[Nfbf-l] Guide dogs and guns: America's blind gunmen

[Jim Ellsworth]

Dear Alan,

That was really a great story.  I loved it and forwarded it to my daughters
and their husbands.

Thank you so much,
Jim Ellsworth

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From: Nfbf-l [mailto:nfbf-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Alan Dicey via
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Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 9:55 PM
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Subject: [Nfbf-l] Guide dogs and guns: America's blind gunmen

Guide dogs and guns: America's blind gunmen
By William Kremer,  BBC World Service
(Photo) Carey McWilliams
In the US, being blind is no bar to owning and carrying firearms. The blind 
people who do it say they are simply exercising their constitutional right, 
and present no danger to the public.

When Carey McWilliams went to the sheriff's office in Fargo, North Dakota, 
to fill out the paperwork for a permit to carry a concealed weapon, the 
staff immediately noticed he was holding the harness to a guide dog.

The woman behind the desk pointed out that he would have to pass a shooting 
test before being granted the licence, but McWilliams said he knew that. He 
told her not to worry.
"So then she took a picture of me, and my application then went up through 
the ranks - it got the signature of the chief of police of Fargo, the 
sheriff and the state attorney general's office - and they kept calling me 
and calling me, saying: 'There's a shooting test, there's a shooting test.'"

The day of the test came, and McWilliams duly went along to the police 
firing range with a friend who was also trying for a permit. The targets 
were half-size cut-outs of assailants, positioned seven yards (6.4m) away. 
McWilliams fired a series of shots with a .357 magnum, all of which landed 
in the heart region of his target.
 Clearly, he knew what he was doing.
 He had been into guns since he was 15, when, as an air force cadet, he went

on a military camp. The marine in charge of the shooting range had a brother

who had lost his sight but they still went hunting together, so he let 
McWilliams handle the M16 machine gun. McWilliams, who before he lost his 
sight at the age of 10 had dreamed of joining the armed services, was 
instantly hooked.
Three years later, he asked to enrol on a pistol marksmanship course run by 
the Reserve Officer's Training Corps, the body that trains officers for the 
US armed forces. At that time there was no requirement to be enlisted in the

army to take the course, and after much discussion, the instructor agreed to

take him on. On the range, McWilliams learned to take aim by listening to 
the sound of his target being wheeled back against the wall. It served him 
very well. McWilliams says he shot better than two-thirds of his class, and 
in his final exam scored 105 out of 100, with one bullet somehow ricocheting

and passing through the target twice.

He used the same technique in October 2000, in the police firing range in 
Fargo.
"The deputy sheriff said: 'Well, you have all these stickers here telling me

that you're blind, but you passed the test, so you got your permit. Expect a

lot of grief because you're a test case for the whole system, no-one's done 
this before.'"

Concealed carry permits - the licences required to carry a gun in public - 
are issued at state level, and the criteria and rules vary across the US. 
While there is nothing in North Dakota's statutes to prevent a blind 
person - or a person with any physical disability - carrying a gun, in 
Florida, for example, a "physical inability to handle a firearm safely" is 
listed as a reason for ineligibility. Yet even there, a blind person with a 
North Dakota licence would still be able to carry his or her gun, since 
Florida recognises permits from that state.

(Photo) Carey McWilliams with some fowl he shot
McWilliams says he used to be against hunting, but became an ardent fan It's

even more straightforward for blind people to own guns if they are content 
to leave them at home. In most states, you don't need to perform a shooting 
test or get a licence to buy a gun. Consequently, no-one knows how many 
blind Americans own guns for home defence, target practice or hunting.

Carey McWilliams started hunting in 2008. When ducks fly across the sky, he 
says, they make a sound like bicycle tyres on a pavement, and he traces them

with the barrels of his rifle. For other types of hunting, such as stalking 
elk, he goes out with a companion, who whispers directions - up a bit, left 
a bit, right a bit - but who is not permitted to touch his weapon.
Hunting in this way is not unskilled, says McWilliams. Ever the military 
enthusiast, he argues that it is no different from how sniper teams work in 
a war zone, with a spotter giving verbal directions to a marksman. At the 
moment he presses the trigger, the adrenaline rush is huge. "You could 
probably lift up a car at that point. After you're done it's like popping a 
balloon and you just get tired."

(Photo)Carey McWilliams
The bigger the game, the bigger the rush.
"In the beginning I thought it was a joke, that somebody was blind and 
wanted to go on an alligator hunt," says Mark Clemens, who runs a company 
specialising in shore hunts in Florida. "Then I sent an email back and I 
guessed he was serious. And once I got him on the phone, you know, he said 
that he was having a hard time finding anybody that would take him. That's 
what the sad part was. Everybody thought he wasn't capable of doing it. He 
was definitely capable of doing it, if he had instructions."

The alligator that Carey McWilliams pulled in with Clemens and his team in 
2009 was more than 11 feet (3.4m) long. As McWilliams recounts how he killed

the beast with a .44 Magnum bangstick - a cross between a gun and a spear - 
his voice fills with emotion. He paints a picture of lightning, lassos, 
trucks nearly falling off dykes and a second alligator creeping up on the 
group from the shore. "They don't die like they do on TV," he says darkly.

(Photo) Carey with the head of his alligator
Clemens says it was obvious how much the alligator hunt meant to McWilliams 
Since then, McWilliams has killed a black bear and is now set on African 
game. He owns "eight or nine" guns, including an AR-15 machine gun, the 
civilian version of the M16 he handled as a teenager. Meanwhile, he has 
continued advise other blind Americans about how they can go about getting 
their concealed carry permit - he says he has now mentored nearly 100.

One of those is Jim Miekka, who in social terms comes from a different 
world. Carey McWilliams is unemployed, and lives in a trailer home with his 
wife, Victoria, who describes him as "a redneck - but a harmless redneck - 
if Carey could drive he would have a big pickup truck". Jim Miekka, 
meanwhile, is a financial trader who divides his time between Florida and 
Maine, where he lives on an 80-acre property. But both men have an 
indefatigable attitude, take pride in being free-thinkers and are completely

hooked on guns.

In his 20s, Miekka lost his sight - and two of his fingers - in an explosion

in his kitchen, while he was trying to develop a chemical that could be used

in mining. Not long afterwards, he began to apply his ingenuity to his new 
situation. With help from his father, a chemical engineer with about 20 
patents to his name, Miekka bought a cadmium sulphide photocell and wired it

to turn visual information into clicks like those on a Geiger counter. The 
clicks intensified when the device was pointed at the outlines of objects, 
allowing Miekka to make out the edges of buildings and roads.

(Photo) Jim Miekka Jim Miekka with the sonic scope of his own design
"I found out that it worked best with a telescope," Miekka recalls, "and at 
about the same time my best friend Bill was getting into target shooting, 
and he said, 'Why don't we try mounting it on a gun and seeing how it 
works?'"

The system is similar to that used for blind shooting in the Paralympics, 
where a high-frequency tone tells competitors how far they are aiming away 
from the centre of a target, which is coloured more brightly than the outer 
rings.

Jim Miekka
Over the years Miekka, now 54, has refined his technology, moving over to a 
pair of stereoscopic photodiodes. His latest scope, made together with a 
gunsmith, allows him to pick out an orange target of 0.17in (4mm) diameter 
at 100 yards (91 metres) - something he says four friends with 20-20 vision 
could not do. It can also pick out standard National Rifle Association (NRA)

targets, allowing him to compete against sighted shooters.

"I like going out to the range and out-shooting people that can see," says 
Miekka. His father, Dick Miekka, has never beaten him, and says he's 
remarkable to watch. "He finds the centre of his target. And then nothing 
happens. Nothing moves and the bullet comes out. He is absolutely, totally 
still. You'd never know that he'd fired the gun except that you heard it and

saw the result on the target."

Throughout his life, Jim Miekka has brought this extraordinary 
single-mindedness to bear on a series of intellectual puzzles. He is the 
creator of two mathematical algorithms for predicting downturns on the stock

market - the Miekka Formula and the Hindenberg Omen - that have long been 
used by Wall Street traders. More recently, he has become obsessed with a 
22-year-old murder case after watching a TV documentary, convinced that the 
scenario presented to the jury was against the laws of physics and the 
accused was wrongly imprisoned.

But when asked what achievement he is most proud of Miekka says he likes the

fact that if you put the words "world's best target shooter" into Google, 
the first result you are likely to get is a video of him on his range. 
Miekka's love of guns doesn't end with target shooting, either. He also 
enjoys dressing up as a cowboy and competing in fast-draw competitions under

the nickname the Midnight Gunslinger. He can draw and fire his six-shooter 
in half a second.

(Photo) Jim Miekka doing his quick draw
Jim Miekka frequently competes with the Classical Fast Draw Society, who use

blank ammunition
In 2007, Miekka came across an enticing-sounding book in the tape library 
catalogue, Guide Dogs and Guns. "My shooting ability is well-documented and 
undeniable," read the blurb on the back cover." So prepare to step into a 
world filled with Braille, machine guns, canes, killer whales, guide dogs 
and nuclear weapons. This isn't a soft, blind man conquers all type of fluff

biography but it is a hard-hitting, bare-knuckles, although at times 
humorous, look into the life of America's first sightless gunslinger."

It was Carey McWilliams' autobiography. Miekka phoned McWilliams and 
listened to his advice on how to obtain a concealed carry permit. "I learned

from Carey that you want to be somewhat discreet," he says. "I knew the key 
thing was getting a friendly instructor."

The cover of Carey's book McWilliams's book, which came out in 2007
This advice was based on McWilliams' failure to get a permit for Minnesota, 
the state just to the east of Fargo. Even though he passed the shooting 
test, McWilliams is convinced the NRA instructor in charge tipped off the 
sheriff that he was blind. "Now why he did that I don't know because if had 
been of a different race or ethnicity or sex or whatever there would be 
riots in the street over that, because that's a civil rights issue," he 
says.

The sheriff, Bill Bergquist, referred the matter to a judge, McWilliams 
defended himself in court and lost. "He was blind, and that was why we took 
it to the court," Bergquist says simply, adding that it was his own office 
staff that told him about McWilliams' disability, not the NRA instructor.

Jim Miekka took his shooting test at a gun show in Florida, under an 
instructor who, he felt sure, would say nothing about his blindness, and 
sure enough he received his permit despite Florida's rule that bars those 
with a "physical inability" from carrying guns. It seems likely that he 
slipped under the radar.

Miekka says he needs the permit so that he can take his weapons to the range

and to quick-draw events. But he also takes the pistol with him when he goes

on his daily walks through the countryside, because he is afraid of being 
attacked by a dog. "There's a 99% possibility that if you have to use it in 
self-defence it'll be against a dog," he says.

Carey McWilliams is also concerned about dogs, and has good reason to be. In

2009 he was attacked by three German shepherds and had to spend days in 
hospital receiving treatment. For weeks afterwards he was scared to leave 
home and is still on morphine today. He says the incident is the reason he 
can no longer work.
Carey McWilliams The whole key to not being shot is basically to leave your 
hands off the blind person"

Carey McWilliams

He wasn't carrying his pistol at the time and doubts it would have helped 
him, since he was too busy covering his neck and face to reach for a gun. 
But it's not just dogs that worry him.

"Being blind you're naturally more vulnerable to the criminal element," he 
says. "You're naturally more a pedestrian. You can't avoid a dangerous 
situation or run from one if an attack occurs. So you're going to have to 
stand and fight with whatever means you have available. For me, that's a 9mm

pistol."

As a backup, he sometimes carries a 10in (25cm) marine fighting knife in his

jacket pocket.

"I've only had to extract the gun three or four times in self-defence. One 
time a person charged me across the yard, another time a person tried to run

me down with a car when I was on the street trying to walk someplace. When I

pulled the gun, they saw the action, took off and that was it. He was about 
split second from getting a bullet in the radiator."

At the same time, McWilliams says again and again that he would only use his

weapon on someone at point blank range - "I consider my gun a blade with a 
bang." That is the only way, he says, that he can be sure he is under real 
attack and - his acoustic shooting skills notwithstanding - pick out his 
assailant.

To minimise danger to passers-by, he says his gun is loaded with frangible 
ammunition, which would be of no danger after exiting an assailant's body. 
"Surgeons absolutely hate those type of shots that I use because they do a 
lot of a damage internally," he says. "It would make a bullet wound about 
the size of a dime and an exit wound about the size of a baseball, and 
wouldn't go very far beyond that."

 What is the NRA's take on the issue?

Dom Raso in the NRA video
A video published last week on the National Rifle Association's YouTube 
channel called for blind people to be allowed concealed carry permits - but 
it was later removed
Commentator Dom Raso condemned an Iowan sheriff for saying he would refuse 
to issue a permit to a blind person, saying: "It's been proven that people 
who lack vision have an increased awareness of their hearing and spatial 
surroundings"
The NRA has not replied to requests from the BBC to clarify its position on 
blind gun-ownership

Not everyone thinks it makes sense for blind people to carry guns. Stevie 
Wonder has commented that it is "crazy" how easy it would be for him, blind 
since birth, to buy a gun. But when asked about these concerns, McWilliams 
responds that it's sighted people that seem to be doing all the shooting. So

long as blind people just use their weapons in defence, at point-blank 
range, he says the rights and wrongs of them carrying guns come down to good

judgment rather than marksmanship.

But how confident is he that, in that moment of fear and adrenaline, he 
would make the right judgement? McWilliams, who is not a small man, admits 
that years ago, someone grabbed his arm in the street to try and help him, 
only to find himself judo-tossed to the ground.

"I've had sighted people get a little aggressive, come up and grab me," he 
says. "The whole key to not being shot is basically to leave your hands off 
the blind person."

One blind man who has thought long and hard about when he would shoot in 
self-defence is Louis Hartley, a former deputy sheriff who lost his sight 
five years ago.

"It would have to be a lot more than somebody just taking me by the arm. It 
would be one of those instantaneous type of decisions that you would have to

make by what they had said, like 'I'm going to cut your throat,' or 'I'm 
going to kill you' or 'I have a weapon and I want your money,'" he says.

(Photo) Louis Hartley with his pistol
"Or if they knock you to the ground or whatever - you have to make your mind

up at that point in time."

His decision to carry a weapon was influenced by an incident in the 1970s, 
when he saw a fellow officer getting shot. "I decided at that point in time 
that I would always have a gun on me," Hartley says. Then, after he lost his

sight, his sense of vulnerability increased enormously and he finds carrying

a weapon "gives you a little bit more sense of a security, knowing you have 
something to fall back on".

Now 70, he had no difficulty renewing his concealed carry permit in his home

state of Oregon. He just had to fill out a form with his son's help and have

his photograph taken.

Carey McWilliams acknowledges that his desire for armed protection also 
comes partly from his personal history. He says he was the victim of 
physical abuse as a child, and was regularly beaten up at school, both 
before and after losing his sight. In one incident his collarbone was 
broken, which led him to study martial arts. Before long, he used his new 
skills to break a bully's nose with a palm strike. "I learned that basically

the best defence is a good offence," he says.

Although he doesn't think guns are for everyone, he believes they do help 
some blind people become more confident and independent.

"I've always wanted to educate people that the blind aren't just zombies 
walking around, meant to be taken care of," he says. "Blind people can be 
empowered to take care of themselves."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28587041?ns_mchannel=email&ns_source=inxm
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