When some uniquely shocking piece of violence occurs, there is a
tendency for the proponents of this or that approach to crime
prevention to make noises about enshrining their notions in
legislation.
The gun toters are pro citizens hefting arms to take the ‘hoods
in hand, turning the hoods from pros into cons. Law enforcement
pros often vote con, fearing that civilians with arms will take the
law into their hands, things will get out of hand, and more cons
will become pros. The cons also vote con, preferring to be fingered
only by pros and not ham-handed householders holding them in their
houses. Your man in the street votes pro, even if he cannot
actually handle his arms under fire, because he wants to con the
pro hood at least wondering.
The other view favors taking the lead against crime by taking
the lead from the criminals. Remove the weapon from his hands and
the bully becomes a coward. They gun for all the guns, and they
think they have a shot. Take away Elmer Fudd’s Wesson and teach him
a lesson; take Captain Black’s Smith and you catch his .22; take a
Philly mobster’s Colt and his lucky horseshoe won’t help him. If
there is no piece, there may be peace. Make the rods hot, tell the
gats to git, make the slugs sluggish, throw the gun slang back at
the gunslingers until they have gone slinking away.
Then there is the third group, guys like me who caution against
haste and deciding under the… er, gun. Right after a horrible
incident is not a time conducive to making rational long-term
judgments. On the other hand, that hands-pushing-down calming
gesture can’t be used forever. At some point, it becomes necessary
to rethink our prevailing approach. In fact, the Talmud tells of
many laws that were instituted because of specific events. For
example, they made it illegal for a woman to walk ahead of her
young child after one kid was kidnapped from behind his mom.
In the wake of the Virginia Tech shooter and the Amish massacre
of helpless schoolchildren, one Oregon schoolteacher argues that
current “safety plans” are anything but safe. “If somebody
threatening comes in, you try to avoid eye contact and do whatever
they say.” That is the current strategy in place at her school
district. Sound a little outdated? A lot naive? I thought so
too.
She is a scrappy little lady named Shirley Katz, and she is not kidding around,
despite having a name composed from two classic movie jokes. (1.
The old Marx Brothers standby: “Surely you jest!” “Stop calling me
Shirley!” 2. From Paradise Lost: “What do you call a woman
who sleeps with cats?” “I don’t know.” “Mrs. Katz!”) Among other
modern appurtenances no woman should be with out, she sports an
abusive ex-husband and a concealed-carry permit. Only the school
district, which entrusts her with the tender minds of the children,
does not trust her with the callused bodies of the adults.
She is going to court, a place she cannot take her gun because
the judges don’t trust her (“Bring your suit and case but don’t
pack”), to see if she can get a judge to school the school into
having the judgment to trust her with bringing a gun into their
place. That sounds like a doomed mission, equivalent to
cold-calling Hillary Clinton to try and sell her a subscription to
The American Spectator. Still, she is bringing an
important message out into the public square; Shirley, I mean, not
Hillary. The inner circle of elitists are not likely to buy it, but
sometimes the public can square the circle.
Is she right? After all, we do abide by the gun-free concept
under air travel conditions, though not in our air-conditioned
abodes. I think the correct approach is that we do not relinquish
the private right of defense unless the public sector assumes the
obligation completely. In the airports, a police-state regime takes
over and we have made a national compact to cede that portion of
our autonomy. But only because there is conspicuous and
comprehensive coverage of the affected area.
Unless a school system, or a college campus, is capable of
instituting a very manpower-intensive police presence, they simply
have not replaced the equalizing effect of a personal weapon. To be
honest, I have not seen campuses and schools stepping up to that
level. We need more folks of Shirley’s caliber.
