Guns and gals

StrategyPage has a long essay on women in combat, with an emphasis on discussing Israel's experience.

summary: They do well if they don't need muscles.

One of my Israeli friends relates hiding in a foxhole with a rifle waiting for the Arabs to invade their village in one of the many wars there. You don't always have a choice.

But combat training is different: You learn combat skills to do things automatically.

Which is why the gun loving guys in the US don't realize that just having a gun doesn't work: You have to practice all the time so you don't freeze in times of stress. Similar to docs practicing CPR so you know what to do without trying to remember what to do next.

the problem, of course, is that you need an aggressive mindset, so are more likely to shoot an innocent intruder. But without the training you are more likely to have the bad guy grab your gun and shoot you.

when we were in Africa, and under threat, only two people at our hospital knew how to shoot: Old Sister Ambuya, who used a shotgun at her farm during WWI to keep out thieves, and my mom, who had brothers and joined the rifle club at her high school.

Nevertheless, if someone came to the door and broke in, we didn't have the rifles right there to grab and shoot.

In another African country, we had a man outside our home with a shotgun to protect us. One night he was absent since his wife was dying, and sure enough the dog woke me that someone was outside. I went to the window with the dog and said loudly: Get ready, dog and you get one while I shoot the other... no, I didn't have a gun, but heck, they didn't know this... and so the thieves broke into the house next door instead and stole his stereo and TV. Since they cut the phone lines, I couldn't call to wake him up, so he slept through the whole thing.

In contrast, my husband had his gun in the bedside table, and another in his glove compartment, because he was a doctor and often had drugs in the home for making house calls.

myself? I had a waiver when in the NatGuard not to carry a weapon.

although my mother was comfortable with guns, my father was not: his own father was a policeman, and never allowed guns in their homes, for fear the kids would accidentally shoot themselves with his gun.

As for gun control: seems to me the problem is that the gun laws are not being enforced. The recent mentally ill people behind recent shootings should never have been given access to guns, or if they had them, there should have been a way to confiscate the weapons.

and of course then there is the problem to try to get angry, mentally ill people hospitalized against their will at the request of their families. PJMedia article about the problem of mental health "experts" and I have had this experience with trying to hospitalize mentally ill (i.e. paranoid and/or hallucinating) patients.