Telephone is no substitute for a firearm when under criminal attack

August 30, 2001 - FraudFactor - Verizon's cellular wireless telephone network was nonoperational in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Sacramento counties in California for most of the day on Thursday, September 30, 2001. Verizon subscribers received "System Busy" error messages when attempting to make outgoing calls. Incoming calls were not received. This long wide-spread total system failure provides additional evidence that a telephone is no substitute for a firearm when under criminal attack.

Cellular Telephones Not Reliable for Calling 911

Cellular phones are not reliable for calling 911 to summon emergency police assistance. Even when there is not a system-wide outage, many problems can cause your cellular telephone to be useless in an emergency. Drained batteries, poor signal strength, an unpaid bill, or a bill that was paid by U.S. mail but not received can cause an unexpected interruption of telephone service. In addition, traffic jams can cause all available channels to be consumed by drivers and passengers calling to say they will be late, to reschedule appointments, or simply to carry on long conversations to make use of idle time.

Even when you can get an available channel, dialing 911 does not connect you to the local police or sheriff department for the jurisdiction where you are located. Instead, in California, dialing 911 connects you to the California Highway Patrol. Experience has shown that 911 may ring without answer for as long as seven minutes.

Once 911 answers, they can connect your call to the appropriate city police department if you know where you are and what city you are located in. You must then wait for several minutes or more for the correct police department to answer your call. And when they answer, you must know where you are to request assistance.

All Telephones Are Not Reliable for Calling 911

Land-line telephones are also subject to service interruptions due equipment failures, automobile accidents where a car hits a telephone pole, unpaid bills, and lost bill payments. There have been cases where the entire 911 telephone system was out of order for extended periods of time. And even under normal circumstances in cities such as Los Angeles, a significant percentage of emergency 911 calls never receive a police response.

Once your 911 call is answered by a call taker or dispatcher, you are at the mercy of the local police department's dispatching priorities and policies, and the availability of a police patrol to respond to your call. Police response times in some cities, such as Los Angeles, have been as long as seven hours for emergency calls under normal conditions. This is in addition to telephone delays in cities such as Los Angeles, where calls to 911 result in up to fifteen minutes of ringing and recordings under normal circumstances before a human being answers the telephone.

Callers who do not speak English may also experience unacceptable life-threatening delays before help arrives, especially for less common foreign languages.

Even in cities such as El Segundo, California, where police response times of two to five minutes are common for routine business, you can still dial 911 and die. A single violent criminal armed with a firearm or a contact weapon such as a knife, screwdriver, or club, can murder multiple people within a few minutes or less.

Furthermore, some criminals cut the external or internal telephone lines of a home or business before beginning their attack or during their attack. This is one case where a cellular telephone can be helpful when it works. However, some subscribers do not have cellular coverage from their home or the surrounding neighborhood due to terrain features such as hills. This is true in the affluent Palos Verdes Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes areas in the South Bay, just south of Los Angeles.

Defense with a Firearm is Safest Course of Action

Multiple studies by Professor Gary Kleck (Florida State University) have determined that defense with a firearm is significantly safer and more effective than any other method, including nonresistance. Firearms are at least 93 percent effective against rape. Furthermore, firearms are used approximately 2.5 million times each year in the U.S. for self-defense by ordinary people, almost always without shooting the attacker, because mere possession and display is almost always an adequate defense.

Wireless and land-line telephones should be used in conjunction with a firearm for personal safety, but not as a substitute for a firearm.