Friday, March 21, 2008

There Ought to Be a Law.....

A California woman was shot to death as she pleaded with emergency dispatchers to come and help her. Her death will not make the network news programs this evening, but this is the latest reminder that we must take responsibility for our own safety and not rely on the police. ATSRTWT

That is just wrong. We need a law against burglary! Oh, wait, that is against the law. We need a law against murder. Oh, that's against the law, too.

I know, we need a law that would keep honest citizens from having a gun, to defend themselves against people who break the law. That's a law we could enforce.

But....hmmmmmm....hard to say why that would help. Why would taking a gun away from ME take away the guns from the hands of people who we already know ignore the laws? It's just a non sequitur. If that woman had had a gun, she wouldn't have been on the phone, begging for help that didn't come. A republican citizenry has an obligation to participate in their own self-defense, and a free people have a right to do so.

Are we a free republican people, or not?

(nod to Instapundit, via AH)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Are we a free republican people, or not?"

We are well on our way to being an unfree Democratic people. The RINOs aren't any great thing but, to see the whole set of conditions note that there is high correlation between gun control, high gun crime, and having Democrats in charge.

randytsimmons said...

Just checked my gun cabinet--one 12 gauge, two 20 gauge, one 30.06, one .222, one .243, one .38 pistol, one .22 pistol, lots of ammo. The mayor is a free republican person.

Anonymous said...

There goes Cato again, providing it's hyperbolic crack to the judgment-impaired. You wouldn't know it from the quote, but Bill Masters is actually pretty reasonable about these sorts of things; here's a snippet from an interview he did a few years ago:

"Cops tend to go after drug people and execute drug warrants as if they are up against bank robbers, but more often than not, there aren't any guns. Yet here we were in full SWAT mode running around with no-knock warrants, endangering innocent parties in the home, children, roommates. When you look at the number of police killings, both the number of officers being killed and the number of people officers are killing have decreased, except when it comes to drug raids. Innocent people are being killed in drug raids because the informant is wrong, they hit the wrong house, the cops were too hyped-up and worried about their own protection. Our entire judicial district has taken a different stand: Now they are reluctant to give no-knock warrants because there were too many people killed, too many officers injured."

Get it?

Disarmed citizenry + gung-ho policing is an equilibrium.

Armed citizenry + limited policing is another.

(I know which I prefer.)

The first bit may well be correlated with Democratic control. But exactly which party is it that's responsible for the "drug war"?

Mungowitz said...

I'd say we have limited policing and an armed criminal class. That's a bad equilibrium.

Further, I would say that the Clinton administration is responsible for the drug war. The big increase in drug arrests, and incarcerations, took place under Clinton.

The reason: The Clinton Justice Dept was MASTERFUL at arranging for those innovative seizure and confiscation laws. Local police departments and county sheriffs found they could finance their operations from the seizing of money and property, often from people nearly completely separate from the drug "criminals."

Sure, the Repubs and Bush are no better. But this is not a partisan issue.

Still, PR, you do make a good point: It is terrifying to be a policeman in this atmosphere. But those folks are likely felons anyway. It is ALREADY illegal for them to have guns.

All gun laws would do is take away my guns, and the Mayor's guns. (The mayor of Providence, UT, not the mayor of DC).