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hschulein

(1,168 posts)
Mon Jun 27, 2016, 06:49 AM Jun 2016

Mike Malloy - Armed Good Guys? The Reality Of A Firefight Is A Form Of Madness



Mike reads a powerful letter to the editor in the NYT.

I was seriously wounded in combat as a replacement in the armored infantry in the liberation of France from the Nazis in 1944. I know what it is to be the stranger in a firefight.

Both Donald Trump’s claim that an armed bystander could have stopped the rampage in Orlando and the N.R.A. official Wayne LaPierre’s notion that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun are ridiculous. Combat — real combat — bears no resemblance to their Hollywood image of war.

The reality of a firefight is a form of madness: shifting silhouettes, dimly perceived, pop of weapons, freezing fear, trembling hands, most of all the stink: sick, sweet odor of blood mixed with the odor of feces and urine, stale sweat, cordite. Who and where is my enemy?

Full letter: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/opinion/armed-good-guys-the-reality-of-a-firefight-is-a-form-of-madness.html

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Mike Malloy - Armed Good Guys? The Reality Of A Firefight Is A Form Of Madness (Original Post) hschulein Jun 2016 OP
We're still using the terms "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys" Night Watchman Jun 2016 #1
We don't have that good of manners libodem Jun 2016 #2
 

Night Watchman

(743 posts)
1. We're still using the terms "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys"
Mon Jun 27, 2016, 07:23 AM
Jun 2016

What are we, a country of 10-year-old boys at a Saturday Matinee in the 1950s???

libodem

(19,288 posts)
2. We don't have that good of manners
Mon Jun 27, 2016, 11:49 AM
Jun 2016

I'm 60 so we watched westerns at home on tv and sometimes the movies. I remember phrases such as, "hands up or I'll shoot." "Drop your weapon, or I'll shoot."

And hands up, meant hands up. It meant you were not a threat, the equivalent of a white flag. It meant surrender.

Shooting somebody in the back or running away, was cowardly.

And, I really am no expert, but rules are rules. Or were.

And good luck with the good guy theme, of trying to draw on a bad guy, already holding and firing a weapon.

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