Letters to the Editor

Letters for April, 2000

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Handguns and Consumer Product Safety

Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2000 01:03:13 EDT
Subject: Firearms & Consumer Product Safety - NO ONE IS IN CHARGE...

To: editor@jacksonprogressive.com

Firearms & Consumer Product Safety - NO ONE IS IN CHARGE..

Guess what???

I sent a note to the ATF about handguns and consumer product safety and was told that they were not involved in that. I checked with the Federal Trade Commission and was told the same. I checked with the Consumer Products Safety Commission and got the same answer.

No one is in charge of Firearms and Consumer Product Safety!!!

Here is what I have been told by another party:

"It's a little bit more complicated than it should be, but here is the story. The CPSC -- according to its charter -- is specifically exempted from regulating firearms.

The ATF deals with firearms as regards commerce (they give out licenses to sell guns, regualte the sales of guns, the import and export, etc.). They are a branch of the Department of Treasury. They do not have a mandate to control or advise on the design of guns.

Any consumer product regulation has to come from the Congress, or the States. Some states have created such regulations, including Massachusetts, Illinois and California. Maryland is working on one now. Local jurisdictions have made such laws, too (Chicago, New York)."

So who cares anyway, right?

Well, the current shooting methods for applying deadly force in close quarters situations that are beind taught are: Sight Shooting (using one or both sights to shoot with), and Point Shooting (pointing the gun at the target without the use of the sights and shooting).

So what???

Well, a review of hundreds of videos of shootouts, shows that those shooting methods ARE NOT used in real close quarters (CQ) shootouts. Sight Shooting just does not occur and Point Shooting defaults to Point and Blast.

Futher, police shootout accuracy is very bad. Four out of every five bullets shot by police in CQ armed encounters, miss and may injure or kill others.

As such, it is no wonder that the police accuracy rate is terrible, that police casualty rates are atrocious, and that tragic accidental shootings occur all to frequently.

Over the last ten years, per FBI data, police were shot and killed at the rate of 1 every 7 days, and thousands and thousands were wounded. You can plan for more of the same for the next ten years.

In addition to the high human costs of those tragedies, millions and millions of our tax dollars have been lost to them, and millions and millions more will be lost to them and the legal actions that flow from them in the next ten years.

And what is true for the police, is even more true for the anxious home defender who may have a gun for home defense, and who bought it with the thought in mind that if their life was ever in danger, they would be able to use it in their self defense. The phrase that comes to mind when thinking about that and the average consumer is "when pigs fly."

So what does it mean???

Current training does not teach shooting methods that occur in real CQ armed encounters, and current guns do not have a practical means for aiming them in those encounters.

If there is validity to the video records that show that current training methods are not used in close quarters gunfight, then to continue training in them, and testing on them, and then allowing trainess to put themselves in situations where they may be shot and killed, is akin to negligence or worse. It is bogus.

Is there a solution???

Yes and no, depending on who you talk to. I have been sending e-mails to police agencies and cities with one proposed solution. If you would like a copy of it, let me know.

I am not in charge of solutions.

If I told you that your airplane would stall and crash if you flew it in such and such a way, would you fly it like that anyway???

John Veit

PS Where does Gore and Bush stand on the issue of establishing a gov arm to protect consumers (families and children), in this area. Why not ask them???