A Bit Of A Reach

NPR (I listen so you don’t have to) has a story on Paris’s crack problem – which, after a year of lockdown, has gone pretty public.

Near the end of the piece, the reporter reassures the NPR audience that at least there isn’t any gun violence, due to France’s strict gun controls.

Thing is, even in the US, guns and all, crack addicts rarely shoot each other. Oh, they sometimes use guns to rob people to get money and fence-able goods for their next fix – but the NPR piece doesn’t favor us with anybody sight as to how French baseheads pay for their buzz. Given hiw defenseless French Gun control, leaves citizens, there’s less need to use a gun to rob people, but again, the report goes into no details.

No, in the US it’s gangs, taking and defending turf and herding beeves, thst do the shooting. And it seems French gangs don’t have that much trouble getting guns.

There are just different priorities so far.

8 thoughts on “A Bit Of A Reach

  1. What part of libertarianism bothers you? That part where you have to make decisions about your own life? Or the part where you don’t get to make decisions for me?

  2. You are confusing Licence with Liberty.

    Libertarians recognize the first requirement of Ordered Liberty is Order, which brings us the freedom to operate within the Social Contract.

    Licentious people recognize no boundaries on behavior at all, which brings down civilizations.

  3. Ha! Sorry, EI, but almost daily, you support the current dictatorship and every edict they put out. Obviously, you can’t make decisions for yourself, either.

  4. You see, if there are no guns in the world, ALL societal problems go away. Imagine… we remake all swords into plowshares! Wait, where have I seen THAT before?

  5. Without swords, people wouldn’t have plows. A plowshare is just the very bottom of the moldboard on the plow. The sword was invented before plows were, and there is a reason for that sequence of events.

  6. Dude, you are missing a huge chunk of historical context, unless you are just playing coy.

  7. Maybe the problem in Paris is lack of parades? Lack of public participation in a grand gesture of solidarity? Lack of cohesion, lack of sense of shared purpose?

    I’m headed to New Richmond, Wisconsin (Heads Up Recent Hawaiian Transplant) to watch the parade for the town festival. Grandson #2 is in the marching band, one of several from surrounding towns expected to attend. I am taking a folding chair from which I expect to stand to remove my cap for the VFW color guard, straining to fit into their uniforms and marching in a ragged line, but proudly carrying Old Glory leading the parade. I expect to remain standing for the girl singing the Star Spangled Banner over the loudspeaker and I expect to applaud her when she’s done, regardless of whether I could actually hear the words carried away on the wind.

    I expect to see pretty girls wearing tiaras and sitting on convertibles, drive past my chair to wave at me. I expect to see shiny farm implements, sweaty politicians, hockey kids on in-line skates (and with luck, the Shriners in Go-Karts doing their signature Insane Figure Eight of Death maneuver), smiling local business people handing out logo pens, and I expect to blast my low-carb diet with a cherry Sno-Cone and at least one Tootsie Roll (might have to recruit Granddaughter to dash out into traffic to snag one from the other street urchins scrambling for candy). I expect to get sunburnt and to sit in traffic with the air conditioner running full blast all the way home.

    In other words, I expect to experience small-town America the way it was when I grew up, the way it still is in parts of the country, the way it should be.

    Nothing like that in Paris.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.