Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Guns save people

gun

Guns Save People, Again

A 19-year-old thug tried to rob a 23-year-old man in the stairwell of his apartment building in Philadelphia. He walked up to the man, pistol-whipped him, and shot him in the leg.
He met some difficulties, though. The mother of the victim heard the commotion from her apartment upstairs, grabbed her legally owned gun, got out and shot the robber. He died immediately, with a wound in his chest.
Robbers we will have, always. Armed they will be, always. Whether laws limit gun ownership or not, criminals are criminals exactly because they don’t care for the laws.
This one is interesting, though. It happens in an apartment building. Nothing wrong with apartment buildings. People who want to spend less on housing, or can’t afford to spent much – especially under the blessings of Obamanomics – find apartment buildings a blessing. Nothing wrong to not be wealthy – in fact, throughout history most people lived on $3 dollars a day, in 2012 prices. Life is still life, and we can enjoy it.
And defend it. Being poor doesn’t mean your life is less valuable than if you are rich. You have the same right to defend it as the rich person.
Having said that, this brings me back to the Democrat obsession with gun control. Some readers will probably remember Emanuel Cleaver: the Congressman who claimed that a Tea-Partier spat on him while walking up to the Capitol building to vote for Obamacare. The video released later showed that Cleaver lied through his teeth, and that there was no spitting at all. If anything, it was Cleaver who poked his finger in the guy’s face, a rude and unacceptable act even between friends, let alone between strangers.
But few know that Cleaver is also very anti-gun. And in his own state, Missouri, he is known as the politician that said that poor people who live in apartment buildings should be banned from having guns. They are poor because of a flaw in their character, and therefore they shouldn’t be trusted with guns. The obvious problem, that a person needs protection the most when they live in apartment buildings – not when they live in gated communities – did not even cross his mind. After all, he’s a politician, and why would he care.It will be unfair to Cleaver if we focus on him only. The truth is, this elitist view about personal protection is shared by all Democrats and by many Republicans. Guns save people – especially poor people – but saving people’s lives is not part of the political agenda. What’s more important is disarming the population so that only the government has all the guns – as it was in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Of course, politicians are exempt from it. Secret Service can keep their guns. Politicians’ lives are valuable; more valuable than the lives of the poor people.
It is hard to imagine the tragedy that would have happened if the “pistol-packing mother” in the news above didn’t have a gun. Her son would have been robbed, and may be even killed. The robber would have gotten away, and then would have robbed another person. And another. And another. Criminals never stop. They only get stopped. The tragedy that would have happened, is happening everywhere in Europe. Every time there is a robbery, or a massacre like the recent ones in Norway and in Belgium, people’s lives would have been saved if there was one decent person with a gun. But there wasn’t. There were many decent people with no guns, and a criminal with a gun. And the police was minutes away.
Guns save lives. Especially poor people’s lives.

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