It was Demolition Weekend here in El Paso. First up early Saturday morning were those two iconic El Paso landmarks — The ASARCO Smokestacks. Demolition was set for 6:45 A.M., but road closures near the demolition site meant that Ursula and I would have to be up, dressed, and in position well before 6:00 to get a viewing.
Six Days Before the Fall
The smaller of the two chimneys was built in 1950 and stood 612 feet (186 meters) above the ground. It was the first to go, but not by much. The 828-foot (252-meter) chimney built in 1966 began its long fall before the 1950 stack finished toppling to the ground. It was a spectacular sight indeed, but one with held for many a sense of regret.
Two Old West Icons Together
Mining, smelting, and refining dragged small, ragged El Paso out of the Old West of the late 1800s and transformed it in just a couple of decades into a modern city known for being the most progressive in the Southwest. If not for that ASARCO smelter El Paso would have remained a mere stop on the Southern Pacific Railroad rather than a major switching point for multiple routes. It’s a true tragedy that the taller structure could not be preserved for its historic value. Alas, political correctness and the unfortunate propensity for today’s historically intolerant and illiterate to judge past events by today’s standards rather than keeping them in the context of the age in which they dwelled sealed that chimney’s fate. Rather than seeing that stack as a symbol of what mining did for El Paso and the American Southwest, it was deemed an embarrassing relic of a polluting past unworthy of preservation.
Just Before Sunup on Execution Day
Indeed, mining and smelting led directly to the founding of the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad, which connected El Paso to another major smelting operation in Douglas, Arizona, and the vast and lucrative copper mines of Bisbee, Arizona. If you drive Arizona State Route 80 and New Mexico State Road 9 (as Ursula and I did just a few weeks ago) you’ll still find running alongside this route the abandoned rail bed, numerous trestle remains, and even what appear to be old telegraph poles long fallen into disuse.
The Small Stack Begins Its Fall
The whole drive made me think of those television classics The High Chaparral (set in the 1870s southeastern Arizona Territory) and The Rifleman (tales from the 1880s in the south-central New Mexico Territory). Look for photos of this particular driving adventure in an upcoming blog.
Charges Erupt on the Big Stack
Stack One Snaps in Two
Stack Two Begins to Drop
Heading Towards History
No Going Back Now
Decades of Accumulated Soot Erupt from the Top
The Last Time You’ll See “ASARCO” on Stack Two
A Cloud of Debris
Cuidad Juarez in the Background
Spectators Watch
The End of an Era Marked by Dust
The Birthday Girl Enjoying Her Day
I did say it was Demolition Weekend. Saturday’s destruction of the ASARCO stacks was followed Sunday morning by the implosion of the El Paso City Hall (built in 1979) to make way for a AAA baseball stadium.
Yep, it’s happened again. On December 1, 2012, a car plowed into the rear of an SUV holding students from the Shenendehowa High School. The SUV flipped and rolled, crossing over three traffic lanes and ending up on a median. Two students were killed. Two more were seriously injured. It is way past time to do something about this carnage:
August 29th, 2012 — A centenarian backed his Cadillac onto a sidewalk across from the Main Street Elementary School near Los Angeles. Fourteen people, nine of them children, were mowed down.
July 29th, 2012 — A driver rammed his car through a barricade and into a helpless crowd of people attending a street festival in Cleveland. One dead, four injured.
October 20th, 2006 — An 86-year-old motorist slammed his car at high speed into the horrified assembled patrons of an open-air market in Santa Monica. Ten people killed, another 63 wounded.
And then there are the acts of terrorism:
March 3rd, 2006 — An Iranian-American citizen confessed to intentionally using his SUV to plow into a group of students at the University of North Carolina campus at Chapel Hill in an act designed to, “. . . avenge the deaths of Muslims worldwide,” and to “punish” the government of the United States. Nine people were wounded.
February 26th, 1993 — Terrorists drove into the parking garage beneath the North Tower of the World Trade Center a truck containing a fertilizer bomb. The intention was to topple the North Tower directly into the South Tower, bringing down both structures and killing tens of thousands in the heart of New York City’s Financial District. Fortunately, the amount of explosive used was insufficient. Nevertheless, there were 1,048 casualties — six of them fatalities.
April 19th, 1995 — 168 confirmed dead (including 19 children under the age of six), over 680 wounded in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The Murrah Building was but one of 324 buildings in a sixteen-block radius that were either damaged or destroyed. The implement of death — an explosive-laden Ford F700 truck rented from Ryder.
May 18th, 1927 — The worst attack on a public school in the history of the United States took place in Bath Township, Michigan. Forty-four people lost their lives, all but six of them pupils at the elementary school. Another 58 people were injured. This time two bombs were used, the second of which involved yet another Ford truck converted into a shrapnel-filled death wagon.
If ever there were a time to get these implements of death off the road, now is it. Many of the vehicles causing this daily carnage (over 32,000 dead in 2011 alone; untold tens of thousands more wounded) were never meant to be in civilian hands. Take the infamous Jeep — the forerunner of many of today’s Sport Utility Vehicles — derived from the deadly Willys MB of World War II. Or the more current Hummer (the epitome of the death vehicle) which had its roots in the devastating U.S. military’s High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle. And while trucks in general (and Ford trucks in particular it would seem) may not have been designed with the military in mind, the Bath, Murrah, and World Trade Center bombings speak volumes as to the dangers of their misuse.
Willys MB “Jeep”
Modern Assault Jeep — Beauty may be skin deep, but death goes all the way to the drive shaft
We simply have no choice but to remove from civilian hands these assault vehicles, be they trucks or SUVs.
Then there’s the question of the high-capacity fuel tanks. Nobody really needs a thirty-gallon (113-liter) fuel tank. All a thirty-gallon tank does is make it easier for criminals or drunks to continue unabated their orgy of death without the need to stop and refuel their assault vehicles. If Timothy McVeigh had to refuel more often the massive Ryder Ford F700 assault truck he was using, each and every 7-11 gas stop would have increased the chances of someone’s suspicions being aroused and the tragedy averted.
The Original “Hummer”
And finally we need to seriously take a look at vehicle passenger load, as such loading is directly related to total vehicle weight (mass). More mass, after all, means more death and destruction. I don’t care how big your family is, there is simply no justification for high-passenger load assault minivans ever falling into private hands. Nobody should be allowed a vehicle that holds more than four adults.
Deadly Offspring — The modern-day civilian assault vehicle
Have a family of five?
Make two trips and reload.
Over Two Tons of Rolling Death (3 tons fully loaded) — High Capacity 20-gallon tank, Excessive THREE ROWS of SEATS!!!
Future Articles:
Banning High-Capacity Magazines — Let’s End Those Paper Cuts NOW!
Maxing Out Megapixels — a Tale of Digital Death
Limiting Limousines — Lethal Luxury in Leather
Banning the Blooming Onion — Aiming at the Assault Appetizer
No matter which side of the table you sit in a debate, I find it morally reprehensible to selectively mine data to push a specific agenda. In discourse over public policy especially, one should either present data in its unrefined (and thus unbiased) form so that an honest debate and reasoned decision may be made, or the data should not be put forth at all.
But the individual below says it so much better than I in the following presentation of unfiltered factual data from reliable, unbiased sources — unbiased, that is, before the media, politicians, or those with an agenda get to them.
I’ve touched upon this topic before in my very popular blog article: What Does Sandy Hook School Have in Common with Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, and the Century Aurora 16 Theater? In that article I stated that so-called “assault weapons” (which are not truly military assault weapons by definition, as they are not fully automatic) are used in less than 5% of violent crimes. Apparently I was way off. I apologize for that, but in my defense I didn’t want to be caught fudging the figures in my favor. The actual statistic according to the latest FBI figures is much closer to 3.5%.
Walther P99c AS
Yet this is the type of weapon on which Senator Dianne Feinstein and others are concentrating their efforts? Not really. Don’t believe that “assault weapons” are the true goal for even a second. Defining semiautomatic rifles with military-style cosmetic appearances as “assault weapons” is the opening volley in an agenda that aims to incrementally remove the right to bear arms from all law abiding citizens. This despite raw, unfiltered data that shows such firearms are very rarely used in violent crimes despite the Sandy Hook and Aurora Theater slayings.
As for the ultimate goal of disarming law abiding citizens, that agenda is being pushed despite raw, unfiltered data that consistently shows almost across the board a sizable reduction in violent crime in those states and localities which have broadened the ability of their citizens to carry concealed weapons upon their person. Remember — twenty years ago only a very few states allowed for concealed carry. Today forty-one states allow it, and many of those states have reciprocal agreements allowing their citizens to cross into other states while availing themselves of the same “privilege” of self-protection. Think for a second about that wording I just used. Scary, isn’t it, that self-protection for law abiding citizens has become a “privilege” rather than a right in some places, and in others it is prohibited altogether.
During that same twenty-year period we’ve seen national violent crime rates cut in half, and the national murder rate has dropped 54%. So, where is violent crime still a major problem? In places in which law abiding citizens do not have the right to defend themselves from society’s predators. Places such as New York City (where even a subway can be used as a weapon); Chicago (where, to paraphrase a popular song, only the unarmed die young); Boston (in which the violent crime rate routinely runs over double the national average); and Washington, D.C. (a national disgrace crime-wise). Indeed, about the only exception as far as I can tell is perennially economically depressed Detroit, which is located in a state with actually pretty lenient concealed carry laws.
Beretta 84FS “Cheetah”
As for Senator Dianne Feinstein’s home state of California? Now, there’s a national poster child for gun control. We all know the decades-long horror story that is the Greater Los Angeles Area. Let’s take a look instead at San Bernardino, as it is instructive to a citizenry that is frequently told by officials both elected and appointed that they should rely not upon themselves for protection, but rather local law enforcement.
San Bernardino recently went into bankruptcy. As a result cost cutting hit even essential services — the San Bernardino police department being among those services. Eighty officers were let go. Predictably, crime went through the roof. In one case, during an active home invasion call to 911, the residents were told there would be a three-hour response time. Three hours! Yet remember, we are told that we should entrust our lives and property protection to local law enforcement.
Indeed, things deteriorated so quickly in San Bernardino that City Attorney James Penman just last November advised the residents that they should, “. . . lock their doors and load their guns.” Of course, if you’re traveling beyond the front door of your home then you’re on your own; California is a “may issue” state in which the local police chief or sheriff can decline at whim your application for a concealed carry license . . . even if their response time in a life-threatening situation is up to three hours.
Walther PPK/S
While we’re on the topic of relying upon local law enforcement for your protection as well as the protection of your loved ones, I would like to direct your attention to two Supreme Court decisions: Castle Rock v. Gonzales and DeShaney v. Winnebago County. Without wading into the entire legal morass, the upshot is this — the Supreme Court of the United States has held on multiple occasions that there is no Constitutional requirement for local law enforcement to protect you, or even to respond in the event of imminent danger. None, which means in San Bernardino the response time is free to go from three hours to three days, weeks, or even months without any consequences to the local government whatsoever.
Some final words on Gun Free Zones. I mentioned in my article — What Does Sandy Hook Elementary School Have in Common with Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, and the Century Aurora 16 Theater? — that all the aforementioned mass slaying sites were Gun Free Zones. I also noted in that article that:
“. . . in not one of the cases cited did those responsible for those [Gun Free Zone] designations take adequate (or even any) steps to ensure that the law-abiding citizens they were disarming were protected from those who would ignore their ‘Gun-Free Zones.'”
I have since learned that Sandy Hook Elementary, Columbine High, Virginia Tech, and the Century Aurora 16 Theater have something in common with nearly every single mass shooting in which there were more than four victims. Each and every one save one occurred in what was ostensibly a “Gun Free Zone.” That exception was the tragic 2011 Tucson shooting in which nineteen people were shot, U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was severely wounded, and six people were killed.
Contrast that record for a moment with sites in which a heavily armed crazy chose as a killing ground an area not so designated. That’s kind of hard to do, as such sites appear to be routinely avoided by mass killers for obvious reason. But we do have a few cases to compare. Just three days before the horrendous Sandy Hook shootings Jacob Tyler Roberts entered the Clackamas Town Centermall near Happy Valley, Oregon. Mr. Roberts had with him a stolen AR-15 Bushmaster rifle, the same make and model used by Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza. From that weapon Mr. Roberts fired sixty rounds, killing two and wounding one other. And then he stopped his shooting and suddenly committed suicide well before local law enforcement could intervene.
Why? Because of a man named Nick Meli, a civilian licensed to conceal carry and who, fortunately, had with him that day a .40 S&W Glock 22. Mr. Meli pulled his weapon and took aim at Mr. Roberts, but decided not to take the shot for fear of hitting a person whom he saw standing behind the killer. Instead, Mr. Meli ducked into a nearby store to await a better opportunity to stop the slayings without endangering someone himself (a wise course of action those of us who have taken concealed carry courses are admonished to follow). The one thing Mr. Meli knew with any certainty at that point was that the killer saw him with his Glock 22 before he made his tactical retreat.
What happened next is instructive. With no police in sight and no one else to stop him, that confrontation with an armed civilian was apparently enough for Mr. Roberts. Mr. Roberts turned and fled, running down a stairwell and out onto a lower floor. The next shot fired by Mr. Roberts was the one used by him to take his own life.
P99c AS, 84FS, and PPK/S Comparison
So, I’m going to say this once again: Those who insist upon creating feel-good, do-nothing “Gun Free Zones” have a moral obligation to insure that the law abiding citizens they intentionally disarmed with that designation are protected from those who prey upon areas so designated.
It is way beyond time for those who insist upon implementing “Gun Free Zones” to take responsibility for their actions rather than allowing them to pass to an inanimate object the blame for what they themselves have wrought. If lawmakers and other government officials insist upon repeating a demonstrably failed experiment with tragically repetitive and predictable results, they should at the very least be held civilly libel and perhaps even criminally negligent for the resulting loss in lives if they do nothing to protect those they have placed inside what amounts to a “Free Fire Zone” for those with deranged minds or criminal intent. For private business owners such as those who designated the Century Aurora 16 Theater a “Gun Free Zone,” there should be absolutely no question as to holding them legally responsible for the outcome of their poor decisions.
Clackamas Town Center is, by the way, not the lone example of an armed civilian or off-duty officer intervening to possibly prevent a much larger tragedy. For additional cites, take a look at the following (and note while you do that some were stopped because an armed citizen or off-duty officer fortunately disregarded that “Gun Free” designation, such as assistant principal Joel Myrick who had a .45 in his truck parked on school grounds in apparent violation of the 1990 Federal Gun Free School Zones Act; I say ‘apparent’ because there are exceptions to that law and I’ve been unable to determine if Mr. Myrick’s possession on school property was under one of those exceptions):
Decisions — Murder in Paradise
The Globe — Murder in Luxury
R. Doug Wicker — Author 