"Defense! Defense! Defense!"
Giant's Stadium 10/31/94
That cry is heard all over the country from September to January every Saturday and Sunday. Is it a cry from someone under attack? Yes...so to speak. That cry is heard in sports arenas from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans by fans that are asking someone else to defend their end zone...their home, if you will. They sit in the stands asking eleven men to defend their home team "honor" while they sit on the sidelines. True they pay for this, and their team is not always successful, yet they continue to pay.
They then go home and criticize the coach, their team, or an individual player if their team did not win. Home they go expecting to have defense of their home and life...and too often to depend on others to do what their team may not have done. Too often the law, their team, can not come in time to prevent a crime, and yet these people continue to rely on a system that is reactive not proactive and then criticize the police for not having done their job. The criticism is wrongly directed...look closer to home.
"There exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law that comes to us not by training or custom or reading but from nature itself...that if our lives are endangered, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right." Cicero [emphasis mine].
Like the sports fan too many of the American people expect someone else to defend them...their end zone. In some states there are in place laws that specifically release the police and anyone else connected with law enforcement from any liability if they can not perform their job, for instance;
S845. FAILURE TO PROVIDE POLICE PROTECTION.
Neither a public entity nor a public employee is liable for a failure to establish a police department or otherwise provide police protection service or, if police protection is provided, for failure to provide sufficient police protection service. [emphasis mine]
That law is a California statute.
The only sure fire way to ensure the protection of your life, your family, and your property is to depend on yourself to be prepared to defend all that you hold dear. Please do not misunderstand me, law enforcement does all it can to investigate any intrusion of your home, or any assault on you or your family, but they come after the fact, seldom before.
Laws that prevent a citizen from carrying a firearm or even owning a firearm cause that person to become a potential target, a victim of murder, or a victim of serious harm.
"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws...that disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes..." Cesare Beccaria 1767 [Italian Statesman and Philosopher]
The law abiding citizens of the United States must be allowed to defend themselves it is a biblical ["If a thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed". Exodus 22:2-3], and visceral right.
Before law and religion described, and proscribed, conduct among men I am certain that Homo Erectus took steps to protect himself from anything that wished to do him harm, including other erect species, otherwise he would not have survived, and a primate other than ourselves might still be living in caves or trees.
The right of self defense predates written history, precludes any law to the contrary...and is a civil right!
"[A] society with a dismal record of protecting people has a dubious claim on the right to disarm them. Perhaps a re-examination of this history can lead us to a modern realization of what the framers of the Second amendment understood: that it is unwise to place the means of protection totally in the hands of the state, and that self-defense is also a civil right."
Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, "The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration," Georgetown University Law Journal, Vol. 80:309 Dec 1991.
With the continuing assault on the individual and society it is time that we take a new approach.
The FBI states that overall crime is down and that is true, but down from what? Are they saying that it is now acceptable that only 600 people out of a sample of 100,000 is acceptable in 1994 because the figure was 1400 out of a 100,000 sample a few years ago? That is the logic we are asked to deal with in this "new" society. I choose not to find that acceptable.
In Switzerland every able-bodied man is required to have a portable sub-machine-gun in his home. There is no street crime in Switzerland. In Israel citizens of a certain age are required to have in their possession a sub-machine-gun if they are in the "militia", and it is optional for all citizens that wish to own and carry one, street crime, as defined by USA standards, is negligible. I'm not advocating that every citizen should be mandated to carry, or even own a firearm, but damn it, everyone that wishes to own one, that is not a felon...should Have The Right!
It is the height of hypocrisy to punish law abiding citizens for the possession of certain types of firearms and then not punish felons that use them with a minimum mandatory sentence for using them [the recently passed "crime bill" excluded minimum sentencing for felonies committed with these guns].
Some will go through life willing to be part of the flock, hoping that the shepherd will come in time to save their life, unfortunately the shepherd is not always there...or can come in time when the wolf attacks. As for me...I choose not to Baaaaa!
"The law of self-preservation is surer policy than any legislation can be." Ralph Waldo Emerson
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