St. Louis alderman's idea to fight crime: guns for all

A North St. Louis alderman's solution to rising urban crime and gun deaths is to arm everybody.

Charles Quincy Troupe, a frequent critic of his city's police force, says more "Show Me State" residents should buy guns and get training, and that if criminals knew they're more likely to meet resistance, they might think twice about their illegal activities.

Troupe says everybody packing heat isn't the only answer to rising crime. He wants more city spending on job training and youth activities too. (See video below.)

But a police association spokesman expresses skepticism about the alderman and his idea and what officers might confront on patrol. And Mayor Francis Slay suggests Troupe could do more by urging constituents to cooperate with police.

Here's a thought:

Maybe we should also apply this idea to commercial airliners. Instead of those ridiculously slow lines at airport security checkpoints prohibiting passengers from carrying too much toothpaste and firearms onto the planes, hand everyone a piece as they board. And a sack of ammo.

Or BYOG. Smith & Wesson has a special holiday handgun sale on right now.

Anyone hangs around the cockpit door too long, the first eight rows could open up. Same for rows 18-24 keeping an eye on the rear galley.

Guns for every passenger could also shorten the wait for toilets.

Oh, sure, there might be some violent disagreements between even- and odd-numbered rows if, say, someone put their seatback down too far too quickly.

But that's a relatively small price to pay to help spread Alderman Troupe's idea of urban safety into the nation's skies.

And if everyone knew that everyone had a loaded pistol handy, maybe it wouldn't take quite so long to get those bags out of the overhead bins and hustle off the plane. No one hustles right now.

--Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credits: Smith & Wesson

Comments

[Anthony Cosenza II]

Allow me to say that the scathing wit of the author of this article makes him look like a moron. Statistics are on the alderman's side with this one, as areas with higher numbers of legal law abiding residents owning guns have much lower crime than areas that do not allow citizens to be armed.

You poke fun at mass groups of people being armed, however it is interesting to note that shooting ranges and gun clubs are rarely robbed, or attacked by madmen shooting up the place.

[Pat Rodriguez]

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine written by Dr. Garen J. Wintemute states the following:

"Such policies are founded on myths. One is that increasing gun ownership decreases crime rates — a position that has been discredited. Gun ownership and gun violence rise and fall together. Another myth is that defensive gun use is very common. The most widely quoted estimate, 2.5 million occurrences a year, is too high by a factor of 10."

Recently a study of ATF data that was previously withheld thanks to NRA lobbyists also shows that more guns leads to more firearms injuries and deaths.

You can read the NEJM article here:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp0800859

[birgit]

120,000 people a year die from prescription meds reactions (taken as prescribed) and doctor errors...hmmmmmmmm..where is your war on that?

Read a book called 'call 911 and die'
Shows you stats the anti gun nuts do not want you to see.
And the case law for all 50 states.
Self defense is just that

When seconds count,a ten minute response time is a lifetime.

[Victor]

Citizen have the right to self defense and to own and use arms. The author of this article is obviously biased and its pretty laughable. As with any any function of government in the USA, they must balance safety of the population with the rights of the population under the Constitution.

[Chris]

The fact is that the FBI has already done a study and shown that people that fight back when confronted by an attacker are more likely to survive than people who submit. It also showed that people that fight back with a firearm are even more likely to survive.

Police also have little to fear from honest armed civilians. The only people that need to be afraid are the criminals and that is the way it should be. I'm going to bet the liberal media doesn't have the guts to print this.

[Cassie]

Letting all the people have guns doesn't really make sense to me. I know they can be used as self defense, but that's just about their only useful feature. Other than that, these guns would probably cause a whole new lap of trouble. Also, mistakes happen. What if a person thought something was about to take a strike on them? All they do is shoot? That could be a waste of life. I say we stick to no guns. That's why we have arms.