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AmSpecBlog
Second Amendment Paradise
When I visited Pakistan several years ago I was struck by how every business seemed to have an armed guard. In Lahore the Pizzeria Uno had three armed guards in front. The doorman held a shotgun in his right hand as he opened the door with his left hand. Even the McDonald's had a fellow with an AK-47 sitting on a folding chair in front. Imagine blathering on to these people about gun control!
Now the Wall Street Journal reports that gun ownership is spreading throughout the middle class. When the government can't, or won't, protect you, what other choice do you have?
After escaping kidnappers who chained him to a bed for 25 days, Mohammad Javed Afridi pressed Pakistani law enforcement for swift justice. The police offered him something else: temporary permits for four automatic assault rifles.
Since Mr. Afridi's ordeal ended in mid-October, police in his hometown of Peshawar, in northwestern Pakistan, haven't made an arrest in his case. They raided the kidnappers' hide-out, but the captors got away, a senior Peshawar police official says.
So the cops allowed Mr. Afridi to arm himself against future abductions. The 35-year-old journalist now carries an AK-47 to work and back home to his wife and five children. Relatives rotate duty as his bodyguards. If his car is again stopped by armed men on a dark road, Mr. Afridi vows to shoot first.
"I'm not going through that again," he said in an interview in this city in northeastern Pakistan.
Guns have long been part of Pakistan's traditional culture, especially in the rugged northwestern part of the country. Handed down through generations, rifles have been used for hunting and for firing celebratory fusillades. Now, however, modern assault rifles and handguns have come into vogue among middle-class Pakistanis, and gun registration has jumped.
And the Left thinks it is bad here!
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Ben Miner| 1.6.09 @ 7:23AM
It is not, and never has been, the responsibility of the police to protect people. They have no legal duty to protect an individual. This has been confirmed by multiple court decisions.
Mark Lawrence| 1.6.09 @ 1:00PM
To the comment made by Ben Miner (or was it Been Mindless): and the sun also comes up in the East. I'm sure we could state other facts which are completely irrelevant to the story and assertion.
Interestingly, it is the accountability of the police to enforce local and national law - the theory being that societies which function within such a framework are more stable. We are, of course, assuming that kidnapping is a violation of the law in Pakistan. Get a clue.
gbcps12| 1.6.09 @ 1:32PM
I see the first thing you (MR Lawrence) write is an insult. Now why doesn't that surprise me? Mr. Miner is correct. Every time someone sues the police for not showing up while a crime is on going or shows up rediculously late the courts always throw the suit out saying it is the police's job to supply general protection not personal protection. If someone wants personal protection they must supply it themselves. In other words our courts have always rulled that officially you can't count on the police for personal protection. You MR. Lawrence are the one who needs to get a clue.
Deborah| 1.6.09 @ 2:27PM
After watching the chaos of Katrina, that's when I finally bought myself a gun and have gotten very comfortable with it. You can't count on anyone to protect you in your home but yourself. That's why gun control laws are so outrageous. If someone's breaking into my house -- they're going to have to deal with a woman with a gun and a man with a gun.
Derek| 1.7.09 @ 11:29AM
Mlawrence is seemingly the one "who needs to get a clue".
As gbcps12 pointed out, law enforcement is responsible for "general" protection and not "personal" protection. All too often people with these liberal attitudes towards gun ownership (and the belief that just making something illegal will stop the crime) end up on the wrong side of an attack by someone who does not care about the law. Just because something is illegal is not going to stop a criminal who by their very nature, do not obey the law! How hard is that for some people to understand?
The bottom line is that if you sincerely believe in your family's safety, you take steps to ensure that they are safe. That is why you rarely hear of gun owners being a victim of violent home attacks.
John from CA| 1.7.09 @ 3:13PM
I realize, Mr. Lawrence, that you've been chewed on a bit already, but you're just too tempting a target. Not only did you fail to recognize that the comment regarding the responsibility of the police in such matters was correct, you missed the most obvious point. The Pakistani police have arrived at the pragmatic conclusion that providing personal protection to every individual is logistically impossible, and would be an unreasonable demand on community resources, just as the U.S. courts have correctly concluded.
Notice, if you will, that the Pakistani police were not present to prevent the kidnapping. They were also unable to apprehend the kidnappers. They then allowed the victim to provide for his own defense, demonstrating a basic understanding of the same simple fact that the authors of our Second Amendment obviously understood; when any emergency occurs, be it a violent crime or a natural disaster, the "first responders" will be whoever is physically present at the event. You, sir, are apparently one of those people who will be curled up in a corner, whimpering and pounding ineffectually on the keypad of your cell phone, instead of doing anything useful. I refuse to submit to your demand that I be one as well.
cash| 1.8.09 @ 4:28PM
wooooooooooooooooooooooowwwww that is very very crazy how they did that. i think it was very dispicable