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July 11, 2003
Guest Editorial
[This was originally posted as comment to Mind Altering Substance. As the comment was very long, I contacted the author of the comment and asked if it could be turned into a guest editorial. He agreed and here it is. Please note that the opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the author not my personal opinions. If you too would like to air an opinion in the form of a guest article, leave a comment and I will email you directly. Thank you for Howard for providing comments and a thoughtful followup. I have not posted Howards contact details, but I am sure he will check the comments section of this article if you would like to thank him.]
WE'RE VICTIMS BECAUSE WE ALLOW OURSELVES TO BECOME VICTIMS - A. Solzhenytsin
Since 1948 I have driven through 46 out of the 48 continental states, the minimum mileage was 30 thousand annually and the maximum close to 60 thousand, until 1982. (Nowadays it runs about 12 to 15 thousand miles per year). In those days I carried a few hundred dollars in cash, and tens of thousands of dollars in merchandise with me, so I was vulnerable. I had locked cages in the car and an alarm as well. One thing I do know is that most of those miles were very lonely ones, and many times I didn't see more than three, four or five Hiway Patrol cars during the whole day while driving several hundred miles on the open road.
When you read the news, you'll find that the police are almost never at the scene of a murder, not in 1 out of 100 cases. They are almost never at the scene of a hold-up or bank-robbery either, again not even in 1% of the cases. They are not at the place of an assault or a burglary, nor are they often present even when riots begin. That also means that crimes are committed and people become victims before the law is on the scene! To me it proves that essentially we are responsible for our own well being almost all of the time, so we should always be alert and ready to protect ourselves and our belongings.
One evening in the mid-1950s a car with two burly guys in it suddenly came up alongside mine and tried to force me off the road in a lonely section of the redwood highway (California), but I out-maneuvered them, and then for almost 30 miles they played tag with me, trying to stop or wreck me, but I decided that if that's their game there will be two wrecked cars in the trees, not one. It was an area in which other lone salesmen had been reported beaten up and robbed. As I raced into Ukiah, they dropped behind and I saw them turn around and head the other way. I called the police, but because no crime had been committed (I had not been robbed or killed) they told me they had no reason to radio for a pursuit!
After that I carried a loaded gun in the car, and if I had to stop and rest, it was always under my pillow. My safety, I realized, was up to me, and I was not going to become another statistic, at least not without a fight. Once I apprehended a thief who had just robbed my car of a $500 camera and a $200 typewriter, recovering both, but without using the gun.
In the book, Gulag Archipelego, Alexandre Solzhenytsin says: "We're victims because we allow ourselves to become victims."
History of Being Victims
My grandmother was beaten up (in Philadelphia) so badly by a mugger that she spent several days in the hospital. My mother had her purse snatched twice. My wife was beaten up by a purse-snatcher. My son was punched in the face by a thug who played for a college football team, and the guy grabbed his pizza and walked away with his buddies while casually eating it. He was also held up at knife-point by two guys and robbed of $20 in a fashionable section of L.A. A good friend's son had his throat slashed ear to ear for $40 while driving a taxi, but survived. Then there were two burglaries, one a car burglary of twelve thousand dollars worth of imported sporting goods (uninsured) and a house burglary of certain very personal items, including souvenir guns from WWII. The area around the home was controlled by a Latino gang, and neighbors reported seeing some of them in the area at the time.
After they broke into my son's 82' Buick Grand National twice and did $800 damage to the dash and ignition each time while trying to steal it, he brought a shotgun to his office. Then one night he heard the car parked behind the building start and he went racing outside with the gun. When the two thieves saw that gun, both doors opened and they fled down the alley. You see, he had by that time decided not to be a victim. Was it dangerous? Of course. Yet there are times when you have to accept danger as a part of living, right?
In these incidents, for whatever it is worth, seven of the thieves were black, six Latino, and two white. Does this mean we dislike anyone because of their race or that I am a racist. No, not at all. On the other hand, if you rob me or stick a gun in my face, I am damn well going to take cognizance of who in the hell you are, and that does not make me a racist. It makes me simply someone who ses their common sense and whatever brains God gave them, to recognize things as they stand.
Anti-gun Nuts
Anti-gun people give me a pain in the ASS.
The 2nd Amendment recognized the citizen's right to gun ownership for two reasons;
a) We were a nation in which violence on our frontiers was a way of life, because it was a continuing battle as we spread from coast to coast.
b) We were all part of a loose-knit militia meant to keep this land of ours free, and as an armed citizenry we were not going to be subject to tyrannical rulers such as those in Germany and Russia in the 1930s, who simply imprisoned and executed people at will.
We were therefore given some control over our own destiny. Many countries do not offer us this chance, but as long as there is a 2nd Amendment I am going to exercise my right to protect myself and my family.
Another bit of History
Back in 1933, my father took cash for tickets to the Electric Ferries crossing from New Jersey to New York (before the Holland Tunnel), on a lonely stretch of road. He was held up by three Wise-guys, robbed, and made to lie on the floor in the back with a pistol to his head while they drove right past his co-workers and onto the boat. For more than two hours they joked about his fate, with one guy holding a gun to his head. At four a.m. they dropped him all a mile out into the boondocks in lower Brooklyn.
Well, his Boss told him to bring a gun to work, so he did. Two nights later as he was turned around, a car drove up and a voice said, "This is a stick-up." He snatched up his gun, whirled,and fired, mortally wounding the driver. The guy was the relief ticket-seller's best friend, but before he died he exonerated my father. Dad always carried a gun to work after that, but it was now a Starter's Pistol, firing blanks. He still carried it when he was in his 80's.
When he died in 1983, in his wallet was a small article from the New York Daily News from 1933 with the story. He had carried that reminder for more than 50 years. He had decided never, never to allow himself to become a victim again. The reason for that 2nd Amendment was to allow Americans the choice of not becoming Victims.
There are downsides to everything, but consider, for all the guns we have in this country, far more people are slaughtered by cars than by guns. Of those who wish to see us disarmed, many have other motives in mind, make no mistake about that and do all you can to fight off any attempt to repeal that amendment.
Remember, in the USSR more than 28 million people spent time in the Gulag, and millions died there. In Cuba, more than 10 thousand have been executed, and thousands more imprisoned. You can get twenty-five years simply for criticizing Fidel Castro. Neither of those countries have a 2nd Amendment to guarantee the citizens the right to keep and bear arms.
You simply don't need to allow yourself to be a victim. That's why the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution set it all out so clearly for you.
One more story, about a friend, Paul, who bought Indian jewelry on the remote reservations in Arizona and traveled to Los Angeles to sell them. He read stories in the papers of several jewelry salesmen being robbed and then killed in Nevada and Arizona, so he began carrying two guns for protection. Well, as he was walking down the street in Los Angeles a big guy ran up behind him and grabbed both jewelry cases and ran off with them. Paul shouted, "Stop, thief, or I'll shoot," and pulled out a gun, firing it into the air. The guy dropped both cases and kept running.
Well, by the time Paul got back to his car, he had three or four squad cars speeding up, and he was made to bend over the car while being kicked so hard his legs were black and blue for weeks. He got a year's probation for discharging a firearm in the city, but he also still had his hundred thousand dollar cases of jewelry.
Posted by Ozguru at July 11, 2003 10:07 AM
Comments
Posted by: pgc at July 11, 2003 10:07 AM
Posted by: Jivha - the Tongue at July 11, 2003 10:07 AM
