Sgt. Mom’s post from a few days ago reminded me of an incident I had some 8 or 9 years ago. It turned me into a proud gun owner quickly afterward. I have since moved from the place where this event happened.
Like Sgt. Mom, I lived in suburbia in a pretty quiet neighborhood. This area isn’t as social as Sgt. Mom’s group – we would wave here and there to people we knew, but there was a general malaise as far as neighborhood associations and the like went.
It was 4am and my doorbell started ringing over and over and over. I grabbed the baseball bat I kept in my bedroom for just such an occasion, told my wife to call 911 and slowly walked downstairs. I checked the back door first and there didn’t appear to be anyone out there so I slowly went to the front door, all the time the doorbell constantly ringing. I peeked through the glass pane on the side of the door and there was a guy ringing the doorbell with his nose.
In my most courteous voice, I screamed at him “What the f*ck are you doing?!” He backed away from the doorbell to reveal that he had his hands zip tied behind his back, had one sock on, no shoes, and a towel wrapped around his neck. He looked like he had just ran a marathon at top speed and had some sticks sticking out of his body.
He started yelling at me – he is coming to get me! He has a gun! Let me in! At this point I slowly walked to the back door again to make sure this wasn’t some sort of a ruse and told my wife to get my other child in the furthest room. The back door once again seemed clear. My wife was 8 months pregnant at the time, I might add. I asked her again if she called 911 and she said she did. She was on the phone with them and asked me what the hell was going on down there.
I told her that I figured that a guy hopped up on drugs was at the door and I was not going to let him in.
I went back to the front door and the guy started getting more agitated. My mind was racing and so was my adrenalin. He screamed at me again pleading to let him in and I told him that if he tried to come into this house that I was going to tap a tune on his cranium. In not so nice words. At a very high volume.
I started to think that there was perhaps a bomb or other nasty device under the towel that was wrapped around his neck. I asked him not so politely to remove himself from my front door area.
He did so probably after seeing me with the veins in my neck bulging out and me waving the baseball bat at him. He stood in my front yard for the better part of ten minutes. I started then screaming at my wife asking her where the cops were?! In the tiny suburb I lived in, I could practically throw a rock at the cop shop. I could hear her swearing at the 911 operator too. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, a cop from another district arrived and picked the guy up. But they didn’t seem to arrest him, they snipped the zip tie from his hands and put him in the squad. The cops got my name and drove away. My wife and I sat down on the sofa, looked at each other and didn’t know what to say. I got a drink. It was about 4.30am by this time.
The next day a cop came by to ask us some questions and we found out what the deal was. Up the street about a mile or so there were some gay guys that lived together and there was some sort of lovers triangle. The owner of the house was actually a once prominent state of Wisconsin politician who was retired and on a vacation in Europe. The house was a rental.
The lovers triangle went south and two guys tied the other one up and were beating him. The towel was a gag. He escaped through a basement window. One of the other guys chased him with a gun. At this time the cops showed up to that house. The guy with the gun shot at the cops (!), got in a car and a car chase ensued to another town. So ALL the cops chased that guy, while the tied up guy who still thought he was being chased by the guy with the gun started heel-toeing it through my neighborhood. After getting several firearms pointed at his face from people on the block, he ended up at my house and got the bat pointed at his face.
The guy who shot at the cops and who was leading the chase stuffed his car into a field, ran a short distance, then shot himself in the head before the cops could arrest him.
I honestly don’t know what happeed to the guy who ended up on my porch. But it taught me that I needed a gun and that crazy stuff can happen anywhere.
“Why I Own a Gun” — just one?
Wow. Remind me never to get in trouble in the US. If you get get screwed up around here the locals will do their best to help you out.
The “FEAR” is rare here. I wonder why? It could be because the most dangerous thing around here is Elk, well maybe the Cougars come close, The Bears are just big ol bush dogs, I run into them all the time.
Anon. — Cougars – the 4 legged kind I assume?
Oh, you poor dear. Have those nasty Americans frightened you again? No wonder no one from the rest of the world wants to live there. Now you just have a cup of hot milk and I’ll read you the story about the beautiful princess who met a prince who was secretly an orthopedic surgeon and was able to get her knee replacement done with less than a three year wait.
Some people think I’m crazy for answering the door late at night with my .45 behind my back.
This is a pretty compelling story from Robert Avrech – during the time of the Rodney King riots
http://www.seraphicpress.com/flashback-los-angeles-riots-20-years-ago/
“Some people think I’m crazy for answering the door late at night with my .45 behind my back. ”
The police may not yet be completely on board with this sentiment. There have been a number of incidents here in the States in which someone answers the door late at night with a gun, and the police who were ringing the doorbell perceived the gun as a threat to themselves and summarily shot and killed the homeowner.
So, make sure you keep it behind your back until you know it’s not the police.
Bobby – yep – I don’t want innocent people to feel threatened but I don’t want to feel under threat either. Some years ago I got a couple of calls – at 2-3AM of my office alarm going off. (it was, both times, the wind flexing the glass windows enough to break the foil on the edges)
What to do?
I sure as hell wasn’t going to go down there unarmed but at the same time the last thing an arriving cop needs on a possible break in call is to see some guy skulking around with a pistol.
I always got there before the cops – a 15 minute drive from home.
So it was in my pocket – until I was sure that I needed it.
I think – like this last election – people are polarized between those who think the govt should look after them…and those who don’t.
Anon:
I’m honestly intrigued. I like the idea of a place with lots of elk etc. and friendly neighbors. We’ve got the friendly neighbors where I live but we’re short on elk… and even so there is *some* crime here.
Help me better understand though. Are you imagining yourself somehow winding up in the position of the guy banging on the door in the middle of the night? Would your neighbors readily let you in under those circumstances?
Or, putting yourself in Dan’s shoes, would you be more or less likely to try to help depending on what means you had to protect your wife and kids? Would that matter to you one way or the other? (remember that for the sake of the discussion and in this instance the person at the door has stated that he the subject of armed pursuit)
If this happened to you tonight, what would you do? Is the place you live safe enough that you’d be confident in letting a raving stranger into your house in the middle of the night, or is it just that it is safe enough that this situation would never arise?
And a general thought: Dan, did you know that the pursuer was not the police? I’d have been a little concerned about that angle, too.
“Oh, you poor dear. Have those nasty Americans frightened you again? No wonder no one from the rest of the world wants to live there. Now you just have a cup of hot milk and I’ll read you the story about the beautiful princess who met a prince who was secretly an orthopedic surgeon and was able to get her knee replacement done with less than a three year wait.”
No Americans don’t frighten me. I have been charged by my buddy Thomas the big male black bear and that actually did stir some mild fear but I stood my ground, you have to, it’s very dangerous to run from a ritual charge.
Idiots with guns make me nervous so I’ll just stay up here in the great white north thank you. It must be awful to live in such a violent place that you cannot help a stranger in distress.
My step father, a Goldman Sacks alumnus, got a new knee in Vancouver at 94 years old. For free, well he dose pay into the medical plan we all have. They told him they don’t usually do people that old but he was in such good shape, and the injury was a tennis injury, so they did him. He waited about 4 months.
Yeah that’s me above.
Keep on being friends with those bears. They are harmless, I read somewhere.
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. I would be far less nervous about an agitated stranger with a gun in my hand. Or in each hand. :)
Here in Orange County we only have mountain lions. I have treated a few folks who met them. One little girl told me as I was working on her, “The lion tried to eat me !” I could see her brain as she was talking to me. Years later, she was a good friend of my daughter.
A local oral surgeon’s wife was attacked when biking off road. Her companion, another doctor’s wife, beat him off her. Her husband fainted when he went into the pre-op room and saw her face. While the sheriff’s were looking for the lion, they found another victim nearby. His liver had been eaten. He had also been mountain biking. That was about a mile from my house. I have seen them in the morning when walking the dog.
No crime around here but I still have guns in the bed side table.
We have the mountain lions because the feel-good people got an initiative passed to prevent hunting them. Now they hunt us. Yep – stay friends with those bears – Tim Treadwell knows all about it
They really are not very dangerous. I run into them all the time and have for many years. The Black Bear is a scavenger and omnivore, not really a hunting carnivore. The Black Bear attack numbers are very small and nearly always because of some stupidity by the human. Cougars are hunting carnivores but mostly stay away from humans. The young males get turfed out of their area when they turn 2 and that is the biggest danger around here. Young males looking for new territory. The Elk in season are very dangerous and huge.
“We have the mountain lions because the feel-good people got an initiative passed to prevent hunting them.”
Excellent. There are lots of people, not so many Cougars. Oh BTW Humans are not my favorite species.
Get yourself a grammar book too.
“he had just ran a marathon” should read “he had just run a marathon.” Funny, I have heard “I haven’t drank anything today” twice in the last week.
run, ran, have run
drink, drank, have drunk
swim, swam, have swum
We got that idea over time Pengun. You are probably right where you belong.
Oh for sure. I have lived all over the world. England, France for a short time, Nigeria when I was a kid and I have lived in and traveled over quite a lot of this continent too. Where I am is my favorite place so far. On the edge of the BC bush is pretty deluxe my friend. Mountains and wilderness to wander in, it is a very fine place. Not so many humans either. ;)
What impressed me most about Dan’s story is the plight of the poor guy trying to get help for a life threatening situation and being met with guns and baseball bats. How sad is that?
“What impressed me most about Dan’s story is the plight of the poor guy trying to get help for a life threatening situation and being met with guns and baseball bats. How sad is that?”
Yes, Americans take care of our families first. I can’t even imagine what I would do if one of my daughters were hurt in some way. Times are changing as more and more of our population become wards of the government. The irony is that a large segment of that dependent population are also the segment with most of the violent crime. They resist cooperation with the police and yet they are the most common victims.
One of my daughters carries a gun as she is an FBI agent. I have offered guns to the other two and taught them to shoot but they have not been interested. One is in Tucson which has a lot of crime. The other lives in Santa Monica where most crime involves homeless people crapping on the street. It’s a bit like Winnepeg, which a friend from there once described as infested with crime by Indians who would come up to you on the street and threaten to vomit on you unless you gave them money.
Jimbino – take a linguistics 101 course please.
And since you had to take a snotty tone of voice about it, I’m begging you to argue the point with me. Really. Give it a try. Explain how one region’s verb declension is correct in all circumstances.
Jonathan – correct I do own many firearms now :).
Jimbino – sorry about my horrible grammar. Your refund is in the mail.
Pengun- if you want to invite in a raving tied up lunatic into your house for some back bacon and Elsinore, be my guest. I dont take kindly to raving lunatic strangers so he was not allowed to see the inside of my domicile without risking personal injury. The cops told me I did the right thing. I also know I did.
I never considered that the guy was being chased by the cops. I just figured he was on drugs and crazed and i was concentrating on keeping my family between me and him and the back door in case this guy was a diversion for a break in elsewhere.
The real question isn’t why you own a gun, but rather why anyone else doesn’t. With very few exceptions, every adult has a moral obligation to possess, and know how to use, a gun.
It is the responsibility of every adult to protect the peace and safety of the community at all times. Most of the time, we delegate that responsibility to certain community members under law but we never know when circumstances may arise in which those delegated under law cannot or will not act.
If you don’t have the means to protect yourself, you can’t protect your family, your neighbors or your community. Those who refuse to own and use guns become a parasite on the more responsible members of the community. The immoral parasitism is all the worse if they are the type of person who advocates the use of the implied violence behind the force of law to micromanage the to coerce behavior changes in your fellow citizens. They advocated casting the shadow of violence over their neighbors but are to hypocritical and cowardly to take up arms themselves.
Only those who refuse to use violence in any form, even the implicit violence behind every law, have the right to claim a pacifist exceptions. These would be people like the Amish who interact politically only because the rest of us force them to. There are circumstances in which it would be unwise to keep a gun or other powerful tool around and individual or household owing to some dysfunction in the family. That is a practical exception not a moral one.
Every competent adult has a equal moral obligation to assume the responsibility of engaging in violence when they, individually, judge it necessary. Every competent adult has a equal obligation to assume the moral burdens associated with using violence. Nobody gets a free ride. Everyone must run the same risk of lifetime of regret.
People who are proud that they don’t own guns and won’t use them aren’t morally superior. They a craven parasites who think like serfs. They believe that all men aren’t created equal and some wiser and greater than the common person are the only ones who can wield lethal violence. They’re wrong. We all have both the right and responsibility to do so.
So, the question is not, why do I own a gun but what is wrong with you that you dont’ own a gun.
Shannon, well put.
“When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
Mike I gotta remember that line. Of course these days they might be an hour away. If they come at all.
Dan – your story reminds me of a time – years ago – my aunt and uncle – both in their 70s at the time (now deceased) had someone banging on their door at 3 in the morning. They lived in an 200 year old family farm, with their private driveway 200 yards in from the country road. A good mile from the next house.
Damn right they didn’t let him in.
You do and they are up to no good suddenly they have control over you. Or you’re fighting for your life and that of your family.
Shannon – right on. Those who sanctimoniously claim that not having a firearm is the morally superior route are society’s parasites.
Pengun,
“Oh BTW Humans are not my favorite species.”
We know.
>>> What impressed me most about Dan’s story is the plight of the poor guy trying to get help for a life threatening situation and being met with guns and baseball bats. How sad is that?
It’s problematic but it’s funny-not-ha-ha. It’s ok to leave the “protection” to the police, but… hey, the police were on the way. So they were gonna “protect” this guy as much and as fast as the homeowner could have, were he unarmed.
Bit of a disconnect, there.
It mainly has to do with timing, the situation, and so forth. Some weirdo comes banging on my door at 4am tied up, I’m not likely to let him in, either. I’ll call the police, but I’m not letting someone in if *I* don’t have a gun to protect myself, and probably not even then.
The days when you knew all your neighbors have, unfortunately, faded. The loss of community is a problem. And that’s what’s really the issue you’re discussing, not guns.
Yes, when you break down the anti-gun argument it often amounts to: You should rely on other people to protect you but you must not attempt to protect yourself. Why this is so is rarely or never explained.
“I/you/they don’t need a gun” is a reckless statement, like telling people that they don’t need and should not have seat belts or fire extinguishers. These are inherently issues for individuals to decide for themselves, and anyone who says otherwise is too foolish or arrogant to be trusted with authority. The argument that we know better than you how you should live, and that you must defer against your own judgment to other people’s opinions about your intimate personal decisions, is incompatible with representative govt or a free society.
Anon: Remind me never to get in trouble in the US. If you get get screwed up around here the locals will do their best to help you out.
Yeah, in England, it’s so much better… You are defending your house from thugs and toughs breaking into your house, you shoot someone, YOU go to jail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer)
Or model Mylene Klass, who was told by British police not to brandish a knife at some young thugs who were in her yard, looking into her home, clearly contemplating their chances… while she was there alone with her daughter.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/10/myleene-klass-knife-intruders
Or how about this one:
Munir Hussain, 53, discovered three masked men in his house when his family returned from their local mosque during Ramadan in September last year.
The burglars tied up and threatened to kill Hussain and his family but a teenage son managed to escape and alert Hussain’s brother, Tokeer.
The intruders fled when help arrived at the house in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, but the brothers chased and caught one, Walid Salem, a criminal with more than 50 previous convictions. He was then subjected to what Judge John Reddihough described as a “dreadful, violent attack” by the Hussain brothers.
[Hussain] was jailed for 30 months.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/14/jail-brothers-burglar-cricket-bat
Oh, and lest one consider only the UK to be a nasty place, there’s the guy who was arrested for shooting at three masked men who were firebombing his home… Clearly the shooter is a dangerous looney. :-S
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/01/20/man-faces-jail-after-protecting-home-from-masked-attackers/
Then, back in the UK, there’s this one:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9516776/Farm-tenant-arrested-after-burglars-shot-was-plagued-by-break-ins.html
In many of these cases, these are thugs with long, double-digit rap sheets.
I’m with Machiavelli:
“Among other things, being disarmed causes you to be despised.”
– Machiavelli –
…Particularly by the enforcement lapdogs of the ruling class, who ALWAYS have armed guards, strangely enough.
“Rules for thee, but not for me”. The first sign of encroaching despotism.
Shannon – since most of the time Amish live in agrarian places and agricultural type lives, I would recommend they own a decent long gun, to prevent livestock depredation and in the case that they need to put an animal down (and for the occasional meal, but not sure if this is allowed). But I am certainly no expert in their customs and don’t know if guns are permitted in their world. To me, in this case, a gun would just be another tool.
Dan, my neighbor had a similar incident a while back; a guy pounding on the door late at night, saying he lived down the block and needed to come in and use the phone, as his mother needed an ambulance.
My neighbor happens to be active in the local community citizens board, has two dogs he walks regularly (the best way to meet your neighbors)… and had absolutely no idea who the door pounder was. My neighbor said he’d call 911 for help, but that he wasn’t letting him in the house.
At that, the door pounder took off. His mother must have had a miraculous recovery.
Dan from Madison: The Amish who operate puppy mills routinely shoot their unwanted animals, so I know they own and use firearms.
Dan from Madison: I’ll bite: when was this? I don’t remember reading about it. True, I never see mention in the paper of the police visits in my neighborhood (Sun Prairie), or most of the fires I’ve seen around town, but this one sounds juicy enough to have made page 3.
It was 8 or 9 years ago. It was kept very under wraps for whatever reason. I am guessing the politician involved. Can’t remember his name.
I suppose that when you are tied up and running for your life it is important to talk softly to strangers from whom you need help. There is an overwhelming urge to scream and shout and be dramatic because that is what they do in the movies. It makes good theatre.
So next time you are tied up, bloody and on the run keep calm, low key and be polite. And try not to bleed on the carpet or the upholstery.
9-1-1 as Dial-a-Prayer. That’s why I keep a 45 under my couch cushion and a home defense shotgun next to the nightstand. Then there’s the seven guns in the gun safe and the several thousand rounds…..
“People who are proud that they don’t own guns and won’t use them aren’t morally superior. They a[re] craven parasites who think like serfs”
Or they are lying. A good example is Jennifer O’Neill. She had been speaking out (Her second occupation after her nine marriages) about evil guns when she accidentally shot herself with a .38 that mysteriously materialized in her bedroom.
At age 34, O’Neill suffered a gunshot wound. Police officers in the Westchester County town of Bedford, New York, who interviewed the actress, said that on October 23, 1982, she shot herself accidentally in the abdomen with a .38 caliber revolver at her Bedford mansion while she was trying to determine if it was loaded.[9]
Proper instruction is also important.
I have been a Buddhist most of my life. I will not be shooting anyone as it is not what a good Buddhist will do. I need no gun in Canada anyway. We don’t regard them as a necessary thing.
A question to all you supposed Christians. Is there not some help your neighbor stuff rather strongly emphasized in the Bible? Risking yourself to do someone good? I haven’t looked at the Bible since I became a Buddhist and that was a long time ago but I remember something like that.
“I have been a Buddhist most of my life.”
No surprise. Trendy. You and Richard Gere.
So … you have these ten commandments as a Christian. I remember one said “Thou shalt not kill”, is that right?
Mike K I was a Christian until, I spent a lot of time in Chapel in private school, I read the back of the Anglican Common Book of Prayer. That convinced me that the religion was bull. It was obvious that it was a screed of hatred. The Jews are damned because they are not Christians … WTF.
Anyway I guess it was about 1965 or so I started to look at the Buddhist religion and in a fairly short time became one. I am very pleased to have come to a path with a heart and will die a Buddhist.
Don’t you feel just a bit strange insulting me because of my religion?
The commandment is not to murder. It isn’t not to kill. There is no Judeo/Christian prohibition against self-defense.
Religion aside, to refrain from self-defense is to give priority to your attacker’s welfare over your own. That is perverse. You are welcome to choose such a course of action for yourself, but to force other people to submit to attackers rather than fight back is evil.
For the benefit of our Canadian and overseas readers, the police in many areas have been advising citizens for years not to open the door to a stranger coming and pounding on the door demanding help for some crisis or other, especially in the middle of the night. Tell them you’ll call 911 for them, pass a cellphone through a window … but do not open the door. Very often this has been a ruse for a home-invasion robbery,or worse.
“Don’t you feel just a bit strange insulting me because of my religion?”
If you are a better Buddhist than Richard Gere, then congratulations. I still think it is trendy and full of phonies in the US. In Asia, it is a different matter. The Buddhists were driven out of India by another “peaceful ” religion and not Christianity.
I wonder if you have ever read “Round the Bend” by Neville Shute? It is about a man who embodies Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. Shute was a bit of a mystic in some of his books.
I am not a very good Catholic but I still think Judaism and Christianity are the best option for the western mind. Personally, I am agnostic. When I was in college, I did a lot of reading about the origins of Christianity, especially some of the work of Albert Schweitzer. One of my medical school classmates spent a summer with him. Today, nobody but old fogies like me knows who he was. He was a great man. Greater than I could ever hope to be. Fortunately, he did not live to see what became of Africa.
It wasn’t an insult but I suspect you feel insulted a lot.
My favorite and why I am not a Christian:
“You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God,visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,”
A petty revengeful god. The religions of the book, all three, are based on fear of punishment. Not for me.
In a place where everyone has a gun it becomes the solution. The old saw about someone with a hammer tends to solve problems as if they were nails is very true.
Good luck with your heavily armed country.
Jonathan,
“You should rely on other people to protect you but you must not attempt to protect yourself. Why this is so is rarely or never explained. ”
One of the best things ever written on this subject.
Yes, a brilliant essay.
Good luck with your heavily armed country.
Says the guy whose own country catches a free ride from the US military.
PenGun,
Did you miss this story?
Yo, Assistant Village Idiot:
I in fact studied linguistics under Gleason and am fluent in some 8 languages.
OK, you demand a point of argument: Explain how it is you decline a verb while everybody else conjugates verbs and declines nouns and adjectives.
What is it again that you want to debate?
“PenGun,
Did you miss this story?”
Of course not. That is his optimal outcome. Remember that Canada was settled by the French and the American colonists who fled the Revolution and wished to continue under English rule. England is now prosecuting subjects who try to defend their homes. When I was there about five years ago, a prominent man was murdered in his doorway by criminals who had no fear of encountering an armed homeowner. It was in Chelsea and was a large home. Another homeowner was arrested for driving off hooligans who were throwing rocks through his windows. He was armed with a piece of wood.
I have been visiting the UK almost annually for thirty years, During that time, crime has increased almost exponentially. The crime rate is even said to exceed South Africa which I find hard to believe. It is certainly the highest in Europe. I used to feel safe walking through London around Mayfair and Trafalgar Square at night. One visit about 1985 included walking out the back door of Brown’s Hotel about midnight. The next night an American tourist was stabbed to death at the same spot. That was before the real spike in London crime.
PenGun wants to be a slave, he thinks it will be comfortable. The Ancients were said to at times envy their slaves.
Your real challenge is to face this: since so many think like him – see a month ago – can you face the world they’ve chose for all if they are allowed and decide that if there’s going to be Masters and they’re are already, that being so are you going to be a slave?
Or a Master?
PenGun and his fellow ProgTards are not only unworthy masters failing the Prime Requirement – Stronger – they are ruinously corrupt and bankrupting financially and morally. They also don’t offer protection, another Prime requirement FAIL. What they offer is a check from bankrupts, degeneracy across the board, the most obscence dandy’s in History against which Rome and the Orient pale, and for us south of 54/40 [so kindly f*ck off] offer not Toronto but the United States of Detroit..
What is to be done?
Who is going to rule Whom?
Sorry about the self government and democracy kids, we pissed it away.
However – the Brave and the Worthy may still preserve and even restore their Liberties.
Not however by talk, and I daresay not by voting.
Mike –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19638439
Apparently since the fall of the iron curtain obtaining fully auto AK-47s – and even hand grenades – are available for those so inclined
The Midlands of England is a deteriorating zone of poor education, unemployment and crime. It represents very similar pathology to the situation in American black ghetto zones. The difference is that most of the pathology involves whites. American crime and murder rates have been higher than those in Europe because of the black inner city areas. The crime rate of white Americans has been at or below European rates for many years. The statistics have allowed Europeans to boast but do not represent the true situation in America. Now, the crime rates in England are rising although the racial situation does not apply. It is a combination of cultural decadence and the prevention of self defense.
This may have much to do with the exodus of English retirees to France where they are settling in rural French areas that have become depopulated in recent years. There was a time when I was thinking of it myself. There are villages in south east France near the Swiss border that are 100% English speaking.
The writer Anthony Daniels, who now lives in France, has written quite a bit about the social pathology of the Midlands cities. He writes as Theodore Dalrymple.
“Says the guy whose own country catches a free ride from the US military.”
In what way? An explanation please.
“PenGun,
Did you miss this story?”
How convenient, quotes already attached.
We have new people in the area. So far they have kept to themselves but for some reason have heavily fenced their property. Lets hope they don’t start weird nonsense here.
The guy in the story did little to fit into his rural area. A big mistake. Offing stray chickens is the act of a townie and could be forgiven if compensation was offered. Deciding to ignore that and the locals is pretty stupid.
I don’t condone fire bombing his house but if you don’t fit into a rural area pulling a hand gun on the locals a huge mistake. The last murder around here was a local rounder and associate of the boys. He decided to turn on them and talk to the cops. Go figure, 30-06 from about 75 yards, two shots, never solved. The fire bombers just wanted him gone.
Slightly off topic,but Theodore Dalrymple is arguably the most interesting essayist around. See this description of the hopeless mess the UK has become.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/128528/sec_id/128528
Remarkable what a completely incompetent intellectual class can do to a society, if they try hard enough and if the public is gullible enough to submit. When I first visited Britain in 1968 it was a very orderly,civilized country. Such is not the case now.The only big improvement is that the food is very much better.
“The only big improvement is that the food is very much better.”
I hink you mean that it is much better in London. I agree, That may be affected by the influx of French entrepreneurs and IT workers. As someone in France wrote a few years ago, “France has a Silicone Valley. It is just in the Thames estuary.” The French Socialist Party seems determined to keep them there. When I was first in LOndon, in the early 70s, the food, except for fish and chips which I like, was pretty bad.
A few years ago, I was attending a meeting in Birmingham accompanied by my daughter who was in a Vegan phase. We had dinner in a Bangladeshi restaurant our host recommended. She threw up all the way back to our hotel. It gave a sort of authenticity to the restaurant. She was cured of her Vegan beliefs by a year in Spain. She told me that a Vegan would starve to death in Spain.
I posted why I carry a semiauto pistol here: “Why I am an armed pastor.” Different reasons than this post’s writer.
My own rules of engagement are simple:
1. 1. I carry a pistol to defend myself and my loved ones, not to defend you. A carry permit does not make me the Fist of Justice. It does not give me police powers. If I face criminal danger in public, my number one choice will be to flee, not fight. Having no other choice, I will draw or use my pistol to save my children, my wife, myself. Not you. If you are an adult, no one is more responsible for defending you than you. If you find yourself unarmed and needing defending, it is because you decided to be. Bluntly put, I am not going to put my life at risk to subsidize your stupid decision. I might be morally justified in defending you with lethal force, but I am not morally obligated to do so.
2. I will not put my life at risk to protect property. Nothing I own is worth risking death for. Nor is it worth killing for. So I will not shoot someone just to protect property. But if someone attempts to rob me or invade my home, my default setting is that they also mean to do me and/or my family harm. That doesn’t mean I will automatically shoot the evildoer, but he shouldn’t count on my restraint, either.
Good comment Donald Sensing, thanks for leaving it.
What a strange story. Let me see if I get this straight.
A poor guy gets beat up, tied up, and then he manages to escape. He seems desperately to need some help and he gets met with a baseball bat? You are so full of fear that you cannot figure this out – even though his hands are bound?
And the lesson of this experience is ….. need to get a gun????
What would you have done with a gun? What would have been an alternative outcome if you had been armed?
Joe C., It is not a pertinant and it is a silly question you have asked. You could just as well ask “what if one the perps that tied him up were close on his heels”. Use some common sense. No harm would have been done by Dan if he had a gun in the reality, if a dangerous situation had developed (surely you agree that the twisted trio could have developed into other, even more dangerous scenarios) he may have been able to protect himself and his people.
I thought Joe C had given up on us dullards as not being worthy of his attention. Worse luck, he’s back. With even less wisdom.
“No harm would have been done by Dan if he had a gun in the reality”
Well, I sure hope you are right Tyouth. I certainly was not making an assertion to the contrary. But I just find it so strange that he draws this conclusion from his story.
Don’t get me wrong here. I am not an anti-gun person. I am not particularly pro-gun either. Some of the people I respect the most in this world own lots of guns, and I don’t have a problem with that.
What I am not particularly cool with is people who are not in control of their emotions waving guns around. Now, I realize it would be a bit of an exaggeration to pin that on Dan, but I read about him shouting at the top of his lungs, screaming at his wife, waving a bat around, and threatening this guy who was innocent, was basically begging for help, and whose hands were bound! That is not exactly the type of sober control that one wishes from someone with a lethal weapon in their hand.
And how does he draw this lesson from this incident? He seems to have been given proof that a baseball bat is all the weaponry one needs against an innocent, beat up man begging for help with his hand bound. How can you draw the conclusion from this incident that one needs to go out and get a gun? That was my question, and I still can’t imagine the answer. Wouldn’t a better lesson be that one may need to work on ones emotional stability so as to better be able to suss out what is really going on in front of one nose? Before getting a gun?
Investigating the Link Between Gun Possession and Gun Assault
American Journal of Public Health, Nov. 2009
Shannon Love:
“If you don’t have the means to protect yourself, you can’t protect your family, your neighbors or your community. Those who refuse to own and use guns become a parasite on the more responsible members of the community.”
Classic paranoid fantasy.
The reason lots of people feel completely safe without guns is not because they’re expecting self styled, steel-jawed John Waynes, to come to their rescue, it’s because America today is actually a pretty safe place. Most people don’t live their lives at the razor’s edge of uncontrolled fear or rage and it is that, not guns, that make a society safe.
I’m no hero, but I have been in a handful of genuinely dangerous situations and not once have I wished I had a gun. I was always able to avoid the worst outcomes, by either talking my way out of it, or anticipating where a situation was going and quickly removing myself from the equation. It really isn’t that hard to do. In most real world situations, social skills are a far more potent weapon than guns.
“If you find yourself unarmed and needing defending, it is because you decided to be. Bluntly put, I am not going to put my life at risk to subsidize your stupid decision.”
Uh, spoken like a true pastor?
KT
“I’m no hero, but I have been in a handful of genuinely dangerous situations and not once have I wished I had a gun. I was always able to avoid the worst outcomes, by either talking my way out of it, or anticipating where a situation was going and quickly removing myself from the equation.”
Classic narcissim. Narcissists always think they can manipulate others with their behavior.
KT
“I’m no hero, but I have been in a handful of genuinely dangerous situations and not once have I wished I had a gun.”
Yeah, the flu is a bitch.
I don’t invite risky situations and have only seen a few. However, I sleep better with a gun I know how to use in the bedside table.
The American Public Health Association is the most left wing medical organization outside the old Soviet Union. I was once invited to join “The Physicians for Social Responsibility” which was being organized by a UCLA public health professor. They were big on trips to Cuba and single payer. All PH physicians, and those authors are PhDs on that paper, are government employees with appropriate political affiliation. The closest in left wing philosophy is the Academy of Pediatrics. All these associations are made up of bureaucrats and professors in medical schools.
Their studies are all baloney, such as eliminating those under 21 in Philadelphia. If you have survived to 21 in Philadelphia inner city, you are retirement age.
“those authors are PhDs on that paper”
which means they are more likely than MDs to understand how to do a research study.
“All these associations are made up of bureaucrats and professors in medical schools.”
And that means what, relative to the validity of this study? I think it obvious that a med school professor would be more likely to engage in solid research and to understand it than a clinician would.
“Their studies are all baloney, such as eliminating those under 21 in Philadelphia”
That sounds like a really thoughtful critique. Are you claiming that the findings have been biased by this exclusion? That amongst those under 21 (but still old enough to physically carry and use weapons) we should expect not to find high rates of gun ownership amongst shooting victims? What would lead you to such an assumption?
It sure sounds like you are one to decide the politics first, then judge the acceptability of the evidence based on how it supports or undermines your politics.
Mike_K: “Yeah, the flu is a bitch.”
LOL! Got a good chuckle from that. Thanks :)
The most dangerous situation I’ve been in was helping a guy who had just been stabbed in the back by a small time neighborhood dealer. I got him inside the door and blocked it as the assailant tried repeatedly to force his way in. Didn’t need a gun. All it took was jamming my foot against the bottom of the door. Problem solved
Second most dangerous was breaking up a no holds barred fight between two drunk roommates, one of whom was holding a large kitchen knife and the other had a large barbecue fork.