{"id":66103,"date":"2018-02-28T06:55:43","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T12:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=66103"},"modified":"2018-02-28T06:56:18","modified_gmt":"2018-02-28T12:56:18","slug":"a-nation-of-cowards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=66103","title":{"rendered":"A Nation Of Cowards"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n

We are told ordinary citizens don\u2019t need guns, we shouldn\u2019t try to defend ourselves, we should leave it to the professionals who have training and experience to do the job safely and correctly.<\/p>\n

In other words:\u00a0 \u201cTrust us, we\u2019re from the government and we\u2019re here to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

The School Resource Officer who hid outside the school instead of engaging the shooter inside, resigned in disgrace.\u00a0 He\u2019s not the only Deputy who hid and waited.\u00a0 The Coral Springs PD walked past three more cowering deputies to go into the school looking for the shooter<\/a>.\u00a0 And that\u2019s after years of warnings were ignored.\u00a0 No wonder the sheriff wants to blame Trump and the NRA for this disaster. The officer who resigned may be the only honorable person in that whole department.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m not sure he\u2019s being justly blamed.\u00a0 Think of the TSA screeners at the airport.\u00a0 All federal law enforcement people, supposedly there to protect the public from terrorists. They put on a big show of confiscating a two-inch pen knife and badgering anybody making jokes about bombs, but imagine the Florida shooter had skipped school to show up at the airport.\u00a0 Imagine he had started shooting at people standing in the rope line, or taking off their shoes.\u00a0 How many of those TSA screeners would have charged the gunman?\u00a0 I suspect the answer is \u201cnone,\u201d because they\u2019re not warriors, they\u2019re window dressing, and everybody knows it.<\/p>\n

Same as the School Resource Officer.\u00a0 He might be a sworn peace officer carrying a pistol but God help him if he shot a kid causing trouble , if he pulled a weapon on one, or even spoke sharply to him.\u00a0 Jesse Jackson would be on the first plane and Gloria Allred would be in the seat right next to him. \u00a0The school hired the guy to be Officer Friendly.\u00a0 They can\u2019t expect him to suddenly turn into Rambo and they would have been horrified if they thought he might.<\/p>\n

The deputy who resigned is a trained professional, all right.\u00a0 But what\u2019s he trained for?\u00a0 Sensitivity to gender issues?\u00a0 Minimizing racial arrest disparities?\u00a0 Reducing truancy? \u00a0He was great at those jobs.\u00a0 Don\u2019t blame him for failing to do a job he wasn\u2019t hired for, wasn\u2019t temperamentally suited for, that nobody wanted him to do.<\/p>\n

Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the seminal essay “A Nation of Cowards<\/a>” – an essay that may not have created an entire generation of Second Amendment activists, but certainly helped them focus their thinking –\u00a0 Jeffrey Snyder wrote:<\/p>\n

Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police’s, not only are you wrong \u2014 since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so \u2014 but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him?\u00a0[In 1993 – Ed.]\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Adults who are kibitzing about the cops – but not calling for school sfaffers to\u00a0assert their moral right, power and obligation\u00a0<\/em>to protect the children in their charge\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>themselves – are hypocrites.<\/p>\n

And yes, I said “moral obligation”:<\/p>\n

One who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety, or to think he has done all that is possible by being aware of his surroundings and taking measures of avoidance. Let’s not mince words: He will be armed, will be trained in the use of his weapon, and will defend himself when faced with lethal violence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this essay needs to circulate again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: We are told ordinary citizens don\u2019t need guns, we shouldn\u2019t try to defend ourselves, we should leave it to the professionals who have training and experience to do the job safely and correctly. In other words:\u00a0 \u201cTrust us, we\u2019re from the government and we\u2019re here to help.\u201d The School […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[265],"class_list":["post-66103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-victim-disarmament","tag-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66103"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66106,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66103\/revisions\/66106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}