Good guys with guns

As it is universally acknowledged that the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, it must be the case that the dudes who laid out the bgwag in Arras were armed (as Real Americans should always be).  If they had not been packing heat, a terrible massacre would have unfolded.

But press coverage of the event has completely omitted the important details: what kind of pieces did they have, how many extra magazines, holstered how?  This is the kind of coverup we can expect from liberal media, but you can see how big the real conspiracy is: even Fox News is hiding the facts here!

Author: Michael O'Hare

Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, Michael O'Hare was raised in New York City and trained at Harvard as an architect and structural engineer. Diverted from an honest career designing buildings by the offer of a job in which he could think about anything he wanted to and spend his time with very smart and curious young people, he fell among economists and such like, and continues to benefit from their generosity with on-the-job social science training. He has followed the process and principles of design into "nonphysical environments" such as production processes in organizations, regulation, and information management and published a variety of research in environmental policy, government policy towards the arts, and management, with special interests in energy, facility siting, information and perceptions in public choice and work environments, and policy design. His current research is focused on transportation biofuels and their effects on global land use, food security, and international trade; regulatory policy in the face of scientific uncertainty; and, after a three-decade hiatus, on NIMBY conflicts afflicting high speed rail right-of-way and nuclear waste disposal sites. He is also a regular writer on pedagogy, especially teaching in professional education, and co-edited the "Curriculum and Case Notes" section of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Between faculty appointments at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, he was director of policy analysis at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. He has had visiting appointments at Università Bocconi in Milan and the National University of Singapore and teaches regularly in the Goldman School's executive (mid-career) programs. At GSPP, O'Hare has taught a studio course in Program and Policy Design, Arts and Cultural Policy, Public Management, the pedagogy course for graduate student instructors, Quantitative Methods, Environmental Policy, and the introduction to public policy for its undergraduate minor, which he supervises. Generally, he considers himself the school's resident expert in any subject in which there is no such thing as real expertise (a recent project concerned the governance and design of California county fairs), but is secure in the distinction of being the only faculty member with a metal lathe in his basement and a 4×5 Ebony view camera. At the moment, he would rather be making something with his hands than writing this blurb.

5 thoughts on “Good guys with guns”

  1. After subduing the gunman, Spencer Stone, with his thumb nearly cut off, saved the life of the first man who had responded, reportedly a French-American banker who has asked for anonymity. This man had a bullet wound in his throat which Stone blocked with his fingers until paramedics arrived.

    Stone, Sadler, Skarlatos, and the 62-year old Brit Chris Norman who joined them have already been awarded the Légion d'Honneur by François Hollande. The recriminations over the security lapses will take a bit longer.

    The three young Americans were apparently heading to Paris as tourists to have a good time. I trust they are now having a very good time.

  2. It seems silly to conclude from the fact that you can put a fire out with a bucket brigade, that you've proven a pump truck wouldn't be better at the job. Nobody says the only way to stop an armed man is another armed man. Just piling on works, too. It can be hard on the people in the pile, though. But it's better than sheltering in place.

    Strawmen and ancedotes. This isn't what I call reasoning.

      1. I'll grant you that's hyperbole, but here it is in context, which is more than NPR would give you: http://home.nra.org/pdf/Transcript_PDF.pdf

        Clearly, you can stop an armed man in many ways, but which is most effective?

        Michael, we've had a couple decades of concealed carry reform in the US, there's a pretty substantial track record. Isn't it time for the reality based community to abandon it's hostility to firearms ownership? It's killing you, but not literally, politically.

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