Another Parent Blames Guns Instead Of Thugs And Officials.

Our 23-year old is back from Iraq.

Safe and sound, our son Edgar brought us happy reports of our being welcome there for our guts, our help, their infrastructure, their schools, their new ability to vote. . . well, just turn off the mainstream media and turn on Talkradio and you’ll get the facts about how we’re making a tremendous difference there.

Our other children are contemplating the Military. They’re already in ROTC. Edgar is a shining example of gentlemanly protocol, discipline, confidence, righteousness, honor – did I mention guts? – and completed mission. I can only presume that all soldiers and sailors are alike this way.

But let me make a comparison to an article I read about how parents grieve stateside over the murder of their child in the streets of New York.

Dae Dae, 8-year-old son of Kimberly Hill, was shot to death in New York by some street punks. Ms. Hill rightly asks why. Though some believe that no one can answer this, the answer as to why Dae Dae was shot is rather obvious.

Too many thugs on the street.

Too many unanswered thugs.

Ms. Hill’s November 30th piece gives you the report in her own words.

But her solution is, of course, all wrong. Like Sarah Brady’s solution is wrong. Like Cindy Sheehan’s solution is all wrong. Like Representative Murtha’s solution is all wrong.

Ms. Hill’s answer is to restrict guns further.

New York is already a gun-free zone. It says so. How much further can you get?

Has this helped?

Or is New York an excellent example of what happens when the innocent are punished for fighting back? Or restrained by law? New York forgot that criminals don’t obey the law, no matter what law you write.

Chicago, New York, California, Detroit.. They’re all case studies in what happens when officials abandon constituents and stop them from resisting crime.

Today, the Citizens Committee For The Right To Keep And Bear Arms rightly castigates His Honor, the Mayor for – and I agree with this assessment – dancing in the blood of an officer shot to death in New York.

Why don’t they have these problems in the right to carry states, where they predicted that more guns on the street would mean more violence?

Why is it that New Yorkers didn’t foresee the bloodshed that factually happens day in and day out when all the guns are in the wrong hands?

It’s not guns on the street, is it? It’s guns in the hands of the criminals (along with knives, clubs, bare hands and multiple predators) while the politicians preside over crisis after crises without end.

What do the right-to-carry states know that New York doesn’t seem to get?

Answer: resistance, the ability to stop the crime. And the law that empowers the individual who elects not to become a victim.


Real closure never comes, actually, in the loss of a child. The pain never goes away. All the more reason to aim for the criminal and not the innocent New Yorker who didn’t do the shooting.

Funny thing about anti-gun laws: they say they take aim at crime, but wind up hitting innocent bystanders, the citizens. Dae Dae was one of them, Ms. Hill.

Keeping the crisis alive is the commerce of politicians.

Stricter gun laws is to punish the innocent: Look at what’s it’s doing. The death of Dae Dae was the combination of more thugs on the street and tying the hands of citizens to make the environment hospitable to thugs.

It wasn’t guns on the street that killed Dae Dae, it was criminals on the street.

What will it take to understand that the next shooting and the next won’t be because of guns, but because of criminals, then too? How do you explain the muggings, the knifings, the beatings in such large numbers which are just as tragic to other parents? No guns there, but a lot of painful violence just the same.

Ms. Hill – Kimberly – I can only imagine your grief.

I was thinking: Had our son Edgar been killed in Iraq, he probably would have died from a gunshot wound or bombing.

Who should we then be mad at? The Bombs that kill our soldiers? The Guns that kill our soldiers? The devices?

Or the Terrorists who kill using a variety of weapons, especially improvised ones? Which is to say that when guns are not available to them, they improvise and make Improvised Explosive Devices w e know as IED's, remember? Making things illegal isn’t the answer there or here: making the acts illegal is the key. There and here.

On American soil, we have our own kind of enemy, our own kind of terrorists; violent criminals and the officials who aid them by tying our hands.

New York officials are the local equivalent of Congressmen who urge pulling out and leaving locals defenseless. New York, a battleground for some like Dae Dae, is the result of that same policy. Abandonment.

It’s time for you, Kimberly, and all New Yorkers to understand that it is not guns on the street that deserve your anger – it’s the conditions grown by officials who delight in keeping the situation in crisis. By abandoning you.

Because in New York, all the heroes are forbidden by law.

They pulled them all out.

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John Longenecker is author of Transfer Of Wealth – The Case For Nationwide Concealed Carry, available worldwide this December.