, that’s not all! Most people who carry a life preserver want it to not only be safe, but also to be effective in the situation in which they would NEED it, typically a dark street or hallway with two seconds notice before a possible real life "shoot or be shot" situation. How do you learn to shoot in impaired light, under stress, drawing from possibly awkward concealed carry? Lets hear a loud joyful cry, kiddies : YET MORE TRAINING. Talk to a real live CCW permit holder, and you will soon realize that this person probably LOVES TO PRACTICE. Yes, shooting is FUN. Until twenty years ago, only the most ignorant of gun- haters didn’t know that. Come to think of it, little has changed.

Talk to staunch anti-freedom activists like Rosie O’Donnell or HCI’s minions, and you will be told how firearms autonomously leap off tables, and MAKE people do bad things, just like pencils force us to make spelling mistakes. Firearms are FACTUALLY documented to STOP THREE TO EIGHT MILLION CRIMES PER YEAR. However, such legitimate statistics are ignored. In an attempt to understand this huge number as a reality, please pause for a moment, and imagine the REALITY of someone just like your wife NOT being raped, someone like your daughter NOT being killed -- and now recognize that such AN INNOCENT LIFE IS SAVED BY A FIREARM EVERY FOUR SECONDS IN THE UNITED STATES.

Immediately following the "no training" falsehood, Ms. Filler-Corn states "Every person is at risk from a citizen carrying guns in malls, movie theaters, restaurants and on highways. And soon bars and restaurants?" First, CCW has nothing to do with carry -- you can CARRY a sidearm in Virginia without a permit as long as you DON’T conceal it. That’s the law. Under Project Exile (an NRA supported production, incidentally), you get five years mandatory prison time if you conceal without a permit. Even with a CCW permit, you get the same sentence if you conceal in a bar, restaurant, church, school, court, etc (not so coincidentally, where you are likely to need your sidearm more, according to recent news reports). As a result of this legal whimsy, the only legal alternative to concealed carry may create a TRUE lack of safety -- when I dine with my wife, I have to OVERTLY slap my life preserver on the table in full view -- remember, while discretion is illegal, it IS legal to carry openly.

SO: If someone does have bad intentions while I am eating, not only have I pre-announced whom the criminal should logically shoot first, but I have made the diners around me somewhat nervous as to why I need to shoot my filet mignon before eating it. This is the ONLY thing the currently proposed laws Ms. Filler- Corn refers to would change -- I wouldn’t have to scare my fellow diners or go to jail should I ever forget to HOLD MY SIDEARM IN OPEN VIEW WHILE I WALK THROUGH THE FOOD COURT AT TYSONS. You want to talk about making a scene?

Next, HCI’s Ms. Filler-Corn refers to drunk DEA agents abusing THEIR Government issued weapons as a means of stereotyping citizen CCW holders. Let’s just ignore the fact that drinking while carrying a sidearm is ALREADY extremely illegal on several accounts for everyone. While we are at it, let’s join Ms. Filler-Corn in trying to ignore the other obvious fact that DEA agents are often less trained than, and most pertinently ARE LITERALLY NOT THE SAME AS, legal CCW holders. Like police, they simply need to "qualify." With all due respect, comparing crazed DEA agents and citizens with CCWs is not even remotely logical, and, as I said above, it is improper stereotyping.

As Hitler demonstrated, people aren’t motivated nearly as much by facts as they are by having someone to hate. In the 1940s, Jews were the target; in the 50's it was Communists; in the 60's Blacks; in the 70's Hippies; and in the 80s, gays were the target of choice. Now that we have laws to protect all of them, Fascists have to pick a new social class to hate, and any facts are still ignored with glee. The "N*gger" of the new Millennium is a white collar professional with a CCW. Nazi’s used the Jew’s self-defense as an indicator of their "violent and lower moral fitness," and now Handgun Control Inc. is using the EXACT SAME TACTIC to convince you, Dear Reader, that I am Satan Himself, despite my peaceful manner and LEGAL compliance. Just how bigoted are these gun-lynching anti-freedom activists? Ms. Filler-Corn put it in writing : To quote her letter, "I do not want my children in a restaurant where guns are [legally] present." Sounds a dishearteningly enormous lot to me like "I do not want my children in a restaurant where COLORED FOLKS are present" or "Jews are not fit to own restaurants" or "Women belong in the kitchen." Racism and bigotry are just as ugly as ever, Ms. Filler-Corn, and I am calling you on it. My rights are not yours to grant, nor yours to abridge.

While Ms. Filler-Corn is poisoning her children’s minds against legal gun owners, I am talking almost daily to rape victims, parents who lost their children, and other victims of crimes too horrible to put here, and time and time again I am told "I wish I trained my kids/wife/loved one how to shoot and protect themselves." Much more happily, sometimes I receive a testimonial from one of the FIVE THOUSAND women who stopped their rapist last year. Unlike Handgun Control Inc., I don’t NEED to make any of this up or stretch statistics -- even without corporate backing, REAL PEOPLE are more than partial to keeping their lives, and the respectable ones don’t try to disarm their neighbors based on their own groundless paranoia.

Ms. Filler-Corn says "we have reached a point where pediatricians recommend teaching our children what to do when they come across a gun at a friend’s house." Does she need her doctor to tell her to cover the electrical outlets, remove lethal household cleaning chemicals from reach or, later on, need her doctor to tell her that drug abuse might not be the best life choice for her children? When the NRA started the Eddie Eagle program, teaching EXACTLY THE SAME "STOP, DON’T TOUCH, TELL AN ADULT" SAFETY INSTRUCTIONS, HCI accused the NRA of "trying to subvert the minds of children." As someone who was repeatedly literally spit on by the 15,000-actual-count "Million" Moms two months ago, I think it is already apparent who the subverters and bigots are in this lineup. When, with HCI’s formal blessing, the family doctor recommends the same things as the NRA, it is suddenly divine wisdom? Aside from the obvious fact that UNtrained children (and adults) really SHOULDN’T have access to the steel life preservers at your friend’s house, I WOULD teach children the standard "Stop, don’t touch, tell an adult" mantra — that’s just common sense along with "Don’t touch the stove" and "Don’t juggle chainsaws."

Ms Filler-Corn is shocked to have to ask about firearms as if it were akin to asking "You don’t build pipe bombs and rape the elderly for sport, do you?" Personal Defense is a normal and sane response to modern life, and so is asking about the general safety of where you let your kids play. Responsible parents DO watch their kids. As someone who HAS been asked about the emergency hardware in my own house, I don’t take that as an insult, or even anything unusual, and parents are usually grateful that not only are my other life preservers safely secured, but their kids are that much more protected by the one on my hip. Thankfully, not all parents are as factually and emotionally uninformed as Ms. Filler-Corn.

In closing, let me echo Ms. Filler Corn in one regard : DO contact your legislators, but tell them that you are not paranoid of legal firearm owners, and you ARE tired of explaining why the nice man has to wave his sidearm BY LAW when entering a restaurant. Tell Governor Allen that you are tired of bigoted fanatics claiming to speak for you, and that you ARE an educated person capable of reading the law before writing a factually distorted Letter to the Editor.

Respectfully,

Keith Manne
Fairfax Station