As always, it’s my mission to bring the liberty message outside the liberty community. A lot of truth and wisdom originate in the liberty community, but, talking amongst themselves, it rarely escapes the gravitational pull of the liberty chat room. Good For The Country is written for the non-gun owner.
One of the top questions I get about personal self-defense is “Why don’t you let the police handle it?”
The best thing a neighborhood can do with its police is to instruct them to untie the hands of the community and permit citizens to act in their personal self-defense without penalty. Go through the state legislature if you must for states which already permit this, but where police don’t observe the law. Police have latitude in their policy, so it’s often worth looking into. More and more states are doing just that in Stand Your Ground laws, evidence of a real course correction in society.
One of the more important places it’s needed is Disaster Management where citizens are frozen out of their own disaster recovery. Confiscation of weapons is one such example of officials exceeding the scope of their authority to the detriment of the community, where servants should more properly share the philosophy of the people, but don’t. For instance, a court order has been issued to compel New Orleans to return weapons confiscated during the Katrina aftermath, but the weapons are not yet in the hands of their rightful owners. New Orleans broke the law when taking guns and defies the law’s court order. What about the next hurricane? What about rule of law?
Guns and all weapons were not intended for duck hunting, but personal self-defense. That’s good for the community. Since the inception of an organized police force in about 1845 here in the U.S., it was never the job of police to protect people. Best they permit people to do it themselves. Officials who confiscate weapons know what they are doing, it’s no error of judgment.
Why we do not let the police exclusively handle it is this: the statement by its language suggests reliance on police in time of danger to the exclusion of citizen involvement. (Like freezing people out of disaster recovery.) That’s identical to relying on the Paramedics exclusively and doing nothing for the patient until they arrive. No first-aid, no bandaging, no stopping bleeding, no CPR, no nothing. Get the idea? The two are identical when a system is choked by disaster and help is days and days away.
The emergency situation escalates, or deteriorates to the detriment of the persons who need the help the most. This is our values system?
Citizen involvement – more precisely, citizen participation – makes things turn out better. As I wrote before, citizens already have the authority to act reasonably. First-aid, CPR, self-defense, they’re all the same as part of our values system. Excluding ourselves from the process because we’re told it’s wrong or anti-social actually runs counter to the public interest and has for decades. Thinking it through to the kind of nation we want will begin to turn it around.
Do we want to depend on agencies to the exclusion of ourselves or are we ourselves dependable?
It starts here. An armed citizen can keep an act of aggression or grave danger from escalating. And an involved, participating citizen can help a community in its own disaster recovery. Stand Your Ground is a lot more than Guns. It is an attitude of re-instructing public servants to adhere to the values of the electorate.
On the subject of escalation, let’s think about your personal safety compared to the well-being of the intruder you face or any reason you would think of not defending yourself with force.
One of the worst instructions the Left can give to citizens is to give the aggressor what he wants. Time after time, this merely whets the appetite for more, and people who survive come to regret that advice of cooperation and surrender.
What if you resist? The Left says that resistance is bad, but it’s a lie: resistance saves more people than surrender. Criminals don’t usually want what you have – they want you, in a personal anti-social anger from long ago. Every criminal act is an act of revenge, not of taking alone for need, but taking as an act of revenge. (When the Left discovered that criminal acts are anti-social anger and not material need or poverty after all, that’s when they handed out the idea that society was to blame.)
So, what if you resist? Think it through.
What happens if the intruder or group doesn’t take your No for an answer? What does it take to stop them? What if you elect not to stop them, because you think the police should handle it? (Remember that you have authority you’ve delegated to police without surrendering any of your own.)
What usually happens next – and what would probably happen to you – is the stuff that makes up the crime stats of the nation, hundreds of thousands of rapes, robberies, beatings, stabbings, shootings, mistakes as drug deals go bad, as crimes of opportunity go bad and one of the worst of all – abductions.
All because they weren’t stopped soon enough or not stopped at all, and instead escalated to completed violent crimes.
Start over: what if you say No and you back your No with your authority and superior force? They might leave. You can’t shoot a fleeing intruder – grave danger is over – so it could be the end of the story. A story with a happy ending, that is.
Start over: what if the intruder is shot? Isn’t that an escalation?
No. (This is not legal advice. For legal advice, better consult the proper licensed professional.) This is thinking it through.
Stopping an intruder with force is not an escalation, since it stops them from completing their criminal act against you. Don’t confuse stopping an act of violence with injustice, and don’t confuse violence with legitimate use of force; you have the authority to stop it. Use it.
This is where I hear the popular comment: “You don’t know the mind of the intruder.”
Precisely. And that could be fatal. For you. Think completed act. Why allow another second of latitude to permit them to get the upper hand and complete their crime? Escalation is the shift of the intrusion to become a mayhem or a murder. You don’t need to read the intruder’s mind, but you should be able to assess that you are one step away from his completing his criminal act unless he is stopped. That act could be your murder or abduction.
As I said, all that’s required by the target is the reasonable apprehension of grave danger (in most states).
This is why we repeal all gun laws: because citizens need to be free to respond to perceived grave danger – rape, robbery, mayhem, murder, abduction – with reasonable force up to lethal force because they are alone. Citizens need to be free to choose whatever weapon they want without meaningless restrictions on make, model, caliber, type of ammunition, power or other features.
And because citizens possess the authority and the rightful judgment in the middle of the situation. No one else has the moral right to second-guess the citizen beforehand and pronounce beforehand citizen choices as illegal to defend oneself or another. The idea that one’s self-defense is recognized in any given case, but that it’s a crime to own or use a banned sort of weapon is a little ridiculous, isn’t it? How is making a weapon illegal going to fight crime?
Completing the act the criminal planned – or maybe just decided on impulse to see to it there are no witnesses – is an example of escalation of, say, an illegal entry into a mayhem or murder. Make sure the aggressor’s only offense is illegal entry and you’ll do alright. You’ll need to convince them of this with force.
Pass the word.
Another common question involves fear about taking lethal action. How can you kill another human being?
Gee, I don’t know. The question is not whether stopping a murder is worth killing for, but whether attempting your murder is worth dying for.
I won’t use the word coward and for this reason: the experience of shooting someone is traumatic. Even in self-defense, the trauma sets in and deeply troubles the law-abiding citizen or even a police officer who was merely defending himself and who believed in the need at the moment of decision. This is a safeguard of a sort for the gun owners to be cautious – with a lot more caution that anti-gun nuts want to admit – when contemplating owning a gun, when training in its legal and tactical use, and at the life-or-death situation. This is why it is needlessly insulting (and very political and very cruel) to believe that gun owners react in anger. We react in purpose and only in cases of grave danger.
But what’s in the balance here? Your living a life traumatized by crime or worse, a life taken? Or making the adjustment for a righteous, albeit, dreadful act of self-defense. Liberals wish to avoid making the choice and believe that taking guns from the law abiding will balm their anxiety. Grow up.
Gun owners are aware of this and Police are aware of this. But this is hardly reason enough to choose inaction to put yourself at the mercy of cold-blooded aggressors who long ago learned how to cope with the idea of hurting someone. For them, it’s not a trauma, but a release in revenge.
But some interesting concepts enter the picture.
We know that criminals do not fear police, but they do fear armed citizens. Many homeowners did not know this. What does it really mean? Why should it be different?
Criminals understand several things when they operate: 1) They believe they won’t be caught (most murders aren’t solved) and; 2) most crooks know that police adhere to a specific policy while citizens are bound to another standard, the average reasonable person standard, and various laws which apply to us, many of which are most reasonable.
Police usually have back-up: a non-shooting arrest means the aggressor comes out alive to go to jail (where he might even want to be!); on the other hand, most victims are alone, or are defending others, and – if they elect not to be a victim – may be likely to act when they believe they are facing grave danger alone and act with little debate. No need to pass the word here, criminals already know this.
If the intruder or aggressor is in the middle of a criminal act and is stopped by their target, they’re more or less caught. They can be held for police at gunpoint. If they advance, they’re stopped by force. (See the 21-foot rule understood by police and by gun-owners. Not necessarily shoot to kill, but to stop, and if that means delivering a fatal wound, so be it. Pass the word.)
Of the more than 22,000 gun laws, many are subject to interpretation against everyday persons, and hardly ever touch the criminal. These laws easily – too easily – criminalize lawful, reasonable conduct, such as where the weapon is carried, how it is maintained, the kind of ammunition people operate, and ineffective registration requirements, complicated jurisdictions and various nonsense rules that take away not only superior force from the owner, but from those he would protect in the absence of police. Now remember these words: absence of police. Grave danger.
One such stupid law – just stupid – is the idea that you may not carry a gun within 1,000 feet of a school. (What about the people who want to come in and hurt kids? How will this stop them? It won’t, will it? But it sure will stop – even punish – a loving father or mother who might have a weapon handy to stop them, but for the stupid law. What are they smoking in the legislature? Whose side are they on when they make our kids’ schools entirely defenseless by separating them from competent adults?)
Another example of stupidity is where someone draws their weapon in public on the reasonable surmise of immediate grave danger, and it works! The would-have-been crime is thwarted, the condition de-escalates, no shot is fired, and the suspect flees.
.. Then the gun owner is charged with brandishing a weapon. It happens. And for what? [In Florida, a woman shoots an alligator threatening her and her dog on her property and the rule is to charge her with hunting without a license???]
Most of all, the elite officials speak out of both sides of their mouths: they pay lip service to the idea of self-defense, but control immorally and unconstitutionally the ownership, carrying, and use of guns while reserving it securely for themselves! (You’d be surprised how many officials either carry concealed weapons or travel with armed guards.) Obviously, they believe in carrying lethal force. Why not for the people? Because crime serves officials.
When I thank people for their service, and sometimes when I sign a book, sometimes I write my thanks to them for joining the fight to help me protect myself and my kids, and their kids and then theirs. This is a nationwide thing, meant for all citizens.
The fight is not only against the criminals, it’s also against the tragically misguided Feinsteins, Boxers, Schumers and other mixed nuts who thrive on the continuation of violent acts against innocent, unarmed citizens in order to be the go-to demagogues. The formula is to keep the citizens powerless and at the mercy of crime so the official can be the heroes.
What a price to pay for a public servant to keep a job and retirement benefits.
It’s all so ridiculous, because criminals do not register guns, they do not care how they carry them, modify them or use them, and they don’t observe laws when they bring them into disallowed locations – for the purpose of carrying out a crime, by the way.
How do gun laws fight crime?
They don’t. Which is at the heart of the idea of recognizing the authority of citizens to act at the moment action is needed most; because law enforcement is reactionary, after-the-fact and not on scene. This costs society terribly. In dollars, in sovereignty, in personal dignity, in life. This costs your home. Because all the mass shootings were criminal acts, and not a single anti-gun law stopped them. Not one.
Imagine making it illegal for you to deliver First-aid or CPR until EMS arrives because of some bogus reasons your official bought into and which goes against your better judgment and values system of what’s really most effective at the moment of need.
Objections to teaching Citizen CPR in the seventies is identical to objections against concealed carry of weapons. But Citizen CPR didn’t turn out that way, did it, and none of the problems described ever materialized. The same thing is true for the predictions of violence when law-abiding own guns. The predictions never came true.
Why not? You tell me.
All you need to do is trust your fellow citizens. There are more honest citizens than not. And they’re a lot more responsible than officials believe in justifying all the go-nowhere anti-crime policies they impose, including 22,000 gun laws.ÂÂÂ
Let me repeat what I wrote earlier: In the final analysis, the repeal of all gun laws is not something we have to prove to officials, it’s not something we have to sell people on or give statistics for or any rationale; all we really need is already at the very core of the Bill Of Rights, namely, our authority to instruct officials and their obligation to honor that, irrespective of what they think.
Whatever reason they give for disrespecting your authority, it cannot be good enough because it is a test of our sovereignty and of their allegiance, and gun laws are not anything that can be justified in that light. Put another way, because we say so.
Time and again, police remind us that they only enforce the law: if you don’t like it, change the law. They are right.
As a Republic, we are not a nation of majority, we are a nation of laws.
Repeal all gun laws, because it’s not the law-abiding committing the crimes, but it’s the law-abiding who are criminalized; it serves no American values to criminalize lawful, reasonable and honest behaviors which serve the community better than the officials do.
It serves officials who thrive on crime. 22,000 different ways and then some. Why do criminals need to disarm their victims when officials do it for them? Crime serves officials, and more than criminals get a payday.
What if all gun laws were repealed? Would there be vigilanteism? Chaos? Anarchy? Road rage shootings? It’s amazing how none of the dire anti-gun predictions over the decades have come true. And it’s also not surprising how the states permitting concealed carry of weapons have not regretted placing their trust in their citizens.
Whatever predictions are enunciated to block the repeal of all gun laws, why not cross those bridges when we get to them? I get the feeling we won’t be getting to those dilemmas.
If you really believe in those hysterical predictions, then let the heavens fall. Let’s find out together, shall we?
Because the reality of our liberty is more vital to this country than the theory of what might happen.
Let the heavens fall.
It might be good for criminals to know you might be armed wherever you have a right to be. Pass the word.
Now, that would be good for the country.
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John Longenecker is author of Transfer Of Wealth, available at all online booksellers. John can also be heard on MP3. Visit his website, www.TransferOfWealth.net
