Leftists are always limiting freedoms. Our Constitution limits only one thing: Government powers, and in doing so, affirms freedom. Sometimes there aren't two sides to an issue when it comes to liberty. As if there were two sides to safer streets, leftists tend to ask provocative questions which wind up only provoking people, especially free Americans. They ask irritating questions as if they're crafted to vex, as if they have no answer, and as if the question itself were an accusation. One of the best ways to short-circuit a liberal is to take that question in front of others such as an audience and then answer it.
Every problem is an opportunity, and when it comes to leftists, every question they craft to accuse gun owners is actually a chance to educate the electorate.
Try this on for size. How many guns are enough? At first, it might feel as if the answer is unknowable, or that it could be only a matter of opinion, but it's really a chance to educate Americans, and that includes 2010 candidates.
I was upgrading my concept of the CPR Corollary and I ran across the 1974 quote that Seattle was ‘.. The best place to have a heart attack." When the show aired on Sixty Minutes thirty-six years ago, and the voice-over said that line, I was trained by then that CPR was not just for heart attacks, but for any case of choking, apnea, or when the heart stops. As always, CPR is not for the dead and dying, but for the viable.
The thing that made Seattle "..the best place to have a heart attack" was not only the Paramedics, but the training of Citizen CPR, the basis of my comparison. If I recall correctly, Seattle took a great deal of pride in a goal of training citizens in CPR, and that goal was one out of ten, if I remember right. I had gone on to recommend over the years to heavy industry, amusement parks, and our own Los Angeles Board Of Supervisors that large expanses of property or campus should have at least one out of ten persons trained in CPR and not rely exclusively on people who cannot leave their post, such as Courthouse Sheriff Deputies, nor is it acceptable for employees or counselors or teachers to do absolutely nothing while awaiting the Squad.
How does the concept of The CPR Corollary translate yet again into an identity of values for the concealed carry of handguns?
That's the easy part; in asking the question of how many guns are enough, we are not talking about how many guns are owned by any single person, but how many guns are worn CCW in any given community, the most central question, really. My answer is one out of ten.
Los Angeles – along with other communities around the union – is facing early release of thugs and cutbacks in assets. It is most reasonable to expedite the goal of one out of ten citizens be armed with a loaded handgun now more than ever before.
How does this work, exactly, to the interests of a community?
There are five features of comparison in the CPR Corollary which make it identical to Concealed Carry of Handguns or vice-versa. This is feature #6, the idea that both should strive for a goal of public education and intervention as optimal safety for person and community when in the absence of first responders. The main idea is that it is a one-sided issue, and that there is no room for opposing views. After all, who could be for the criminal? Anti-gun means anti-liberty and pro-crime by interfering with and discouraging self-defense.
There can't be two sides about safer streets in 2010, and being anti-gun means you're against safer streets.
If one out of every ten adult citizens carried a loaded handgun wherever they had a right to be, and if they are faithful to taking training as so many gun owners do, it could change the entire complexion of how crime is managed in this country. How? Well, for one thing, it would be from the ground up. All authority in this country rises from the electorate. An armed citizenry would be one of the first areas of affirmation of this, would it not?
Second, not everyone needs to own and carry a gun, and thugs aren't always impressed with the concept of the armed citizen until the numbers are known to rise. When a community is known for being armed, they're impressed. Things then change in favor of the community. Because, then, the issue is not that someone might be armed, but that enough are.
There are now NINE elements to the CPR Corollary developed by the author. For more, see the e-book Safer Streets 2010 available online here.
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Comments
Haven't read the column yet, but thought I would answer the question in the title.
As many as I can afford to buy and feed. Unless of course, I want more and need to save up.
Ok, now to answer the thrust of the column. One, minimum, in every room, on every block of sidewalk, in every workplace, in the hands a legal holder. One is the absolute minimum acceptable. Whether there be two people in a room, restaurant, or gathering or ten people. As the numbers go up, so should the number of guns. But if my goal could be reached of one minimum in every room, the numbers would be up.
To go along with your CPR analogy, my father had a massive heart attack in my sister's home. Fortunately her husband was proficient in CPR. There were only three people in the house. One in ten would have cost my father the additional fifteen years of life he enjoyed. However, there was a minimum of one in that room and that was enough.
The purpose of carrying a gun is to intimidate the criminal in to not committing a crime or moving on to a community where the liklihood of being shot while assaulting someone or stealing something is less. No one ever wants to use a gun or be the target of a gun shooting review unless there is no other choice. We carry guns to warn others not to assault or rob us. Cops do not prevent crime. They attempt toi solve them after they have happened and the damage to life and property has already been done. Having the right to defend your self during such an attack may help to prevent damage to life and property at the moment of the attack because the cops are not around until after the fact. The anti-gun faction assumes everyone is blood thirsty and that the average citizen is just a criminal waiting to get a gun. Their assumptions are an insult to every citzen when they assume citizens are mature enough to vote but not mature enough to own a gun.
Good one, straightarrow. You never know.
Robert, right you are. My whole purpose is to reinvigorate the electorate into understanding that gun control's purpose is to create a void which the State will presume to fill. It never could, of course, but they take the guns just to grow the State.
How many guns are enough? How many books are enough? How many times can you take the Fifth and refuse to incriminate yourself? How many times do the cops have to get a warrant when they want to search your home? How many newspapers are enoough? How many times can you petition the government for redress of grievances? Where does it say in the Constitution that there is a numerical limit on the exercise of any liberty? Oh that's right, I forgot - we are "progressing" beyond the Constitution. So let's have a limit on the number of times the Brady Jerks can have a press conference and call for the banning of guns.
1 in 10. Hmmmm.
300 million people, about 250 million aged 21+, and 4-5 million with a license to carry.
That's between 1 in 50 (5 million) and 1 in 62.5 (4 million). We've got a long way to go.
Here in the Shall Issue state of Washington, it's about 1 in 19, and we're in the top six states for concealed carry licensure.
That's just with a license. Not necessarily everyone with a license to carry in fact carries every day.
Right, Ken. If we could get to an objective of 1 out of 10 adults who wear their sidearm wherever they have a right to be, several things would happen: violent crime would diminish, and costly programs which infringe on many other rights in claiming to fight crime would be immediately redundent.
This, of course, is the second amendment's purpose: to show that government programs are not needed.
Can you imagine how our revenues could be better spent? Could you imagine what sort of candidates we would attract and elect?
My suggested answer: "Must you self-styled social experts insist on trying to central-plan EVERYTHING? Just let freedom work for a change -- the people will settle on the right balance entirely without your invaluable 'help.'"
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