Andy Caldwell
As the saying goes, when seconds matter, police officers are only minutes away. In fact, here on the Central Coast, it can take officers up to 20 minutes to arrive to the more rural areas of the region in the event of life-threatening situations. As such, it behooves the citizenry to have the means to protect themselves from harm, but don’t tell that to Michael Bloomberg.
Mr. Bloomberg got behind the podium in the aftermath of the recent Texas church shooting to indicate that only cops should have guns and be trusted to respond to such dangerous situations. In this particular incident, the assailant killed two people, including an armed security team member, before he himself was shot dead by another armed volunteer. The entire incident was over in a matter of six seconds.
How many more people could have died if the church did not have civilians armed and trained to respond immediately as they did? Unfortunately, we know the answer to that question because in other situations, deranged killers have killed scores of people before the cops arrived.
Lost on too many Americans these days is the fact that the Bill of Rights does not grant citizens the right to bear arms, as the people already have that unalienable right. Instead, the Second Amendment flows from the principles espoused in the Declaration of Independence along with the first words of the Bill of Rights. Taken together, Congress shall make no law abridging the ability of any one of us to defend our lives.
Our founding fathers did not write the Constitution in order to restrain the people. They wrote it to restrain government. Unlike the elitist Bloomberg, our founding fathers respected and trusted ordinary people to be able to govern their own lives in a civil society. When they used the word “We” in both the Declaration and the Constitution to describe the body politic, they were not referring to a ruling elite or a professional class of “experts.”
Mr. Bloomberg and others like him are asserting, in this particular case, that people participating in a church service can be denied their right to life, as he would relegate them to sitting-duck status. That is because he believes government alone can be trusted in matters of life and death. Or does he?
What is even more astounding than the average American’s willful ignorance of our heritage of freedom and liberty is their tolerance for progressive double speak. That is, the truth of the matter is some progressives don’t want cops carrying guns either. They literally want to disarm the police. And, in those situations when the cops must resort to violent constraint, up to and including the use of lethal force, these same politicians are prone to put the cop in the hot seat, giving every benefit of the doubt to the perpetrator.
Moreover, with respect to only allowing trained professionals to carry weapons, why on earth are the men and women serving in our military here at home also sitting ducks because they are not allowed to carry their government-issued firearms on base?
Finally, if these incoherent double standards don’t get your goat, consider the movement in America today toward decarceration, known as the prison abolition movement. That is, the push by some activists and politicians to eliminate prisons altogether. They are asserting that prisons are akin to slavery and apartheid.
These activists and politicians seek to limit the rights of law-abiding citizens even in life-threatening situations, while elevating the rights of convicted criminals and would-be terrorists. Whose side are they on, really?
