By no means am I implying that this column is twice as good as Dickens’ novel. Besides, he described a man who was loyal unto death, and I am describing people who are quite different.
West Hollywood, California
This city is sandwiched between Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. It is a stronghold of liberal causes. It is in the forefront of the fight to pass laws banning law-abiding citizens from owning guns.
First came bans on so-called “Saturday night specials,” which are said to be cheap, unreliable, inaccurate handguns. In fact, unreliable guns are already banned by federal and California laws. In fact, all handguns are accurate enough for close-range self-defense. So a ban on “Saturday night specials” is really a ban on inexpensive handguns. It is a ban on poor people defending themselves. Now there’s a worthy goal for self-proclaimed liberals.
Next came bans on “assault weapons,” a misnomer. In fact, assault weapons are actually light rifles capable of both full automatic and semiautomatic fire. They are machine guns, which have been severely restricted since the National Firearms Act of 1934. But the anti-gun elite in government and the media claim not to know about this 84-year-old law. So they use “assault weapon” to mean any rifle, shotgun, or pistol whose looks they don’t like. The beauty of this elastic term is that the government – in California, the attorney general – can arbitrarily define any gun as an “assault weapon” and ban it.
More recently we have a ban on .50 caliber rifles, which are expensive, heavy, long, unwieldy, and used by dedicated target shooters. But the anti-gun lobby banned them because they are “sniper rifles.” You see, “Saturday night specials” were banned because they are too inaccurate, but .50 caliber rifles were banned because they are too accurate. Any excuse will do, so long as it is useful in banning any type of gun.
So we have West Hollywood: anti-war, anti-gun, anti-self-defense, elitist.
Brooklyn, New York
The following news story speaks for itself:
Defend Your Family, Go to Jail
A Brooklyn man who shot and wounded an intruder while defending his family will spend three days in Rikers Island, the same jail housing the burglar who terrorized his home, because he owns an unregistered gun.
Ronald Dixon, a [black] 27-year-old father of two [and Navy veteran], caught an intruder rifling through drawers in his [two-year-old] son’s room early on Dec. 14.
“I went in…I looked in his face. I didn’t know this guy; I was so shocked…In a nervous voice I said, ‘What are you doing in my house?’ and he ran toward me yelling, ‘Come upstairs!’ like there were other people with him. I shot him ’cause I thought more people were in the house,” Dixon told the New York Daily News.
Dixon fired two shots from his 9 mm pistol, wounding the suspected burglar in the chest and groin.
“The only thing I could think about was my family − there was no telling what he would do to my children or girlfriend,” he told the paper.
Authorities charged Dixon with illegal possession of a firearm when they discovered his gun was not legally registered in New York, a charge that carries up to a year in prison.
When Dixon proved he had obtained the firearm legally in Florida and tried to register it in New York, the prosecutors agreed to a charge of disorderly conduct.
Dixon pleaded guilty to the disorderly conduct charge, which will allow him to do time without carrying a criminal record. Sentencing is scheduled for June 27, WINS Radio reports.
The intruder turned out to be Ivan Thompson, a career criminal with a 14-page rap sheet. Thompson has been arrested 19 times and been convicted of criminal trespass, burglary, and attempted assault. He currently is on parole until 2004 on burglary charges.
“Clearly [Dixon] was justified in shooting this burglar, and the burglar is going to get as much jail time as we can get him,” Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes told the News. But Hynes will not budge from his tough anti-gun policy.
Why a man with a 14-page rap sheet was free to roam the streets was not stated. But at least our government can protect us from people like Ronald Dixon, a veteran who was working two jobs to support his family – and only wanted to protect them from nocturnal intruders.
San Francisco, California
I grew up in this beautiful city, but it was different then. The Presidio, a large military reservation, was a few blocks from my home. I took ROTC in high school, and there was a rifle range in the school basement. But there were no shootings during my years there. Perhaps we formed a different impression of a gun by being handed our first one by a master sergeant with combat decorations than by the local gang leader. Perhaps we got the idea that a gun was a tool to defend freedom, not to rob liquor stores. There were no stabbings, either, though most boys carried knives – Boy Scout knives.
Every year we marched with active-duty troops in the Saint Patrick’s Day and Columbus Day parades, which were big events. People in uniform were respected – we knew to whom we owed our freedom.
But things changed. When Sen. Dianne Feinstein gathered private funds to build a World War II memorial around the battleship USS Iowa, the Board of Supervisors voted to refuse the offer. Apparently their anti-war stance would not allow them to honor those who had defeated Nazism and Japanese fascism, or even to tolerate the presence of the ship that had carried President Roosevelt.
Then the school board kicked out the 90-year-old ROTC program, claiming, “We need to teach a curriculum of peace.” Not explained was how to live in peace with Nazis. This question gained urgency when the city allowed a demonstration of marchers carrying pro-Hezbollah, anti-Israel, grossly anti-Semitic placards.
Apathy masquerades as pacifism, and self-hatred disguises itself as “seeing other people’s point of view.” But all that is accomplished is to enable terrorists and other enemies of freedom. Opposition to self-defense is suicidal – for individuals and for civilizations.
Blanchard, Oklahoma
Eighteen-year-old Sarah McKinley was home with her three-month-old son on New Year’s Eve. She lived in this rural community, and police response times tended to be long. Her husband was not with her; he had died of cancer on Christmas Day.
She saw two men attempting to break in. She recognized one as a man who had been stalking her since her husband’s funeral. Reportedly he was looking for drugs in the cancer victim’s home. She gave the baby his bottle, then retrieved a shotgun and a handgun and barricaded the door. She phoned 911 and asked what to do. She was told she could not shoot unless they came through the door. But the 911 dispatcher, who was a woman, added, “You do what you have to do to protect your baby.”
Sarah was on the phone with 911 for 21 minutes, and the police still had not arrived when the men broke down the door. The first man, the stalker, came at her with a 12-inch hunting knife. She fired the 12-gauge shotgun, killing the man. His companion fled, quite possibly breaking the Olympic 100-meter record. He later turned himself in to police.
Armed citizens protect themselves and others from violent criminals approximately 2.5 million times a year. Many people find this incredible, because they almost never read about these cases in major newspapers or see them on mainstream TV, which are biased against guns. But thousands of these events have been recorded.
We live in a dangerous world. There are violent criminals who would think nothing of murdering us. There are terrorist fanatics who would think nothing of unleashing nuclear, biologic, or chemical weapons on “infidels.” Terrorists and criminals are not “teaching a curriculum of peace.” Their lessons are rather different, but they learn them well. What lessons are we learning? Are we learning anything?
Which of the four cities will we emulate?
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