To Arms!!!

by Gary Graham

A week ago, a horrendous crime took place in a nursing home in Carthage, North Carolina.  Seven innocent lives were taken by an unhinged dirtbag apparently upset at his ex-wife.  Fortunately, a brave police officer answered the call, engaged the perpetrator in a gun fight, and though he took three rounds to the legs, managed to deliver a center-mass hit onto said dirtbag, dropping him in his tracks.  This courageous officer kept his head, and, with bullets pounding around and into him, kept his muzzle on target long enough to bring to an end a tragedy that may have been a whole lot worse.

A few days ago, an even more egregious travesty upon the innocent occurred in upstate New York.  A disgruntled man blocked off the exit to a community service building with his car, then went around front and entered the building firing a high-powered rifle.  Before the rampage was done, fourteen souls were gone, including the shooter’s.   

Predictably, there surfaced immediately the usual suspects who painted this tragedy as further evidence that more comprehensive and restrictive gun laws are needed, now more than ever. 

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

But first let me say that my heart breaks for the families of those killed and wounded in this past week’s slayings.  They were done in both cases by deranged men, intent upon murdering innocent and unarmed people.   You will notice that in the most recent case, the scumbag killed himself quickly and painlessly before having to confront the consequences of his evil actions.  (And those of us who believe in the afterlife know of what consequences await him.)  The shooter at the convalescent home took on a policeman and one shot dropped him.   What’s my point?  Almost all of these killers are cowards.  They arm themselves to the teeth and go up against an unarmed enemy no more formidable than a cornered herd of sheep. 

How very brave of them.

The Main Stream Media is busy screeching two questions:  1) Where did the shooter get the weapons? and 2) What was his motive?

I’m sorry… but who gives a sh*t??  Anyone can get a gun anywhere in the world, regardless of the prevailing gun laws.  As for motive…hey, I don’t care whether he was frustrated about his unemployment, or the fact that he couldn’t speak English, or his favorite for American Idol got voted off.  What difference does any of that make when a deranged asshole decides to go postal?   Is society now to walk on eggs, even more tolerant and deferential than we already are; constantly scared to death that we might inadvertently say or do something that may offend a tender sensibility and trigger a violent orgy of mass murder?  Hey…not in my movie.

A day after the horrendous mass-shooting in Binghamton, a deranged scum-dog kill-‘em-there A-hole gunned down three Pittsburgh Police Officers.  His picture (along with assorted tattoos) was immediately thrown onto the media screens, quoting his words that, “Crazy to me is going through the motions … Crazy to me is letting each day slip past you. Crazy is being insignificant. Crazy is being obscure, pointless.”

 My plea to ALL media:  Stop putting their faces on the news!   These scumbags who are virtually screaming, “Hey world look at me!  I killed a bunch of people!  Now I matter!  I’m a star!!”   (Yeah, pal – nice career move.)   You, in the media, are giving these coward miscreants exactly what they want – to be media stars for 15 minutes.  They couldn’t get enough attention to suit their self-possessed, meaningless existence, so they went for the easy way into infamy – they locked and loaded and snuffed out a bunch of innocent lives.   ”But it’s our job to report the news,” you say in your lame attempt to insulate yourselves from complicity; but you in the media are accomplices in this sad, sick media mobius.  Report the news and refuse to put their pictures up!  Refuse to give them what they want — media exposure.  Don’t let them ‘go out in a blaze of glory’.  Do not yield to the impulse to pick the low hanging fruit; let the other jerks do that.  Be better than the rest.  Your coverage encourages other would-be psycho killers.  Surely you can see this.  Surely there must be some moral integrity left somewhere in the media.   How about exercising just a modicum of social responsibility for a change?

But I digress.

It is a grievous sadness that anyone had to die at the hands of these demented homicidal losers.  Dialing 911 is of course a good thing when the sh*t goes down – but the police are a dispatch call away.  The responder in last week’s case in Binghamton, N.Y. was there very quickly, less than five minutes, I understand.   But generally it takes an overworked police force longer to arrive on the scene – at least it does in my neighborhood.   But even at five minutes…a lot can happen within that time.  And in New York, by the time the several SWAT teams arrived, the damage was done, fourteen people were already dead.  

Beyond the inevitable, yet ultimately meaningless, questions of why he did it, there’s a much more important question we should be asking ourselves:  What if one or more of those innocent civilians had been packing, and was trained, and drew his or her gun…and shot back? 

Things may have turned out very differently.

What is needed, now more than ever, is for Americans to pull their heads out of their tails and become proficient with firearms.  And then, having gained competency with their safe usage, arm themselves.   And then, having armed themselves, be prepared to deploy those arms in the responsible defense of innocent life. 

Guns stop crime.

Sorry for the whiplash all you Lefties just got doing the double-take on that last line.  (Call your chiropractor for an adjustment, it’ll be all right.)  But yes, guns stop crime.  Now, of course, that’s an intentionally incomplete statement.  Obviously, guns don’t stop crime in and of themselves, any more than guns cause crime.  A gun is an inanimate object, a tool, incapable of doing anything on its own.  And like any tool, it is the user that determines the outcome of its utility.  Statistically, guns in this country are used more to stop crime than perpetrate crime almost thirty to one. An armed citizen can stop horrendous murders The so-called “gun-free zones” are a joke.  Who pays attention to those zones?  Law abiding citizens.  Your friends, peace-loving people.  Who ignores them?  The bad guys.  And also…smart people, who risk imprisonment and persecution to protect their loved ones against the bad guys who might want to harm innocent life.

An armed, trained citizen can make a difference. 

I’ve never worked for the police force, nor have I ever been in the military service.  But I’m around guns and gun owners a lot.  Aside from having had extensive tactical firearms training over the years (professionally and for fun), I also do competitive shooting events all over the country.  And I admit that when I first started, it was a daunting moment when I realized that I was surrounded by a large group of people, each of whom had a gun on his person.  But what I came to realize is this:  There is not a safer place to be, than surrounded by a bunch of responsible, armed gun owners.   I’m not sure of the origin of the saying (but I heard it first from a gentleman named Massad Ayoob in his book In the Gravest Extreme):  “An armed society is a polite society.”

Now…  I understand this is anathema to many on the Left…and probably some on the Right.   Fantasies of ‘the Wild, Wild West‘ roam through their minds; people brandishing guns at the least provocation, shootouts in the streets, neighbors drawing down on each other if one refuses to turn down the music or take in their trash cans.  And sure, there are exceptions to every rule…parts of the Middle East come to mind…

But in civilized society, this saying largely holds true.  An armed society is a polite society.  There is something that comes over a person once they, A) have been highly trained in one or more of the firearms skills, and B) are armed with a gun.   One’s countenance steadies.  Your very carriage changes.  You become a model citizen; because along with the actual physical training of gun handling and manipulation, safety awareness, loading, malfunction clearance, and general marksmanship…comes education.   Legal, civil, ethical…and moral.  

More specifically, you learn the hypothetical ramifications of getting into a real gun fight.  You learn what is likely to happen should you elect to produce your weapon in defense of innocent life; and also what the police response is likely to be, step-by-step, from the moment the initial 911 call goes out, to you either being turned loose…booked for a crime… or worse.  (the ‘or worse’ would be waving a gun about as amped-up officers arrive on scene, draw down on you, misinterpret that you’re the good guy – and shoot you my mistake.   It’s been known to happen.)   You learn how you are likely to be handled, possibly ordered or thrown to the ground and cuffed.  You find out what the questioning process is, how the investigation is handled and what your likelihood of going to jail…or being released. 

And beyond the legal problems — you may be sued, either by the wounded bad guy himself, or by the family of the dead bad guy.  You learn that you are talking a minimum of $50,000 in legal fees just to defend yourself.  You may lose your job.  You may lose your house.  You may lose your standing in your community, the respect of your friends, and you may have to move out of the area.  And that’s if you were completely justified by law in the shooting. 

But beyond the legality of the shooting…and the civil action that may or may not be taken against you…is the moral issue.  There are psychological issues.  How would it make you feel to hurt someone, even kill them…though you were completely legally justified using your weapon.   How does it square with your ethics or religious beliefs?  Is your marriage affected adversely?  Do your children look at you differently, having to defend your actions at school?  What does that feel like?

Your reaction may surprise you.  I have known people who have produced their weapon in defense, have been involved in a gunfight; and I know people who have had to take a life.  In each instance a common reaction held true:   First, there was an immediate elation and relief at having survived a potentially lethal situation.   This was quickly followed by anger and deep regret at having been forced into the fight.  Then, came an unmistakable sadness and devastation.   I’m not talking about the steeling of the heart necessary for the combat veteran; I’m talking about a typical law-abiding citizen who finds himself in the unenviable position of having used his weapon in lethal defense.  The use of deadly force has lasting impact and permanence of consequence.   It’s no small deal.

A trained, armed citizen learns the legal, civil and moral ramifications of being involved in a gun fight to such elaborate and excruciating extent, that I guarantee you:  the very last thing you ever want to do is get into a gun fight. 

But what if we citizens were armed?  What if we took the Second Amendment to heart, not only as our Constitutionally-guaranteed right…but our responsibility?  What if the two cowardly mass-murderers in North Carolina and New York couldn’t be sure they would be confronting unarmed citizens?  Maybe they wouldn’t have entered the buildings in the first place? 

Maybe…maybe not. 

But one thing is irrefutable:  In every state where law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry guns, violent crime drops to almost zero.  And everywhere people are prohibited from owning or carrying guns…burglary, armed assault, and home invasion crime sky-rockets.

Criminals in prison testify that the number one deterrent to them committing violent crime upon a citizen…is the fear that their possible mark might be armed with a gun.  It naturally follows that the biggest fans of gun control…are the criminals.   They love when their targets are disarmed by gun laws.  Because only law-abiding citizens pay attention to them!  Criminals certainly don’t.

But if I enact my right in Los Angeles to keep and bear arms…and carry a concealed hand gun…and am deemed a criminal for it…and in deploying my weapon to avert a much more grievous offense against the innocent (a rape or robbery, or murder)… am I a criminal?

Yes…and no.  The Law of Competing Harms, as I understand it, says that you are not guilty of a crime, if in the act of breaking the law, you avert a more heinous crime from being committed.

So I ask myself…what’s it going to be?  In the face of a possible tragedy such as these horrendous shootings, do we just ‘think a good thought’ and hope it all goes away?  Do we trust that maybe a cop will get there in time when it all goes down and only seven people will be killed? 

Or do we step up and declare ourselves to be Defenders.  The American citizen as Citizen Soldier.  Trained and armed.  A model citizen – responsible, professional, respectful.  And if some scum-sucking lowlife shows up at a McDonald’s or a Denny’s where you’re sitting with your wife and kids, and he pulls out an AK-47 thinking this is the day he’s gonna ice some people and get ‘pay back’ for some imagined grievance…  Well there’s a good chance you could completely ruin his afternoon.  

“But what about Los Angeles?  New York City?  You can’t legally carry concealed in these cities.” – Joe Lefty

And your irrelevant point is..?

Am I advocating breaking the law?  Yes.  I’m advocating civil disobedience.  In support of the Law of Moral Common Sense.   I’m not a vigilante.  But I am prepared to risk criminal prosecution in order to defend innocent life.  Concealed-carry permits are almost all but impossible to get in Los Angeles currently, even to a model citizen who is also highly trained in the use of firearms like myself.  So do I have a concealed carry permit?  Yeah – it’s called the 2nd Amendment.

“The competent deployment of a gun, on scales both personal and national, is the guarantor of our freedom.” – Gary Graham

Now we hear from the Obama Administration that the problem is there are too many guns out there.   In a prevailing cultural mindset that wants to avoid accountability, shirk responsibility and just be taken care of…my question to you, dear reader is…  How long are we going to buy into what the Left tells us is the mandate of the Obamanation:  That we must sit back, let the brilliant Obamaheads figure it all out, and simply take care of us?  They will take over and run our formerly free markets, banks, and corporations.  They will monitor and censor our airwaves, creating what they call ‘fairness’, thereby protecting us from the ubiquitous ‘hate speech’ of the Right.  They will take over the medical community and deliver to us ‘free’ health care that will resemble a wasted and decimated shell of its former magnificence.   And then they will compel us to build autos we don’t want to buy, and use energy we don’t want to use, and do things we don’t want to do…all for our own good — if we were only smart enough to realize it. 

And, oh yeah, almost forgot.  They will want to take away our guns.

 As a great man once said, “…From my cold, dead fingers.”  (– C. Heston)  

Well FTS!  We don’t want to be ‘taken care of’.  We want to be left alone.  I say we keep our guns.  We keep our liberty.  We keep our country. 

Who’s with me?


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Posted Apr 8th 2009 at 8:13 am in News, Politics | 526 Comments