Despite “expert” security the hotels in Mumbai were an easy target for terrorists. Why is this so, when hotels have increasingly come under attack, particularly in Asia? The experts seem to be throwing their hands up.
P.R.S. Oberoi, the chairman of the Oberoi Group, said at a news conference over the weekend that he had directed his company’s hotels to step up security after the Islamabad bombing. The Oberoi banned anyone from parking in front of its hotel here for fear that a car bomb could destroy the glass wall at the front of the lobby, a risk at many hotels.
But those protections did not deter the attackers, who entered the Oberoi on foot.
Mr. Oberoi questioned whether any hotel could defend against such an assault.
Well, certainly not the Oberoi. Their “security” officers are unarmed! Now how does Mr. Oberoi expect his staff to protect his customers if they aren’t even armed? By the time the government could respond, the situation was already completely out of hand. All they could do is clean up the mess and count bodies.
There really is a simple solution: trust ordinary people. Fortunately, here in the U.S., most states do. The principle is enshrined in the Second Amendment and lived out by those of us who choose to carry arms (and further choose to live in states that allow concealed carry). A disarmed populace is nothing but a nation of victims. Would the attacks have been thwarted if there had been armed security officers and citizens? Not necessarily, of course, but it could have made a significant difference. An armed civilian may not survive such an attack, but it’s certain at this point that a couple hundred unarmed victims did not.
The officer was about to clean his gun after giving his daughter a safety lesson! Apparently he skipped class when they covered the first rule of gun safety: treat every gun as if it loaded (until you personally verify that it is not). Good grief! Now the gun grabbers are going to yammer away again about how unsafe guns are.
After four days it appears the carnage is finally over, with a couple hundred killed and many more wounded in terrorist attacks on ten different sites in Mumbai. How is this kind of attack possible? If you’ve been following the news for the last few years, you already know that India has the second largest Muslim population in the world and is also the location of a very large percentage of Islamist terror attacks. What you may not know is that India is also an almost entirely disarmed society. Their citizens and foreign travelers are completely at the mercy of fanatics like those who perpetrated this atrocity.
The patronizing tone of Europeans toward Americans for our stance on gun ownership shines through in a recent BBC article. Many here in the U.S. consider gun ownership not only as a fundamental right but a serious responsibility. Not so in Europe.
Top Gun [a shooting range and gun store in Houston] is the kind of business that simply could not exist in Europe – the staff wear holstered handguns both in the shop and on the shooting range. …
No area of American daily life makes this country feel more foreign to Europeans
I always find it amusing when foreigners appear shocked that the employees of a gun store would be carrying guns. Heck, in Arizona more than 1% of adults have concealed carry permits and open carry is legal and not terribly uncommon, so chances are very good that there are handguns being carried in every store (or other public venue) you visit. You often simply don’t know it because it’s not a problem because law abiding citizens don’t misuse guns.
England really should take notice. According to The Times Online, gun crimes have almost doubled since England banned handgun ownership. And the Dutch Ministry of Justice (Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialized Countries, 2001) notes that
Many of the countries with the strictest gun control have the highest rates of violent crime.
Australia and England, which have virtually banned gun ownership, have the highest rates of
robbery, sexual assault, and assault with force of the top 17 industrialized countries.
The author does get one thing right. There are a lot of us who consider restrictive gun regulation as a first step in eroding our rights as Americans. I’ll take the American view of gun ownership any day.
Seattle’s mayor wants to ban guns from all city property.
“Our parks, our community centers and our public events are safer without guns,” Nickels said at a June news conference when he announced his executive order for the ban.
The problem is, that’s simply not true. Banning guns from city property won’t keep criminals from carrying. Witness the effectiveness of the gun ban at the Southcenter mall last weekend. Fortunately for Seattle residents, Washington has a state preemption law under which all authority for regulating gun ownership and possession resides in the state. So in addition to being irrational, the mayor’s order is itself illegal and unenforceable.
Your safety is your responsibility. An estranged husband barged into a small New Jersey church and killed his wife, injuring a couple other people in the process.
[…] active restraining orders had been issued in California and New Jersey against him after domestic violence complaints by his wife, who had moved recently to New Jersey.
Those orders obviously protected her, eh? If you need a restraining order, you need a plan for your own personal defense. The courts won’t protect you. The police won’t protect you. The responsibility really is yours.
[Note: the biggest mistake this woman made, sadly, was that she moved from one gun grabbing state to another. Both CA and NJ make it very difficult for people to legally provide for their own defense in public. She was obviously in danger and should have moved to a gun-friendly state where she could protect herself.]
Once more demonstrating that gun free zones aren’t we have a fatal shooting in a mall in Tukwila, WA. The Southcenter mall is owned by the Westfield Group, an international real estate giant whose shopping centers all have an official “no guns” policy. That worked really well today, now, didn’t it?
“Clearly, such a senseless act in our community heightens everyone’s state of awareness and concern. Our security precautions reflect that heightened state,” mall management said in an unsigned statement Sunday.
And those “security precautions” won’t do a single thing to make the mall safer. Thugs who have ignored the posted signs and mall cops to this point aren’t going to be swayed by more rules, more signs, or more flashlight-toting insecurity officers.
For those who think the police are the answer:
SWAT teams from all over Puget Sound converged on the mall, which was locked down for six hours. Store employees and customers were allowed to exit in groups and Murphy said the shooter “must have got out with the crowd.”
Yep. Loads of officers showed up but the perp got away. The police can’t be everywhere, folks, and by the time they do arrive, the damage has already been done. When the shooting starts, if you’re relying on the police for protection you’re already a victim. Safety, both public and private, begins with personal responsibility.