Dakota Beacon

Directly following the horrendous massacre at Sandy Hook School in Connecticut, I proposed that, rather than banning guns (inasmuch as Connecticut and the rest of America have already banned murder and that did no good), we do something more constructive.  Something designed not to exploit a tragedy in order to destroy our Constitutional rights, but designed instead to actually create a safer school environment.  In my article, I proposed that rather than having “gun-free zones” (which obviously did not include Sandy Hook Elementary, despite posting to the contrary), we have “defense” zones – as opposed to “defenseless” zones and arm teachers, requiring them to be prepared to defend the lives in their charge in the classroom.  The sound theory behind this proposal, of course, is that wherever a killer finds a “gun-free” (“defense-free”) zone, he knows he can kill many people before he is stopped.  We don’t read about crazed gunmen going on with their killing sprees after they have been stopped by someone else’s bullet; it is, as anyone can see, illogical that they would do so, being either disabled, disarmed or dead. 

Logic is what is needed, not unreasoning emotional outbursts.  Like Chicken Little, the press, members of government and some of the public went into high gear.  Never let a crisis or a perceived crisis go to waste.  Regardless of the wrong done here, regardless of the outrage, it does not constitute a reason to throw out our Bill of Rights.  Dare I say that the event, however terrible, is not a reason to rewrite our Constitution.  While my heart breaks for distraught, bereaved parents and friends, their anguish absent the power of reason cannot help correct the problem.  We must deal with these things rationally if we are to defeat this kind of heinous crime.  Wayne LaPierre, of the NRA, has stated that the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.  How can anyone argue with this?  Let us just forget the politically correct nonsense and stipulate to this.  It is fact.  You cannot argue your way out of getting killed by a crazy person with a gun and you can’t keep a gun out of the hands of a criminal through laws any more than you can prevent him murdering through laws.

Logic must be employed in the matter of a generally armed citizenry.  Our patience has been abused recently by an exchange between Piers Morgan, Prominent British Thinker and Ben Shapiro.  When Morgan began his usual tirade against Americans owning “semi-automatic assault weapons” such as an AR-15, Shapiro quite rightly pointed out that it is our right as Americans to have these.  He reached for his pocket Constitution and Morgan derisively admonished Shapiro for “brandishing your little book”, an astonishing (for anyone but Morgan and his colleagues) insult to the foundation of our nation’s government.  Shapiro’s point was that the Framers of the Constitution did not intend that the citizens be armed with spitballs or bows and arrows or rocks or any other weapon of lesser quality and power than that of the Army.  The reason for an armed citizenry was to obviate oppression by the government.  How absurd!  Piers Morgan asserted.  He was amused that Shapiro or anyone else should fear any abuse by our own government.  Shapiro quite correctly pointed out that indeed, this is much to be feared, and we have seen the proof of it time after time, in the memory of some of us in Hitler’s Germany.  A free nation lost its freedom almost overnight.  Its citizens were disarmed.  Some of us have read the editorial in Pravda last week, wherein we heard the story of how, back in 1917, when the Communists took over, following civil war, they called in the citizens who had arms (and they were many and heavily armed); when they came in to report – they were shot. 

We do not conceive of this happening here.  It hasn’t yet.  Perhaps it hasn’t yet because most Americans would not surrender their guns.  The deterrent is not the gun in the hand of the man behind his own door.  The deterrent is NOT KNOWING WHO HAS A GUN, but knowing that many people have guns and therefore, the people in general are not defenseless against aggression.  What keeps the “knock at the door” in the middle of the night from occurring is not Mr. Smith at home with his semi-automatic assault weapon, but not knowing whether he has one and will use it, not knowing if the guy in the apartment down the hall or down the street has one.  It is the same principle which guides the mass murderer contemplating whether to shoot up a theater with a “gun-free” posting or a theater that is silent on the issue.  He’ll always go to the gun-free one.  Of course, as I said, that theater is not “gun-free”.  If it were there would be no shooting.  It is merely “defenseless”. 

The knowledge that the general population is armed and will defend itself is a mighty deterrent.  No one wants to be killed dragging a citizen out of his home at 2AM.  No one wants the headlines that would go with sending the Guardia Civil, the SS or the Streltzy in to do this and having civil conflict break out.  An armed citizenry is a great deterrent.

My sister used to have a huge and lovely dog, Pickles.  Pickles was probably an Irish Wolfhound.  She got him from a shelter.  Pickles would circle around her if anyone approached.  He was tame and friendly but no one could approach unless it was okayed by Melissa.  She was never assaulted.  She lived in an “iffy” neighborhood, all alone, but no one ever broke into HER house, nor attempted to attack HER.  We will never know how many people out there might have tried to make my diminutive sister a victim.  Pickles deterred them.  Maybe dozens of times.  Who can say?  Although never called in to defend her physically, his very presence was a de facto protection.  In the same way we will never know the threats to our liberty which have been averted over the centuries since we earned it, through the knowledge that someone out there might just be drawing down on a would-be storm trooper on a mission.  How many such ideas were nixed by presidents or county sheriffs just because an armed population would have stood up and said “NO”? 

This is why Shapiro was quite right to assert that the citizen is intended to have parity with the armed guard.  He is not supposed to have a BB gun to counter a semi-automatic gun.  If the early American citizen of 1789 had nothing more than a musket, it would have been because that was the state of the art.  It was expected that “bearing arms” meant parity; it meant arms as understood by one and all, including the army.  The “militias” referred to were not government-generated and run organizations, but rather free men organizing themselves to defend against everything – from bears to Indians to French or Spanish to English Tories to a rogue American force.  It was intended to defend the sovereign people against all comers.  Certainly it would have been pointless to restrict these arms to some “junior” weapon. 

We must send a clear message to our legislators, both state and national, that we intend not to give up our right to bear arms, nor will we allow it to be compromised by the kind of standards Piers Morgan would like.  We should further, end the idea of registering these guns.  If they are registered locally, this information can be demanded by and will then undoubtedly be surrendered to federal authorities, the unique status of the county sheriff notwithstanding.  Most of them do not understand their jobs.  The Second Amendment protects the other rights our forefathers secured for us through our Constitution.  This, in turn, must be protected by us, the citizens of America.