Those were the simple words of Iowa Congressman Leonard Boswell, after fending off an armed intruder in his house.

His wife, daughter and grandson were about to hit the sack late Saturday, when the thug broke in, attacking his daughter.

The wily 77 year old tried to stop him, but it was Boswell’s grandson’s loaded shotgun that caused the punk to flee in the opposite direction.

Yep, if there’s one thing you can learn from a shotgun: you never run at one.

Now, publicizing tales like these do nothing but good, for they remind the common thug of a key life or death question: what house would you rob, if you could?

One in which the owner is armed, or not?

And it poses a question to everyone else: if you’re the victim, would you rather be armed – or not?

Me – I don’t want to depend on the kindness of strangers, I prefer to depend on the accuracy of my shot.

Of course, the biggest gun control advocates will disagree, but they all work in well-protected media networks, surrounded by well-trained, well-armed security.

You don’t.

Guns are a conservative, libertarian way of privatizing safety.

It’s also the best way to keep good people free.

And bad people scared.

TONIGHT:

and…KT McFarland!

His op-ed skills, alas, need some fine tuning.

McMurtry took to the pages of The Washington Post this week to share his thoughts on the Tucson shooting and the ensuing cultural debate. He’s a longtime Tucson resident and felt he had something to add to the conversation.

“Brokeback Mountain” screenwriters Larry McMurtry, left, and Diana Ossana with director Ang Lee

On second thought …

His rambling essay contained the usual liberal bromides spelled out in convoluted fashion. And, worst of all, he apparently has serious misgivings about the free and unfettered political debates in this country. Why would an artist who makes his living with words fear a spirited body politic?

After a quick attack on Arizona’s lax gun restrictions – a subject wholly relevant to the matter at hand – McMurtry brings out his big guns.

Oh, sorry. Is that hate speech today?

He applauds Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for blaming heated political rhetoric for the killings, even though the entire civilized world now knows there isn’t a microscopic scrap of evidence to bolster Dupnik’s case.

That doesn’t seem to bother McMurtry.

I thought that he was magnificent and his point obvious. Ask the Indians and the Mexicans; the latter are usually referred to as “illegal aliens,” though none of them comes from outer space.

Definition of “alien” from Dictionary.com:

1. a resident born in or belonging to another country who has not acquired citizenship by naturalization ( distinguished from citizen). 2. a foreigner. 3. a person who has been estranged or excluded. 4. a creature from outer space; extraterrestrial.

McMurtry recent wrote Books: A Memoir, which recalled his life-long love affair with texts as well as remembrances of his own book collections. Maybe the only edition missing from his book shelf is one written by that Webster fellow.

The Pulitzer Prize winning author then blames Arizona’s willingness to enforce its own border as part of the state’s violent mindset, using a massacre from 1871 to help buttress his case.

“This border has always been cruel,” he writes. “On Ajo Way car wrecks are frequent; the convenience stores sell memorial crosses.”

Wonder if he has any compassion for Arizona residents who deal with the wave of illegal “aliens” on their property, or the crimes a fraction of them commit? And why can’t a nation defend its borders? Does he consider the consequences if immigrants from every part of the world streamed into the country without any sort of control in place?

Of course, you know a slam on former Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin is mere syllables away.

“Palin has attacked journalists for suggesting that violent speech might provoke violent action – but mightn’t it?  We don’t know for sure.”

Actually, we do know for sure in this case. It didn’t. But the monster who shot 19 people Jan. 8 is on record as loving The Communist Manifesto and digging music from Drowning Pool. Where is McMurtry’s essay calling out either source for blame? Don’t hold your breath. Violent fiction doesn’t inspire murder. Criticism of ObamaCare just might, though.

Chalk McMurty up as a literary genius whose skills translate badly to the op-ed pages. He’s also yet another artist willing to use a tragedy to malign those who don’t agree with his ideology.

It’s no secret that I’ve never been a fan of Moore’s, but I’ve often said that the last thing I’d call the man is “stupid.” Afterall, a man who cons Americans into paying $9.99 at the local Cineplex only to watch him sermonize on the evils of capitalism must be one of rapier wit. One would think that either he’s a clever graduate from the school of Andy Kaufman, or he’s the embodiment of pure evil held back a grade from the kindergarten of Michael Meyers.

As it seems now, he’s neither of those.  It’s becoming more and more glaringly apparent that the man is dumb. Pure and simple. In a recent interview with MSNBC’s Richard Maddow, Michael Moore stated that people own guns because they are racist. He prefaced his comments with this:

“Everybody’s packing there… everybody has guns. Yet they all said that we have a very low gun murder rate here in Tuscon.  So why do you have a gun then?”

Ummm… How about, so that the gun murder rate remains low?

I’d never pictured Michael Moore as being so dense that he could answer his own question without tasting the irony. Gelatinous yes, but dense a good filmmaker does not make.

High gun ownership in this case, would seem to be the cause for low-gun murder rates, not the effect.  Criminals have told us time and time again, they’re worst fear is that the person they’re mugging or the one who’s house their breaking into may be armed.

• Fact: Bad guys hurt people.
• Another Fact: Bad guys don’t like being shot.

The More You Know!

Rather than see the absurdity in answering his own question, Michael Moore went on to explain that the only reason Americans own guns is due to their racist fear of black people breaking into their homes:

“That imaginary person that’s going to break into your home…and kill you. Who does that man look like? You know, it’s not freckle-faced Jimmy down the street is it?”

Well thank you for educating us, Mr. Moore. I only have one question; What about the black people in the United States whom also own guns?  Are they racists, merely afraid of the not freckled-face folk, too? Or is it that they’re only afraid of white people breaking into their homes? What about Latinos/Latinas? Or am I supposed to believe that they stick with mere cutlery?

Of course, Michael Moore and Maddow then went on to cite the fallacy that a gun owner is more likely to be disarmed and have their gun used against them in a self-defense situation.  No facts or logic need apply. They sort of hop-scotched the actual research in order to get to the part where they call all of the middle-American gun-owners nothing more than racists.

Let me be the first to say, that I own a gun.  I’ve never thought myself to be a racist but maybe today, Maddow and Moore have proven me wrong. Perhaps they’ve proven us all wrong. 

What say you, other gun owners out there? Do you own guns simply because you’re filthy racists? 

Moore and Maddow are betting you do…

According to council-member Dan Halloran, these changes give police more power to reject licenses, in order to counter a possible upswing in gun ownership caused by new, lower fees.

Now I’m all for keeping guns out the hands of bad people.

But I’m also for getting guns into the hands of good people.

But I must ask: how does being a bad driver, make you a bad person? And getting fired? I’ve been canned three times – does that mean I can’t have a glock? I mean, I shouldn’t have a glock – but not for that reason. There was an incident in Shreveport that ended that dream.

As for being in debt? That eliminates everyone here on this set. And also John Gibson – who still owes me $1300 for that lost weekend in Cancun.

So yeah, these new restrictions seem pretty vague.

But there’s something else here that stinks. If the government can link certain good behaviors to gun ownership, who’s going to define what’s good?

Think about it. Your fitness to own a gun might only be approved as long as you fulfill a strict criteria that appeals only to the modern, annoying civil servant.

Perhaps, to own a gun, you’ll have to possess an impeccable recycling history, participate regularly in Take Your Daughter to Work Day, watch The Daily Show religiously, and ban trans-fats from your kids diet. So you didn’t run the 5k on Earth Day? And you chose to rent “the expendables” over “Eat Pray Love?”

Sorry, no Smith & Wesson for you.

But worse, if you take guns out of the hands of decent people, you’ll never learn how to carve a pumpkin, the fun way:

—–

Nice work.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist, homophobic, glockophobe.

Tonight:

Leeanne Tweeden!

Lauren Sivan!

Dana Vachon!

“Wolverines!”

There are some welcome ideological surprises lurking within the script’s 104 pages.  Shockingly, Hollywood actually seems to accept the premise that if the Chinese and Russkies invade the United States we are justified in fighting back with hot lead instead of teach-ins and choruses of Kumbayah.  But the script also displays a bit of the moral illiteracy we’ve come to expect from the Hollywoodoids – naturally, the script has to imply that we kinda brought the invasion on ourselves and that resisting tyranny somehow means becoming just as bad as the tyrants.

The re-imagining of Red Dawn will be released later this year and does very little actual re-imagining of the original’s simple plot.  We first meet some all-American teenagers.  They play high school football, party, and talk and look like CW series cast members – not real bright, but pretty (the pretty part in the script).  For some reason, the Soviets (replaced here by the Chinese with a Russian assist) invade America and seize their hometown.  Their town’s tactical significance appears to be that invading it advances the plot.  Anyway, the teenagers go up into the mountains, score some of the firearms our prescient Founders ensured we’d always have the right to keep and bear despite the best efforts of those gun control-loving wusses, and launch a bloody guerrilla war against the invaders. 

Sure, that sounds awesome in theory, but John Milius’s original Red Dawn was – well, let me be diplomatic – probably one of the silliest movies ever made.  And I loved it.  When you combine killing communists with unbelievable camp – like the teen warriors’ giggle-inducing battle cry of “Wolverines!” and Harry Dean Stanton’s memorable scene that ends with him hollering “Avenge me!” – and then add some beer, you’ve got one hell of an awesome time at the movies.  In the quarter century since its release, it’s inspired a cult following.  A young captain even adapted the title as the name of the Army operation that rounded up the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein.

Now, I’m not here to evaluate the aesthetic worthiness of Carl Ellsworth’s script.  I’ll leave that task to someone with the expertise to properly critique its unique aesthetic qualities – like noted reviewer Hackey von Hackenheimer.  I will say that Ellsworth must have sat through a few of those screenwriting seminars because you can set your watch by the predictable action beats (“Hmmm, we’re three quarters through the script, so time for Act III to begin:  {*types into FinalDraft 8*} ‘MCGUFFIN ENTERS and provides motivation for climactic battle sequence.’”)

Let’s just say you won’t walk out of the theater feeling that your prior conception of what “cinema” is has been radically redefined.

—–

Of course, there’s no Patrick Swayze here.  Boo.  And the new Red Dawn also unforgivably omits the cry of “Avenge me!” in favor of a much lamer substitute.  Those interested in specifics of the plot, such as it is, can peruse this spoiler-filled synopsis.  As John Nolte memorably put it, we’re here to spot the liberal sucker punches for you, not to reveal fanboy-centric plot points like whether Boba Fett’s helmet will be dented on the right side or the left side.

The hero is Jed, probably because Hollywoodoids think everyone who lives east of the I-5 is named “Jed,” or possibly “Zachariah” or “Cletus.”  Jed is a 22-year old Marine who has come home after fighting in Iraq.  I guess the fact that he’s not portrayed as a raving psycho counts as something like progress.  The script’s view of Iraq is ambiguous, as demonstrated by Jed’s exchange with a local hick who incoherently swings between gung ho belligerence and neo-isolationist cliches. 

Returning vets do get into those kinds of conversations, but it’s usually with Blue State quarter-wits sounding off with Mother Jones talking points.  Whatever – we should just be grateful Jed doesn’t launch into a speech about how Bu$hitler lied and his buddies died, or how Dick Cheney, in association with the Carlyle Group, hid WMDs in oil wells to raise Haliburton’s stock price.

There are a couple of nice scenes.  Early on, the escapees get to a cabin and decide to arm themselves with the firearms stored there.  The script does not see this as odd or unusual – it rightly assumes that every American should always ensure his or her ready access to weapons in order to be able to do their duty and defend their society in time of emergency.  However, the cabin’s owner had failed to stockpile a sufficient amount of ammunition, and the script properly points out this major lapse.  All real Americans should always be ready with adequate supplies of arms and ammunition – after all, “Bang” is the sound an American makes while maintaining this country’s freedom. 

Jed trains up his guerrillas and they start killing the Chinese occupiers.  That’s cool.  Some might scoff at the notion that a bunch of armed rural folks could have any effect against a professional army.  I would note the fact that we don’t speak with an English accent and enjoy our beer cold rather than warm and by the pint.  I would also note the example of a Finnish hunter who personally took out at least 705(!) Russian soldiers, and observe that deer are harder to hit than people.  Now, the training scenes are a bit perfunctory (I’d have gone for an 80s-style musical montage myself) and the “Wolverines” go from high school kids to steely-eyed killers pretty quickly – though they sure babble about their feelings a lot.   A lot.

There is also a rudimentary explanation of the theory of insurgency – Ellsworth rightly does not seem to think his kids can win by literally forcing the stronger enemy to flee by inflicting damage, rather than by forcing their departure by setting conditions among the populace that make further occupation too painful to bear.  Guerrillas who get in stand-up firefights with counter-insurgents tend to become dead guerrillas. 

And there’s a refreshing take on the proper response to those foreigners who murder Americans – the script actually agrees that you fight back and kill them.  I wish I could share the exact quote, but just seeing that sentiment on the page of a Hollywood script is a revelation.  Did someone at a Rodeo Drive bistro secretly spike Ellsworth’s Pellegrino with Awesome Coolness Pills, because Hollywood needs more of that kind of clarity and old-fashioned can-do.  I need a cigarette after reading something like that.

It’s not all awesome.  There are a couple of throw-away lines where the Chinese invasion is explained, in part, by the massive liberal-spending binge debt we owe them.  There are lots of reasons to worry about foreign debt; I’m not sure the threat of repossession is one of them.  The explanation for how the wily, inscrutable Asian enemy (and the script does portray them as wily and inscrutable) pulled off the invasion is pretty lame too. 

Also, there’s an unintentionally hilarious scene where the junior varsity guerrillas get a drop on some US commandos, the leader of which introduces himself as a lieutenant in the Delta Force.  Ummm.  Well, that bunch does not take inexperienced lieutenants.  And they don’t tell outsiders they are from “Delta Force.”  And pulling an AK-47 on one of those guys is a good way to get a 7.62mm suppository – if you’re lucky.

There are no real sucker punches, but there is at least a sucker tap.  The script really falls down on the job toward the middle, where Jed momentarily devolves into the kind of dork who spews the type of moral equivalence that might seem profound to a pampered UC Berkeley sophomore but that is, in reality, really stupid. 

He whines that because he’s using guerrilla tactics that he is now just like the jihadi scumbags he fought in Iraq.  His girlfriend Toni inarticulately disagrees.  This is supposed to be a moving moment, but it only served to move my lunch back up my esophagus.

The character of “Toni” should have smacked some sense into Jarhead Jed since the script didn’t have his drill sergeant around to do it.

You know, the audience is watching an uplifting and inspirational tale of shooting communists and all of a sudden this nonsense pops up.  Just stop.  Let’s try another example.  Nazis liked oxygen.  Hey, Americans like oxygen too!  Ergo, Hitler and Americans are the same, right?  Nimrods.  The fact that we kill bad people for killing us does not make us bad too.  For the perpetual sophomores out there, the test of the morality of a conflict is the cause you fight for; the tools you use are largely irrelevant.  American bayonet – good.  Nazi bayonet – bad.  I blame the public schools for this kind of nonsense and muddled reasoning – the “critical thinking” they purport to teach is actually anything but. 

Let’s clarify for those who remain unclear – the act of shooting, blowing up, bludgeoning or otherwise eliminating those who threaten and murder Americans is an unambiguously good thing. What al Qaeda terrorists, Taliban, Shiite militias, Republican Guards, Viet Cong, North Koreans, Nazis, Imperial Japanese soldiers and their ilk feel or felt deeply in their little hearts and warped minds about their various causes is irrelevant and unworthy of attention — except to the extent that understanding their thought processes facilitates defeating them.  Their destruction was and is a moral necessity and unquestionably morally right; their fighting Americans was and is unquestionably morally wrong.  Always.  End of story. 

Any questions?  No?  Good. 

However, the script is admirably forthright on how best to deal with American traitors and collaborators.  Let’s just say due process comes quickly and in pistol form.  That’s refreshing.  As a lawyer, I appreciate trials and such, but as someone who has known folks killed and wounded by such bastards, my perspective is different.

It’s nice to see that in Red Dawn, Hollywood is at least inching toward ideological sanity.  The Americans are the good guys.  The people trying to kill the Americans are the bad guys.  In this way, if in no other, the new Red Dawn is just like real life.

Of course, I’m hardly Rosie’s daily television show target demographic.  I work for a living instead of sitting at home staring slack-jawed at the succession of Sham-Wow commercials and ads for shyster lawyers promising big payouts for the imaginary injuries of their deadbeat clients that fill the time between inane segments of mindless yak.  And while the social parasite demographic seems to grow larger after every freebie, hand-out and pay-off the Administration and its Congressional flunkies issue in favor of their employment-averse constituents, Rosie O’Donnell still seems like a bad economic bet.

This is no longer the same country as it was back in 1999 when Rosie was honchoing her first daytime gabfest and hassling Tom Selleck over his support for the Second Amendment of the Constitution.  It’s not even the same country as it was in May 2007, when the former “Queen of Nice’s” anti-conservative bile culminated in her slandering American fighting men and women as terrorists on The View:

ROSIE O‘DONNELL, HOST, “THE VIEW”:  655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead.  Who are the terrorists?

ELISABETH HASSELBECK, “VIEW” CO-HOST:  Who are the terrorists?

O‘DONNELL:  655 Iraqis—I‘m saying you have to look—we invaded…

HASSELBECK:  Wait, who are you calling terrorists? 

O‘DONNELL:  I‘m saying that, if you were in Iraq, and another country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?

She also takes particular pleasure in attacking the Catholic Church and seems to consider anyone not buying wholesale into her radical agenda against traditional marriage and adoption as a contemptible bigot.  And let’s not forget her equally insightful foray into that moronic twilight zone known as 9/11 trutherism; it completes her personal trifecta of idiocy.  

Rosie’s backers for the new show seem excited at the chance to pick up Oprah’s viewers, whose departure will apparently leave them without a reason to live.  “Those 4, 5, 6 ratings points have to go somewhere,” one told Variety. “Something’s going to come in and fill that vacuum.”

But with the President’s approval ratings in freefall, and with Congress envying the polling numbers achieved by such public favorites as Kim Jong-Il, Vanilla Ice and syphilis, it is a new world.  Rosie’s kind of aggressive, grating, in-your-face liberal stupidity may well serve to alienate a substantial part of today’s potential audience.  Her partners seem to know it too, assuring Variety that:

“If Rosie wanted to just have a platform for her causes, she would go get a show on cable news . . . .  She’s a comedian, not a political pundit.”

Except no one is laughing – her Rosie Live! variety show was cancelled the first night after scoring an anemic 5.25 million viewers, though the presence of such hip, relevant and cutting edge guest artists as Alanis Morrissette and someone/something called “Ne-Yo” probably didn’t help. 

The fact is that Rosie O’Donnell is an unpleasant, smug and actively dumb woman who is unlikely to garner anything like the following she once had before embracing her personal jihad against the most deeply held and sincere beliefs of a significant majority of the country.  The stay at-home mommies I know are too busy to sit and watch television without a very good reason, and being bitched at by a sanctimonious harpy isn’t one of them.  Oprah likes Barack Obama, but (I assume) she doesn’t spend an hour a day telling her audience that they are the scum of the Earth for not agreeing with her.  Rosie probably couldn’t resist – and watching her show would probably make the Bataan Death March look like a week at Club Med.   

So, there are two possible reasons behind the resurrection of Rosie as a daytime talk show hostess.  The first is that the producers think they can make some money by harnessing what they believe to be her undeniable audience appeal.  Perhaps that’s true, but that seems like a triumph of hope over recent experience considering the unbroken track record of audience alienation and failure that has haunted her since she left her original talk show back in 2002 as well as the increasing polarization of the American public into liberal and conservative camps.  Does it seem smart to invest in a show that at the threshold flips the bird to at least 50% of the people who might be enticed to watch it?

The other possibility is that Rosie’s aggressive lefty political stance is a net positive for her backers, and that they believe she would provide a valuable, if only intermittently coherent, liberal voice in the vast wasteland that is daytime television.  And they may be willing to suck up the potential losses in order to let that obnoxious voice be heard.

The truth is probably somewhere in between.  It’s not unknown for Hollywood to try to mix business with leftism (*cough* The Green Zone *cough*).  Of course, that doesn’t always work real well. (*cough* The Green Zone *cough*). 

Will Rosie O’Donnell succeed with her career resurrection?  No one can know for sure, but just in case, I’m keeping a crucifix and some garlic handy.

At 10:10 into the episode, Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell) explains to Michael Weston (Jeffrey Donovan) that an individual who they are checking up on in Florida, “Owns a gun, but it is registered.” The only problem is that Florida, where the show is said to be occurring, and the vast majority of the rest of the US, doesn’t have gun registration. Indeed, only four states require the registration of handguns and one state requires the registration of all long guns (several other states require the registration of so-called “assault weapons.”

At 16:20 Sam Axe says: “The cops are probably matching ballistics right now even without your gun.” Ugh? Now I concede there’s possibility that this comment might have been geared solely to freak out Tim (the suspected thief”, but given the previous conversation about guns being registered between Weston and Axe, I am not so sure. And there are never any knowing winks between the main characters to indicate that they are in on some joke they’re playing on the bad guy.

Now the only possibility is that two states (Maryland and New York) have spent millions of dollars registering the ballistic fingerprints of new handguns before they’re sold. The notion is that this data bank could then be used to catch criminals from bullets found at crime scenes. But this never solved any violent gun crimes for the simple reason that the friction from the barrel that produces markings on the bullets also causes the inside of the barrel to wear (read: “change”) and thus produces different markings on bullets over time. Also two barrels that come off the same assembly line will initially very likely produce essentially the same markings on a bullet (it would be like taking molds of all new tire treads with the notion of keeping them on file to help solve crimes where tire tracks are available).

Finally, at 35:30, Michael Weston has this conversation with the bad guy in the episode.

Michael Weston: [The gun] was stolen and the serial number has been filed off.

Damon (Jeff Parise): Which means that it is untraceable.

Michael Weston: Completely untraceable.

Again, I concede that it is possible Mr. Weston knew this statement was false, but that he made it anyway to freak out Damon. In this case, though, part of the statement is true and part of it is false. Why add in incorrect information if you have a strong explanation anyway and the false information might let the person you are trying to trick think you don’t know what you are doing? It is particularly troublesome in this show because the whole premise is that Mr. Weston has all the angles on potential problems thought through.

The false part of the statement involves the claim about serial numbers. Serial numbers can’t really be effectively filed off. The stamping of the number into the metal creates structural abnormalities in the metal below the stamped number that can be discerned by a forensics lab. The portion of the metal where the numbers were stamped is denser than the surrounding metal and that makes it possible to determine the original serial number.

Now the statement about the gun being stolen is a different matter because there is no one to trace the gun back to. That said, given the earlier statement in the show about gun registration, registration doesn’t work to solve crimes. In theory, if a gun is registered and it is left at the scene, it could theoretically be traced back to the owner. There are a couple of problems with that. 1) Crime guns are virtually never left at the scene of the crime. When they are left at the scene it is almost always because the criminal has been seriously wounded or killed, and thus you are going to catch the criminal anyway. 2) Even when the crime guns are left at the scene they turn out not to be registered to the criminal who left them at the scene.

Here’s a link to a piece that I wrote for the Canadian Newspaper “The National Post” a few years ago. Additional information is available in the forthcoming third edition of More Guns, Less Crime.

Don’t get me wrong, the show is still entertaining, but the frequent factual errors can become quite disconcerting. “Burn Notice” used to really stand out from other television shows for its insightfulness. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. One suspects that political correctness on gun issues might be the cause for the changes.

An Ethiopian Jewish woman soldier takes aim. Both men and women serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. Thus, there is a weapon in almost every Israeli home.

Before our son Ariel Chaim ZT”L passed away, age twenty-two, in 2003, we spent a good deal of time discussing the Second Amendment, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Ariel was amazed that so many American Jews—overwhelmingly liberal and secular—aligned themselves with the advocates of gun control, in reality a movement to banish the private ownership of guns by lawful citizens.

Trapped and Defenseless
During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, my wife Karen and I, Ariel and Offspring #2, were inside a film theater. Abruptly, an angry mob congregated outside; soon they were trying to break down the doors. Trapped inside, we were all terrified. I held Offspring#2 in my arms; she shivered like a frightened rabbit. Karen gripped Ariel’s hand.

“Don’t worry,” we were assured, “the police will be here soon.”

But the police did not arrive that night, nor did they protect the city from arson, looting and murder. In fact, we watched in disbelief as news cameras captured images of police officers standing idly by while looters gleefully committed their crimes.

A few days later, I purchased a pistol, a 1911 .45 ACP.

I bought a gun because I realized that the day will most certainly again arrive when civil order breaks down and we are flung into a cruel Hobbesian landscape.

Here’s my three part series on the LA Riots, Hollywood is Burning:

Part I

Part II

Part III

As Ariel’s conservative political opinions took form, he logically and ethically fell on the side of legal gun ownership. But because he was first and foremost a Torah Jew, first and foremost a Talmudic scholar, Ariel placed gun ownership into the framework of Jewish law, halacha.

Ariel wanted to put down his ideas on paper. Unfortunately, he never had the opportunity to write an article on halacha and gun ownership.

And so I humbly jot down a few of Ariel’s ideas. Any mistakes in this article are mine and mine alone. I write from an imperfect memory, from conversations with my beloved son held years ago, and from the few notes he managed to scribble while sick and undergoing chemotherapy and radiation.

The Sword is Not the Cause
Ariel pointed out that in his commentary on Genesis 4:23, Ramban, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, the towering medieval scholar, writes with refreshing clarity:

“The sword is not the cause of murder, and there is no sin upon him who made it.”

In other words, a weapon, be it a sword or a gun, is neutral. It can be used for good or evil. Thus to label a gun as “bad” makes no sense, for a gun can be used in self-defense which the Torah sees as an obligation.

The Torah (Exodus 22.2) teaches that, when necessary a householder may kill a burglar to save his own life.

The Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin (72A) says:

“He who rises to kill you, you must kill first.”

It seems odd to have to defend the most basic notion of self-defense, but in America today, the shrill and self-righteous voices of pacifism and appeasement have become alarmingly prominent.

Ariel and I agreed that if gun control advocates had their way, the only people with access to guns would be the police, who cannot be counted on for security, and criminals, who can be counted on to be, well, criminals, with no respect for the hundreds of firearm laws already on the books.

Jew with gun. An Israeli soldier of the elite Nahal Brigade, during the Second Lebanon War.

Tyrants Ban Gun Ownership to Secure Their Power Base

Ariel also pointed out that in the story of Purim the Jews were granted royal permission to defend their lives. The King’s edict did not order the army to protect the Jews. Instead, the Jews were permitted to purchase arms in order to defend themselves.

Obviously, as a minority in the Persian Empire, Jews were forbidden weapon ownership.

This is not unique in Jewish history. During the Roman occupation of Judea, Jews were forbidden to own swords, spears or any implements of war. What better way for a ruling empire to control an unruly and rebellious population?

And of course, in Europe, one of the first laws that Hitler imposed was an all-encompassing weapons ban. Imagine how different Jewish history would be if every Jewish family in Europe owned at least one gun that had six bullets in the chamber.

Surprise Folks, Evil Exists

One of the hallmarks of modern Liberalism is an astonishing inability to recognize, much less confront, evil. Therefore it becomes psychologically necessary for the liberal to place the blame on an inanimate object—the gun—rather than on the person who pulls the trigger. It is easier to fault the gun manufacturer for the horror at Columbine, rather than admit that two sixteen-year-old boys are evil.

The Jewish attitude, Ariel maintained, is to place the blame where it squarely belongs: on the two young men; to declare their evil, and never again utter their names. For just as goodness is a reality, so is evil.

Try and imagine, said Ariel, if one or two Columbine teachers had guns with them. Imagine if these armed teachers had been able to protect the students who were massacred.

There was another aspect to these stories that Ariel detected and deeply troubled him. The media invariably referred to Columbine and 9-11 as “tragedies.”

“They are not tragedies,” Ariel insisted. “They are atrocities.”

A tragedy is when people are killed in a flood, a fire or an earthquake. But when people are murdered in cold blood, it is an atrocity. Again, Ariel pointed out, the media—overwhelmingly liberal and marinated in moral equivalence—is unable to distinguish malevolent acts from natural disasters because their moral compass is broken.

Ariel concluded that Jews in America should be at the forefront of the right to keep and bear arms. For Jews to rely on the power of the state for protection is sheer foolishness. Time and again, Jewish history reveals governments cruelly betraying their Jewish citizens.

And though Ariel felt that America was “different,” he maintained that allowing the state to make ownership of weapons illegal is a dangerous policy that opens the door to tyranny in the name of social justice.

But like so much else in American Jewish life, liberal/progressive Jews have signed on to aggressively utopian ideologies that go against their self-interest. Instead, countless Jews espouse principles that feed their need to feel virtuous. But in the end, these beliefs defy common sense and display an appalling ignorance of Jewish history, halacha, and human nature.

“
“Announce this among the nations:prepare for war; arouse the mighty; let all the soldiers approach and ascend. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning forks into spears; the weak shall say, I am strong.” Joel 3:9

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

Such is the power of a single word.

That power has not diminished but only increased with an ADD, multi-channel, hyperactive media-centric world. The silver screen has long given us immortal dialogue which now blends so deeply into the culture that people may not know their origin, but we know the meaning.  A wise man I know said, “Image creates perception, perception creates reality.”  It couldn’t be more true in the film business.

–

In a media-centric world, from motion pictures to internet to phones, we are pounded with images, forming our perceptions and then creating our reality. How fast did the Internet meme “Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys” become a daily reference at the coffee klatch, in your email, or on phone calls?  Not long.  We forget how powerful words can be when written in a clever and pithy way.  The masters of dialogue like Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, and the Epstein brothers, knew irreverent and immortal lines.  And as producers, writers or just Americans who appreciate a good, nimble turn of a phrase, we should excel at creating phrases that demonstrate the values we hold dear.  Don’t understand?  “What we have here is a failure to communicate!”

Why bother?  Movies (and other media) create the Culture.  Culture creates America.  America creates the world.  When we talk media and politics, this nimble phrase can radiate far and wide.  Great dialogue resonates in our brains for weeks, months, even years.  Our own snappy comebacks to important values issues can demonstrate a better point of view, an attitude and an insight.  Of course, you could use radical phrases like, “I love America” and “I’m against terrorism,” but write up your own snappy comebacks on issues and policy to share with friends.  As human beings, we remember great Moments.  Movies create moments.  Great dialogue reminds of those moments and their images.  And great lines can change minds.

We cannot forget the line, used by recent Tea Party groups, “I’m as mad as hell, I’m not going to take it anymore.” And in political theater, who uttered the line, “There you go again”?  Ronald Reagan in the debate with Jimmy Carter.  It pounded Carter on national TV.  Reagan was the President who best understood the nexus of the Power of Media and the Power of Strength when confronting enemies like Soviet International Socialism.  Reagan knew from his long career in radio, films, television, and public speaking that people longed for memorable phrases by which to guide their lives.  The simpler, the better – easier to remember, easier to repeat, easier to live by.  Why else are words of wisdom from great books and the Ten Commandments short and to the point?

So what does this have to do with any of us?  The genius of the American people is self-evident.  No society on earth has created such a robust population, teeming with energy and creating a vast marketplace of ideas.  When talking with friends, family or working in the media world, each of us can create dialogue that spreads our values and our message about the troops, our country, and more.  I saw a TV show one day where some actress proclaimed that a man who tried to sexually assault her was either a “pervert or Clarence Thomas.”  A few words and this image becomes a perception that morphs into a reality for millions (or in the case of this show), thousands of viewers about this noble Justice.  When Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano reframes terrorism into “Man Caused Disaster,” she’s putting auto exhaust sparks that accidentally caused a thousand acre fire on the same level as planes slamming into buildings of innocent Americans.  “The greatest trick the devil every played was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

Words everywhere matter. “You want answers?  I want the truth!  You can’t handle the truth!” Words are weapons.  When you refer to China, use the term, “Socialist Left-wing dictatorship.”  The prisoners in Chinese gulags, persecuted Christians and political dissidents will attest to that.  If somebody mentions “Religious Right,” then counter with “Atheist Left.”  It’s never “Gun Control” but “Second Amendment Civil Rights.” Newspapers are infected with political correctness.  “Islamic rioters in France” are “disaffected youth,” according to some reporters.  Does “cheese eating surrender monkeys” come to mind?

Whenever I’m given an application or form with boxes for “Race,” I  check “Other:________” and write one word.

“Human.”

“Human,” Hollywood…single words can be powerful.  Revolutionary.  Watch the words you use in your everyday life and in your work to reflect the values we hold dear about Freedom and America.  There’s great tradition in snappy comebacks and immortal phrases to change the culture, America, and the world.  Words are our First Freedom, but everyday we have to ask ourselves…

“Is it safe?”

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?