Last edition, I mentioned the e-book version release of my book Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns. At the core is the formula for how to get back your safe streets. Does it work? It works.
In Los Angeles, Angelinos felt the loss of seventeen year old Lily Burk. Lily was stalked and robbed by someone who should have remained in jail. Lily was abducted, coerced into making. repeated attempts to obtain money from her credit card, and then slashed and beaten to death, left in a car in Los Angeles’ Skid Row district.
Here in L.A. there is talk of the death penalty in letters to the editor of the Los Angeles Times. There is talk of keeping people in jail. There is talk of swift justice. All of this is after-the-fact. As I say often, it may speak the language of justice, but does this speak the language of personal safety? Why can’t there be more exploration about how to get back to safer streets?
There can, if a community is willing to accept certain realities first. Chief among those realities is the fact that the citizens are supreme authority in this country, and with that comes direction of all public servants, including law enforcement assets and City Council.
There is also the reality of citizen authority to act in the absence of police not unlike giving first-aid or CPR in the absence of Paramedics.
When we talk of safe streets, we are speaking of a unification of a community, which unification becomes known and respected, yes, respected by thugs. It seems to work in more than forty states, but it doesn’t seem to be even tried in the major cities.
I have noted many communities this month who schedule walk-a-thons for peace or security, but will they do any good? Not likely. Recapturing safer streets for our kids cannot be done with rhetoric.
Recapturing safer streets does not come about by breaking the law, vigilante curbside justice, or shooting anything that moves, but by invoking the law, namely the law of the land. I point again to citizen authority to act in the absence of officers. After all, police derive their authority from us. We never abandoned our authority to act.
What about training? What about good judgment? I’m not talking about stopping a bank robbery or restaurant takeover; I’m talking about the lives of your own sons and daughters who may be in their own homes, in their front yards or in school when violence strikes. Sometimes, one armed citizen does take out the seeming odds against them. How many abductions can be stopped when parents become aware of their own authority to act? How many shootings can be averted when thugs understand that parents may carry concealed weapons when they visit campus?
Well, I have news for you: Many college campuses already affirm the armed students on campus and without any of the fears forecast by the anti-gun movement. Many a time has a single armed citizen stopped what could have been a horrific (and scandalous) mass murder. One place to check for those stories is a repository of such cases, keepandbeararms.com
If you really want safer streets, then you accept certain realities, and the very first is the citizen authority of every adult to meet and answer violence in the absence of police. Whole states have found no regrets in affirming their citizens’ being armed. State legislatures who petition for sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment emphasize how they will be out from under unreasonable gun control of their constituents, among other things. This policy needs to make it all the way to airports and civil aircraft, public buildings, schools and even interstate recognition.
Adults may be aware of health care costs, the price of gasoline and personal workplace benefits, but how the family will meet, manage and even survive an encounter with violence is the most neglected area of household management.
At present, how gun control advises citizens to respond to violence gets people killed. Gun control does not have to live with the consequences of that very bad advice: you do. The cover of Safe Streets features an old man crying, brokenhearted thanks to advice of the gun control movement to surrender and to ‘give them what they want’.
Paradigms have to change, as other states have changed theirs and without regret. The time for presiding over crisis is over, and the time to preside over prosperity and independence is now. In 2010, candidates enunciating a platform of independence from our servants, even in affirming the armed citizen, will probably get the job. A lot of people right now are going to remember those who voted to confirm anti-gun nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Now is the time to take memory training so citizens think of why they vote for whom.
Sherri Stevens of Beverly Hills wrote The Times that the murder "...leaves me weak, feeling helpless, and incredibly angry." Then, please read the book, Sherri.
If you expect police to do it all, and after the fact at that, you will not get to safer streets. Not ever.
Safer streets come from the understanding of the thugs that the odds have now greatly enlarged that their target will be armed, armed with not only lethal force, but also armed with knowledge, authority, and most of all, the community spirit to tolerate absolutely no more.
_____________________________
Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns is available in Hardcover, and now as an e-book for immediate download at NationwideConcealedCarry.com
Comments
Hey,
Not that this is the forum, but I don't really know any other way to communicate with you.
You seem like you have a very firm grasp of the English language, since you're a published author and all, so can you explain the title of your book Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns. I feel like I must be missing something because it does not seem to follow. Thanks.
Heh Dion,
It's very simple. There are 4 to 5 million of us with a license to carry a concealed firearm out there--concentrated mostly in 39 or 40 states. Show anyone any correlation between the passage of Right To Carry laws over the past decades and an increase in crime.
Hi, Dion,
Write me at John at goodforthecountry.com
I have a really hard time believing that a tiny 17 year old would be any safer if she'd had a gun on her. Honestly, if you have a gun, you better be ready to shoot, and I know that even if I had one, I would be afraid to use it. Someone like Lily who was small and young could easily have a gun wrestled away from her, and she could have been killed anyway. Knowing that people have guns doesn't deter violence or crime. The people committing the crimes and the violence are simply not thinking because either they are stupid or mentally defective.
I don't know why that poor child didn't run away or scream. That's the worst of it. It just haunts me.
Zina, I agree that everyone is not capable of using a firearm for self-defense. That being said, I do believe that everyone should be able to use a firearm for self-defense, as a matter of Freedom of choice. I understand that you are not dangerous and would scream and run away if faced with assault, but there are those of us who can be dangerous and who can and will use a firearm to defend life and limb. We defend not only our own lives and the lives of loved ones, but the lives of others who are incapable of protecting their own lives, like you Zina.
I'm going to say why I urge you to read the book: when I emphasize citizen authority, I am also emphasizing that it is backed by the spirit of survival. You MUST have the spirit to fight back and be unafraid of what the fella thinks, or what he may do next or anything other than your survival.
Safe streets won't come on their own: they were not lost on their own, they were ignored. Predators moved in.
You teach your kids the values they need when alone, not to mention when you are gone. Do we hand down Independence, or do we hand down dependency?
I hate even to think it as you mentioned, Emmett, but why didn't she just scratch the &^%$! out of his face and run?
If it can buy you one second, it can by you a lifetime. What was she taught>
Check out nationwideconcealedcarry.com
Zina,
Well, that is the reason why my daughter and her best friend took karate lessons before they were 10, and why I made sure she was a WAY better shot with a pistol than the majority of police officers by the time she was 15.
There was recently an incident in La. where a couple of thugs were kicking down the door of an apartment. The 10-year-old boy grabbed his 8-year-old sister and hid in his mom's closet. After the thugs broke into the bedroom, they opened the closet door. The boy shot one in the face with his mom's gun. The crooks fled.
You are only a victim if you are willing to be a victim.
Zina I’m curious about your comment: “I have a really hard time believing that a tiny 17 year old would be any safer if she'd had a gun on her.”
How much WORSE OFF do you “feel” a gun would have made her? Do you “feel” that she might have gotten disarmed and KILLED? And, exactly, how would being shot to death been WORSE than beaten and slashed to death?
While I can’t speak for what “might have been . . .” for Lily Burk; 30+ years ago my friends 17-year-old, 4’10”, 98 pound daughter was confronted by an armed serial rapist that was literally over twice her size. She shot and killed the animal with her “illegally carried and concealed” pistol. But then again, those were the days when what mattered to the police was public safety, not political policy. If you clearly used a gun to defend yourself that was what mattered.
To John Longenecker:
If New York City is so much safer than it was a couple of decades ago, then why can't you go into Central Park after dark, to this day? You couldn't do it then; you still can't do it. Where's the safety so touted by Bloomberg?
Exactly, Luis.
I think it's amazing how easily the populace swallows the notion that arming everyone leads to increased safety, when in fact it results in increased gun accidents (because most handguns are faulty in design and manufacture) and cases of shooting of by-standers and due to mistaken identity. The urban gun owner has a mindset of paranoia and unrealistic degree of control over one's surroundings in what is perceived as an "absence" of a governmental role. People don't recognize that this mindset leads to a true "dead end" of distrust of one's neighbors, alienation from proper governmental processes, and acceptance of violence as a means of social interaction to resolve conflict.
Mr. Longnecker, assuming that you are carrying, if you came home one evening and encountered an unarmed (you frisk him yourself) young man standing in your living room and holding your TV in his arms (with no one else in the home), indicating that burglary is his intention, would you (a) shoot the young man on the spot for simply being in the house and showing intent to commit a crime, or (b) use your gun to hold the man in place while you phone the police, who later arrest the young man after they arrive at your home? Please explain the reasoning behind your answer.
Mr. Longnecker seems to be a member of the Cult of the Victim. He shows that he doesn't really understand the meaning of the word 'victim' in that any person anywhere in the world any time of his or her life can be classified as a 'victim' with respect to this or that circumstance in life. When Mr. Longnecker chooses to concealed carry then comes upon an armed citizen in the commission of a crime, then Mr. Longnecker pulls out his gun and fires one round at the perp, and misses. The perp then takes notice of Mr. Longnecker's presence and prepares to fire back by taking a position that puts Mr. Longnecker at an extreme disadvantage. Then Mr. Longnecker decides to fire again at the perp but his handgun malfunctions and no round is fired, thereby putting him at even greater risk of the perp's next action. At this point, Mr. Longnecker is a 'victim' of a poorly designed or manufactured firearm. Why is this? It's because Mr. Longnecker has put his trust in another entity (a weapon). Cont ..
Mr. Longnecker participation in the Cult of the Victim has blinded him to the reality that in almost every part of human life, trust of others is required. It is just a matter of degree as to what kinds of trust and with whom and with respect to what rules and manner of redress that trust has been created in one's society. The gun lover has put aside the notion of social trust and chooses to emphasize distrust, "ineptness" of government, etc. He chooses to ignore the root causes of the issues found in society that result in conflict. He chooses to simplify what are not simple circumstances. It is this "black and white" mindset that is seen for hundreds of years as the mindset of the conservative and what must be resisted by persons who understand that life is not "simple" and must be oversimplified to the advantage of certain members or classes of society.
Unarmed Thinker: who in the world ever told you that modern handguns are faulty, dangerous and defective?
Who?
"who in the world ever told you that modern handguns are faulty, dangerous and defective? "
News reports available to anyone on the Internet. It's very easy to find news articles about how handguns malfunction when used. Just try doing so sometime. Also, have you never the seen vids on YouTube of police officers shooting themselves in the leg while speaking in a classroom? Etc., etc. There are also serious design flaws in many firearms such that the user can't determine when there is a round in the chamber before attempting to disassemble the weapon, change magazines, etc. You see stories about these incidents in the news all the time, you look for them as I do. Handguns come nowhere close to basic safety performance found in other precision-fabricated devices.
The gun lobby has also succeeded in exempting firearms from being the object of product liability lawsuits. Now that's rational!
Firearm liability cases: maybe I should take back what I just wrote. Use google to look for the Atlanta law office of Sutton T. Slover, PC (can't post links in comments on Examiner).
Mr. Longenecker, you'll like this story. Do a search in google for an article (World Net Daily) entitled "Drill instructor convicted after rifle jams." Oops. that weapon made by Olympia Arms does tend to "slip into automatic mode." Oh well.
Mr Longenecker, you might want to look into the "NYPD Phase Three Malfunctions" regarding the Glock Model 19 police issue handgun (NYPD).
Mr. Longenecker, I also like the article titled "How to Reload a Pistol and Clear Malfunctions" I just found on the web. The article list for different types of malfunctions found in semi-automatic pistols. It is so easy to find these articles that I'm surprised that you're surprised that I might have noticed that this information exists in such quantity. This doesn't even address all the news stories about "accidental shootings," especially those involving children holding or dropping handguns that go off and kill someone.
Unarmed, you're so far off-topic you confirm suspicions of what you're really all about: hounding people more than solving the problem.
Nothing you have said relates to the truth of what I have said. Stop being belligerent, and try to stay on topic.
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!