What Would You Do?

     Retiring Attorney General Eric Holder recently admitted that his greatest regret is not putting more gun control measures in place. You will remember the gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious run by the ATF, which allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico so they could be traced to drug cartels.  It didn’t work.  Those guns got to the bad guys who killed several people, including an American border guard, but the ATF lost track of them.

            You may also remember that Holder lied to Congress about this scandal.  Valerie Jarrett led the cover-up and Obama hid evidence against Holder by executive order. This is only one example of our lawless and duplicitous administration.

            Obama, the anointed one, is releasing droves of illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds out into our communities. Naturally, many of them have returned to their normal criminal behavior.  Watch what Obama does by executive order after the election. 

            Following the lead of ISIS we now have psychotic Muslim fanatics killing at random in the U.S. and Canada.  If not for men with guns, many more lives would have been lost.  But many in government and outside government want to remove guns from law-abiding citizens. The young Canadian guard who was killed this week carried an unloaded gun. Politically correct, but dead.

            The average time for the police to respond to a call is 20 minutes.  Generally the police won’t even respond until a crime has been committed. So how do you protect your family?  

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            I have a true story for you.  This comes from a friend and is an example of why the law-abiding citizens should consider carrying a loaded weapon.

            I’ll call the man and wife in this story, Dick and Jane.  Dick and Jane were on their way to Oregon for a vacation and had pulled into a rest area for the night.  The rest stop was very close to the highway, which had a drainage ditch between the north and south lanes. 

            Dick happened to look out the window of his camper and saw a Highway Patrol officer walking from his patrol car to an abandoned car on the side of the road.  As the officer looked in the car with his flashlight, a man emerged from the ditch, walked up behind the officer, and put a bullet in his head.  The killer then looked around and became aware of the rest area with possible witnesses and began to walk toward to the campers.

            A young couple, who had evidently witnessed the killing, tried to run from their camper, stumbling, falling, and rolling in the bushes, but managing to escape as the killer shot at them.

            Seeing a light on in Dick and Jane’s camper, the killer began to walk toward their camper.  Dick had a 38 caliber revolver, but it was unloaded.  Big mistake.  He grabbed the gun and finally found the shells, but the killer was closing and staring intently at the small window in the camper.

            Dick’s hands were shaking uncontrollably as he tried to load the gun, but the shells kept falling on the blanket. He frantically fumbled to pick them up and load them in the cylinder but was getting nowhere.   Dick knew he and Jane were in trouble when the killer, only steps away, pointed his gun in their direction, but Dick’s gun was still unloaded.

            Suddenly, an elderly man in a motor home parked nearby, stepped out holding a 44 Magnum with both hands.  The man fired one shot.  The killer flew several feet though the air, his lifeless body landing within feet of Dick and Jane’s camper. 

            The old man quietly turned and went back to bed in his motor home, while Dick held his unloaded 38 in his still shaking hands. I love the part where the old man went back to bed.

            I may have some of the details of this story wrong, but the point is that an unloaded gun is as useless as boobs on a nun.  You hope that you will never need a gun, but we have seen more than one case lately where a man with a gun shot a perpetrator and saved the lives of innocent people.

            In a life or death situation like the one described in the story, a potential victim is normally in a panic state and will not have time to search for a gun, open a gun safe, and load the gun. A potential victim may only have seconds, if that.  The gun should be easily accessible, yet out of a child’s reach.  It should be loaded and ready to go.  Many will disagree, but that’s my opinion.

            Gun ownership and a license to carry require serious thought.  Regarding the Second Amendment, Joyce Lee Malcolm, Professor of Constitutional Law rightly said, “...leniency toward criminals contrasts starkly with severity toward the law-abiding citizen's right to defend himself or herself."   It is true that the law will not be on your side even if you are justified in defending yourself.  You may face trial, a lawsuit, adverse publicity, and other problems.

            But ultimately, it’s our responsibility to protect ourselves and our families.  The law may not be sympathetic to that philosophy, but, as someone said, “I’d rather be judged by a jury of 12 of my peers than to be carried by 8 pallbearers.”  

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I’ll write more on this subject in the future.  Gayle and I are both licensed to carry concealed weapons.  We’ve been through the training, testing, and vetting process with the FBI and the County Sheriff, so the authorities have cleared us and are aware that we are gun owners. In today’s climate, I’m not sure I’d write on this topic otherwise.