My Opinion: Guns. Love Them or Hate Them, We Need Them

Courtesy Wikipedia Images Baltimore Sun Main News July 30 Page 2. “Lawsuit challenges Md.’s (Maryland’s) Gun restrictions.” The article details a lawsuit by Second Amendment Foundation supporting Maryland resident Raymond Woollard as a person with legal “standing” regarding restrictions on Permits for Handgun carry. Recent Supreme Court decisions virtually barring States and Cities from unnecessarily restricting gun ownership of any kind prompted the suit against Maryland’s requirement that Woollard demonstrate that his Carry Permit was needed as a “reasonable precaution against apprehended danger.” Woollard had been robbed in a home break in, and his family threatened. The man who robbed him was convicted, and moved less than three miles away after his release. Wollard feared revenge among other reasons, and sought a Carry Permit. TRUE IRONY IS THAT RIGHT NEXT TO THIS COLUMN was another, larger in fact, about the burial and mourning events of a twenty-three year old Johns Hopkins researcher, stabbed (while on his cell ’phone with his mother)by multiply-arrested and convicted drug and assault felons.(The article didn’t note whether they were on probation, but should have). Would the twenty-three year old have defended himself with his own weapon, if he had a Carry Permit? What would we be saying if he had done so? Would Pitcairn’s parents, co-workers and friends have thought less of him for defending his life? Would we have offered that justice was served, or at least that a murder was prevented? The point is that our criminal justice system is reactive instead of pro-active, meaning that justice is served after the fact, if at all. (over 60% of assaults, rapes and robberies are never solved, and less than four-in ten of the murders are ever solved). Baltimore has the fifth highest violent crime rate per thousand population of all major U.S. cities, some with millions more in population. It seems that modern society is helpless in the face of crime. Frontier justice in the form of traditional and active self-defense is necessary, a premise which seems to be lost. If permitting and licensing (including proper training through authorized Police and gun dealers and Certified Instructors) were mandated for anyone seeking a Carry Permit (no restrictions except for guns and rifles maintained within a home or business), even included in a high-school senior curriculum, as part of the graduation process, it could help. It certainly would offer better results than the “basket weaving” and other “fiber-fill” courses schools now allow, and prepare people venturing into the real world with the means to defend themselves. Would there be mistakes? For sure. Would the results be a thousand percent less frustrating and demoralizing than reading about home owners and students, professionals and everyday Citizens being raped, robbed and murdered?For sure.

Image via Wikipedia

If you believe that survival is a Citizen’s right which is founded in the Declaration of Independence’s inalienable Right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for everyday Citizens, in the face of relentless crimes of violence, then having widespread Carry permits would force criminals to think twice, even three times about assaulting anyone. I, for one, would feel much better about having the opportunity to defend myself, than I would having loved ones and relatives read my Obituary and Murder article in the newspapers. Oh, and the Darwinian principle of “survival of the fittest” would turn today’s weak and uniformed into trained and ready to defend themselves and their property. That’s an outcome that might rid the streets of cities of violent criminals faster than our inept system of criminal justice could ever do. Certainly, the recidivism rate-re-offending violent criminals-would drop. Even if modern society and the justice system had every tool and resource available, which they have had, and whose cost continues to rise inexorably, we would still need to revolutionize the system into one in which Citizens can defend themselves, their family, and their home, and be treated with respect for doing so. The Founder’s considered Personal Rights and Responsibilities the foundation of the American Spirit and in fact one of the primary reasons for America’s creation. Self-defense fits the definition admirably.