SO YOU BOUGHT A GUN TO DEFEND YOURSELF...

SO, YOU BOUGHT A GUN TO DEFEND YOURSELF…

Recently, a well know blogger in Prince William County wrote that if you wanted to rob someone, you should pick a home that had Obama stickers displayed on their car bumpers.  At the same time he cautioned that those same folks should not come by his place because he had a large National Rifle Association sign outside his home, thus implying that he was ready for all who might wish to do him or his family harm.  He brags about the fact that he is a gun owner, prepared to strike down anyone who choses to do him harm. This particular person is but one of thousands of Americans who own guns all in the name of self-defense.  

There are literally thousand of Americans who believe that the government has battalions of “brown shirt “ troops and squadrons of “black helicopters” just over the hill, waiting to deprive them of their personal liberties and weapons.  There are groups who are purchasing land in the northwestern part of our country with the idea of building fortified zones, prepared to fight off government invaders.  One group has claimed they will build a fortified compound complete with impenetrable walls designed to fend off all invaders.  They have even said this place will be a vacationers’ paradise, much like Disney World—just come packin’ heat. 

While I am not a combatant, I spent 39 years of my life in the U.S. Navy.  And most of that time I spent serving alongside Marines both as an enlisted man and as an officer in war and peace.  I even attended the Marine Corps Command and Staff College and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.  I really do understand the art of war.  I don’t brag about it because I believe that those of us who “know” just don’t talk about it, we don’t need to.  Others, like the blogger I mentioned above THINK they know about war—they have never been there.  What they know, they got from books and training courses.  They have never smelled blood, they have never known the fear of being under attack, they have never seen death up close.  Yet they brag they are prepared to, “Take out the bad guys.”  It is obvious to me they have watched too much television—to many editions of the popular NCIS, Law and Order or Blue Bloods where the good guys always manage to take down the bad guys with semi-automatic pistols that seem to have unlimited numbers of rounds.  Generally, one or two shots and the bad guys are down.  Even after the Newtown, Connecticut massacre, Wayne La Pierre of the National Rifle Association (NRA) claimed that the only way to take out a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.  (By the way, LaPierre is well compensated for his work with the NRA, making a base salary of $845,469 a year plus additional incentives often adding up to more than $1,236,101.  Not bad for being the vice president.)  More and more states are beginning to entertain arming our schoolteachers in order to prevent school shootings like the one in Newtown or at Virginia Tech University.  Have we lost our minds? 

Let’s start with the survivalists who believe the government is coming to get them.  Do they really think they could stop the government if the government was really intent on disarming them?  What about the folks in the fortress?  Well, one drone with a fuel-air explosive device could destroy the place and kill the folks in it quite easily.  The impenetrable walls would help contain the blast, thus insuring the death of every one.  Isolated pockets of survivalists could be picked off by one or two well-armed Marine Corps fireteams.  Yes, there would be some bloodshed and perhaps something approaching a small civil war, but well trained military forces would win the day. 

And how about all those folks with personal weapons?  They claim they will take out the bad guys should the need ever arise.  A rather erudite writer posed a question on Facebook recently, asking, “How many lives are saved each year in the United States by armed individuals acting in self defense?” The last time I looked, no one had come up with a definitive number.  I’m talking about ordinary citizens here—gun owners who have ostensibly purchased a weapon for protection.  If you want to add the police to the formula, I think many of us know there are police officers who go through a whole career and never unholster their weapon to subdue someone.  And how about the guy who brags that criminals won’t come around his place because he has visible evidence that he is a member of the NRA and thus has one or more guns at his disposal?  Now if he is a responsible NRA member, he keeps his weapons in a gun safe or at a minimum has trigger locks on them.  He doesn’t walk around his home packin’ heat.  So, it’s late in the evening and suddenly the front door of his home is shattered and his home is invaded by two or three armed and desperate criminals.  What is he going to do?  Where are his weapons?  Why, they are locked up of course.  BANG—you’re dead.