After an incident a few years ago, I stay out of most discussions on our local pages, preferring to observe and take in what people say. You may or may not be amazed at what people will confess to on the internet. It seems to be mostly men who are so insecure that they feel the need to put the worst of themselves out there. One former friend’s new boyfriend posted publicly about wanting to rape a 13-year-old girl to “teach her a lesson.” I just shook my head at the idiocy.

A couple of days ago, our local agricultural fair announced that there will now be metal detectors to get into the fair, and guns and knives (other than pocket knives) will not be allowed. This stems from two incidents. Last year at the fair one carny stabbed another he was fighting with and killed him. The other incident is the shooting in Lewiston Maine last year that killed 18 people and wounded 13 more. I suspect that whoever insures the fairgrounds mandated that something be done to continue to insure them as well.

I expected a lot of whining and crying and I was not disappointed. The number of people who are so terrified of going to a fair that they feel the need to carry a weapon is astounding. I lived in New York City for 39 years, supposedly one of the “crime capitals” of the country, and I never felt so unsafe there that I felt the need to carry a gun. After reading four posts with a mixture of people who understood and were thankful for the new policy, and those whining that they wouldn’t go to the fair because they couldn’t concealed carry to keep their family “safe”, I posted a comment to the fair’s post telling them that some of us do appreciate what they are doing. I didn’t post it in response to anyone else. But, of course, a number of people felt the need to respond.

As you can see, the first guy thinks there are many people saved every year by a “good guy with a gun.” That’s a fantasy. The Center for Policing Equity dispels the myth:

Three hundred and seventy-six heavily armed officers stood by as 19 fourth-graders were slaughtered in Uvalde, TX in May, even as two teachers died trying to save them. Law enforcement was present all along the Fourth of July parade route in Highland Park, IL when seven people were gunned down. Officers arrived within four minutes of a gunman opening fire at a Virginia Walmart on the day before Thanksgiving 2022, but by then, he’d already killed six victims and himself. And who stopped the Club Q shooter? An unarmed army veteran, with an assist from a trans woman who stomped on the gunman’s head with her high heels.

In fact, recently gathered data show that fewer than one-third of all active shooters are actually stopped by law enforcement. Moreover, “good guys” with both guns and badges have been responsible for dozens of friendly-fire deaths of their fellow officers, and the other “good guys with guns”—security guards or bystanders—are frequently killed by police arriving on the scene. In fact, in the last seven years alone, police officers have shot and killed more than 8,000 people in this country.

What they detail here is my exact fear in an active shooter situation. Let’s say I was at the Fair before they started using metal detectors. Two guys start fighting and one whips out a gun and shoots the other guy. A bystander who’s carrying concealed sees the guy with a gun in his hand and whips out his own weapon and shoots him. A different bystander sees the first one shoot the first shooter but doesn’t know that so he shoots the person he sees with a gun. Another “wannabe hero” sees him, and shoots him. And it just keeps going until the bullets are flying and more people are killed by men with wannabe-hero complexes.

But there are so many people out there with this fantasy, mostly men, that it’s frightening.

So here’s the second guy who responds. Again, my post was to the Fair. I wasn’t replying to anyone who said they weren’t coming or anything else. It was a comment I made to support those who had to make this decision. But he feels the need to engage me. Why? Why is it so important for these men to try to make everyone see them as “the good guys”? That’s the image they have of themselves, but it’s not the image a good chunk of society has of them. Once I let the misogynist who thought he had a right to tell me I was getting “emotional” and I didn’t ask him to engage me, he was at least respectful enough to depart from the conversation.

The next guy, though… Well, he’s the reason red flag laws were written.

I checked this guy’s page and it’s all about law enforcement worship. At first, that didn’t surprise me. However, when he descends into the libertarian madness I was a bit surprised. He seems to be working both sides of the equation. On one hand, he worships law enforcement. On the other, he has great disdain for them and believes he alone can protect society.

I see quite a bit of hubris in this taking on the responsibility of the safety of people who have not asked him to do it. That’s the kind of thing that they look for during the psychological exams before hiring. He sees himself as the hero in a situation, and then he admits to it and doesn’t see anything wrong with it! He is the self-appointed protector of the masses, kind of like Kyle Rittenhouse. He’s okay with being judge, jury, and executioner out there. He sees that as his role in society.

When I point out that it’s kind of sad that the only thing that defines his life is carrying a gun, he continues that this is how he sees himself in the world. He says he worked for the sheriff’s office and they won’t protect you – only he can do that. His psychological makeup is quite frightening, really, and I’m glad he won’t be going to the Fair with a gun.

The fact that Kyle Rittenhouse went to a situation where he did not belong and took it upon himself to shoot people, then was acquitted has empowered people like this. That frightens me even more. They see themselves as the heroes and everyone else as the enemy.

For anyone who doesn’t know, my husband and I were in Las Vegas in 2017 when the mass shooting incident happened there. I had been at Mandalay Bay earlier that day. We weren’t at the concert where it happened but had gone to the MGM Grand to see the show Ka. When the show was over, they wouldn’t let us out of the theater at first, keeping us on lockdown because there was an active shooter on The Strip. After about an hour, they let us out into the Casino itself, but we couldn’t leave the MGM Grand. We were kept there until about 3 in the morning before we could go back to our condo.

So I’ve been in a mass shooting incident. No “good guy with a gun” could have stopped this person once he decided what he was going to do. To this day, no one really knows why he did what he did. But he managed to acquire the weapons that would allow him to kill 60 people and wound 413 (and more than twice that in the ensuing panic). I talked to people who were there and fled the scene in a panic that night. One was standing, watching the show when the person next to him had their head blown off. If there had been people carrying concealed at that music festival, they would never have been able to stop the gunman, but there could have been many more people killed.

Elsewhere someone cited “FBI statistics”. Well, FBI statistics state that “only 4.4 percent of active shooters are stopped by a “good guy” with a gun, yet we’ve let the idea that ‘more guns mean less crime’ take hold of our country.” You can see their statistics here: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-incidents-20-year-review-2000-2019-060121.pdf/view

When I was in London two weeks ago, I had an honest conversation with a cab driver at one point. The rest of the world doesn’t understand what’s wrong with us over here when it comes to gun violence. When I read comments like these, I completely understand where they are coming from.