Thursday, February 4, 2010

‘Safer Streets 2010: How many guns are enough?‘
  Guns/Self-defense piece by John Longenecker

Leftists are always limiting freedoms. Our Constitution limits only one thing: Government powers, and in doing so, affirms freedom. Sometimes there aren’t two sides to an issue when it comes to liberty. As if there were two sides to safer streets, leftists tend to ask provocative questions which wind up only provoking people, especially free Americans. They ask irritating questions as if they’re crafted to vex, as if they have no answer, and as if the question itself were an accusation. One of the best ways to short-circuit a liberal is to take that question in front of others such as an audience and then answer it.

Every problem is an opportunity this way, and when it comes to leftists, every question they craft to accuse gun owners is actually a chance to educate the electorate. .

Try this on for size. How many guns are enough? At first, it might feel as if the answer is unknowable, or that it could be only a matter of opinion, but it’s really a chance to educate Americans, and that includes 2010 candidates.

I was upgrading my concept of the CPR Corollary and I ran across the 1974 quote that Seattle was “.. The best place to have a heart attack.“ When the show aired on Sixty Minutes thirty-six years ago, and the voice-over said that line, I was trained by then that CPR was not just for heart attacks, but for any case of choking, apnea, or when the heart stops, any age. As always, CPR is not for the dead and dying, but for the viable.

The thing that made Seattle “..the best place to have a heart attack” was not only the Paramedics, but the training of Citizen CPR, the basis of my comparison. If I recall correctly, Seattle took a great deal of pride in a goal of training citizens in CPR, too, and that goal was one out of ten, if I remember right. I had gone on to recommend over the years to heavy industry, amusement parks, and our own Los Angeles Board Of Supervisors that large expanses of property or campus should have at least one out of ten persons trained in CPR and not rely exclusively on people who cannot easily leave their post, such as Courthouse Sheriff Deputies, nor is it acceptable for employees or counselors or teachers to do absolutely nothing while awaiting the Squad.

How does the concept of The CPR Corollary translate yet again into an identity of values for the concealed carry of handguns?

That’s the easy part; in asking the question of how many guns are enough, we are not talking about how many guns are owned by any single person, but how many guns are worn CCW in any given community, the most central question, really. My answer is one out of ten.

Los Angeles – along with other communities around the union – is facing early release of thugs and cutbacks in assets. It is most reasonable to expedite the goal that of one out of ten citizens be armed with a loaded handgun now more than ever before.

How does this work, exactly, to the interests of a community?

There are five features of comparison in the CPR Corollary which make it identical to Concealed Carry of Handguns or vice-versa. This is feature #6, the idea that both should strive for a goal of public education and intervention as optimal safety for person and community when in the absence of first responders. The main idea is that it is a one-sided issue, and that there is no room for opposing views. After all, who could be for the criminal? It would be like letting somebody die for lack of CPR. Anti-gun means anti-liberty and pro-crime by interfering with and discouraging self-defense. Gun control abandons the people by letting them die. After all, gun control activists do not have to live with the consequences of your taking their advice.

There can’t be two sides about safer streets in 2010, and being anti-gun means you’re against safer streets.

If one out of every ten adult citizens carried a loaded handgun wherever they had a right to be, and if they are faithful to taking training as so many gun owners do, it could change the entire complexion of how crime is managed in this country. How? Well, for one thing, it would be from the ground up. All authority in this country rises from the electorate. An armed citizenry would be one of the first areas of affirmation of this, would it not?

Second, not everyone needs to own and carry a gun, and thugs aren’t always impressed with the concept until the numbers are known to rise. Once a community is better armed, thugs are better impressed. Things then change in favor of the community. Because, then, the issue is not that someone might be armed, but that enough are.

John Longenecker
http://goodforthecountry.com/

Posted by John Longenecker on 2/4/10 at 11:04 AM
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