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Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013 | 2 a.m.
Another view?
View more of the Las Vegas Sun's opinion section:
• Editorials - the Sun's viewpoint.
• Columnists - local and syndicated writers.
• Letters to the editor - readers' views.
Have your own opinion? Write a letter to the editor.
In response to Sandra Mary Smith’s letter “Self-defense claim doesn’t make sense”:
Chris Kyle was helping Eddie Routh, who had post-traumatic stress, so Kyle had no idea he was going to get shot.
Kyle might have thought that Routh, the alleged shooter, was even a friend.
When I think of self-defense, it is when some nut is trying to break into my house.
Sandra Mary Smith's premise was that since one can't defend themselves at a gun range especially someone with Mr. Kyle's military background then it's virtually impossible for anyone to defend themselves in any other scenario. In real life, there are many more likely self defense scenarios than at a gun range. Sandra tries to appeal to Mr. Kyle's expertise by describing him as the "deadliest military sniper in U.S. history" then turns around and negates her argument saying "neither Kyle nor anyone else at the shooting facility could prevent one armed psychopath from committing mayhem. If one of the deadliest military veterans in U.S. history couldn't protect himself against gun violence, at a facility where everyone is armed, what are the chances that the common man can defend himself or herself against these armed lunatics?"
Mr. Kyle couldn't defend himself because he was attacked while being in a defenseless position. Clearly, Mr. Kyle didn't use his sniper training and experience at the gun range that fateful day because he did not view his attacker as an enemy combatant. Sandra correctly acknowledges that Mr. Kyle nor anyone else could have likely defend themselves in a sudden ambush attack at a gun range then states her premise that "this case exemplifies the ridiculous self-defense argument". She picked one of the most likely defenseless scenarios then boldly claimed this scenario **exemplifies** that an individual can't protect them self in any other scenario. The gun range defenseless scenario did not exemplify a reason to choose being defenseless in other clearly more defensible scenarios like self/family protection against home intruders.
No sign or sighting of Obama or Biden or any administration representative at Chris Kyle's funeral. Chris Kyle made four tours of Iraq as America's top sniper.
Yet Obama was a no show
Iraq War veteran Eddie Ray Routh, 25, has been charged in the Feb. 2 killings of Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield
Eddie Routh had recently been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder - yet had been released from the Dallas Veterans Affairs hospital against his family's wishes just two days before the shootings.
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Think Eddie Ray Routh, Steven Brooks, Christopher Jordan Dorner, Jimmy Lee Dykes, Seung-Hui Cho, Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Adam Lanza, Monserrate Shirley, Mark Leonard, Bob Leonard, One Goh. All were KNOWN mentally ill.
John Kennedy as part of his New Frontier program established the Community Mental-Health Centers to replace state mental-health hospitals. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 (CMHA). It led to considerable deinstitutionalization.
Over the years Social Security disability Medicare and Medicare have subsumed the funding of these facilities at about $140 billion per year.
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Yet Our mental illness health care delivery and reporting system is broken. HIPAA-1996, Privacy Rules, passed under Clinton, must be modified to allow sharing appropriate information with immediate family and law enforcement databases.
After freedom of speech, the right to self defense is the next greatest of all. The two [freedom of speech and self-defense] go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other.
CarmineD
The tragic gun murder of Chris Kyle spurred Ron Paul to tweet "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword."
Another entertaining rightwing idiot steps in it big time.
Well Said Carmine!
Self-defense goes way beyond someone breaking into your house. Killings by friends and intimates is very common, especially in places like Nevada.
That being said the FBI reports roughly 200 cases of justifiable homicide per year. I believe there is something in the neighborhood of 400,000 gun crimes per year. Self-defense sounds good in theory but it's very difficult to pull off, whether it be on a gun range, someone breaking into your home or defending yourself against a violent husband.
The broad social meaning i.e. constitutional right to self-defense resides in an armed citizenry's proficient tactical ability to utilize weaponry in a cohesive manner which assures self-preservation of its individuals through the application of greater lethal force than that potential delivered by enemies, enemies which are not limited to potential armed civilian criminal threats but those also posed by armed law enforcement and/or military forces.
Emma Hernandez and daughter Margie Carranza along with David Perdue have become recent defenseless victims of malicious armed attacks by law enforcement agencies -- armed enforcement agencies operating under the cloak of authorized force for the perceived purposes of protecting citizens continue to demonstrate the FACT that their unbridled lawlessness is a proven public safety hazard -- disarm law enforcement?
Hence, the truthful "meaning" i.e. the "real worth" of civil/personal self-defense i.e. armed public safety resides with the ability or lack there of an armed citizenry, more specifically, its individuals to employ viable "self-defense" armed tactics upon all armed hazardous threats not excluding those which have "mistakenly" been commissioned in securing public safety.
"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." -- John Locke, "A Treatise Concerning Civil Government"
"Those that make peaceful resolution impossible make violent resolution inevitable." -- JFK
Law enforcement unbridled lawlessness begets civilian lawlessness as a means of "self-defense".
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last Throes: The tragic gun murder of Chris Kyle spurred Ron Paul to tweet "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword."
Another entertaining rightwing idiot steps in it big time
Ron Paul is an idiot, and I agree with you on that.
But what happened to the government being represented at Kyle's funeral?
A Chris Kyle billboard in Texas
https://images.nonexiste.net/popular/201...
I don't understand why anyone would take a person with PTSD to a gun range without realizing the danger of initiating a flash back response. It was a really stupid thing to do.
Carmine.......
Nobody is taking away our freedom of speech and
self-defence.
You republicans fool nobody.
But we are going to have a new ban on assault
rifles and mega-clips.
NOBODY NEEDS AN ASSAULT RIFLE FOR SELF DEFENCE
or any other reason.
We the majority will keep voting out no common
sense republicans until the end of time.
And PRESIDENT OBAMA said it best, today.
We need a vote on it.
I carry a weapon just for self defense, period. It doesn't stop at your home it's everywhere in this sick world.
Everybody needs a friend who does self-defence, today. Revolution of a monogamist.
fedup2here,
"I carry a weapon just for self defense, period. It doesn't stop at your home it's everywhere in this sick world."
Oh great! And how do we know your mental stability is such to make a correct determination of a threat? Did you have a comprehensive mental evaluation before you were given the right to carry?
Anyone in public must assume that anyone carrying could be a criminal, a mentally disturbed individual, or anyone else. So, behave accordingly, or stay at home if you don't want to get caught in the crossfire.