By Seth Richardson
For more than twenty-five years now, both as a police officer and civilian, I’ve carried a concealed handgun against the remote chance that I’ll be called upon to use it to defend the innocent. Doing so on a daily basis is a nuisance and a pain in the butt, literally, but it’s a habit I’ve formed and a grave responsibility I’m proud to accept. Carrying a firearm in public requires careful attention and constant training to remain proficient and safe, but it’s a necessary component of securing our liberty as a nation and our individual freedom and safety.
Aside from the obvious reasons related to self-defense against criminals, two terrorist suspects in Seattle illuminated yet another reason why we as a nation need to take our duty to be armed more seriously, as the citizens of Israel do.
In Israel, it’s perfectly commonplace to see citizens carrying fully-automatic weapons like the famous Uzi submachine gun and other military arms openly in public. As a result of this public policy of an armed and prepared citizenry, Israel has not suffered a major terrorist attack on a school in many years. Parents and volunteers armed with military weapons routinely guard Israeli schools.
And contrary to the hysterical maunderings of hoplophobes and anti-gun zealots, Israelis aren’t gunning one another down randomly in the streets, and the gutters remain tidy and free of blood…except when some terrorist sets off a concealed bomb, which is the weapon of choice for cowards.
If Israel’s example is not sufficient, last week, federal agents arrested Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, AKA Joseph Anthony Davis and another unidentified man in Seattle as they took possession of illegal machine guns provided for them by federal agents in a sting operation. Abdul-Latif, a former sailor in the U.S. Navy, and his cohorts were planning to attack a Seattle military recruiting station to kill as many people as possible. Agents also recorded conversations between Abdul-Latif and an informant where Abdul-Latif lauded the massacre in 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas, where 13 soldiers died and many more were wounded by a traitorous Muslim terrorist mole in our military. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle also released court documents that quoted Abdul-Latif as saying, “It’s a confined space, not a lot of people carrying weapons, and we’d have an advantage.”
Those chilling words vindicate every inconvenience and personal sacrifice I’ve ever made in choosing to be armed in public.
The lesson here is that that no one can defend your life against such sudden attacks but you. The police won’t be there in time and you won’t have six minutes to wait for them to show up. You won’t have sixty seconds. If you’re lucky, you might have six seconds or less to take action to put a stop to the attack and save many lives.
But like the victims at Fort Hood and Virginia Tech and every other mass shooting in U.S. history, the potential victims in this foiled plot, who were disarmed and denied their right to keep and bear arms by their own government, would have been at the mercy of the only people in the room with a gun; the terrorists.
And that’s exactly why terrorists and deranged killers deliberately and carefully seek out “gun-free zones” like colleges and schools and, paradoxically, domestic military bases, where soldiers are denied their right to keep and bear arms except when they are going into combat.
It should be obvious that the fewer “gun-free zones” we allow, and the more law abiding citizens who step up and accept the burden of being armed in defense of themselves, their families and their nation, the fewer targets armed terrorists will have to choose from to ply their trade with impunity, and the greater the chances that when terrorists do attack, and they will, they will not murder innocents unopposed.
© 2011 Altnews
NFA Trust lawyer…
[...]Why carry a gun? – The Broadside : Colorado Springs Gazette, CO[...]…
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Come join me blogging at the above site. Just click on BLOG and post away! Your thoughts and posts are trrific. Here is what I posted recently about Norway – similar to your post above!
Norway Needs to Learn From Colorado!
July 24th, 2011 | Author: HelenS | Edit
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President Obama (and Michelle who for the first time in her life is proud of her country!) denigrates the Unites States every chance he gets. Sarah Palin on the other hand always praises it. Here is one example of why I am proud to be an american and glad I live here in this country. Your thoughts?
Norway Needs to Learn from Colorado Springs, Co.
By Helen Sabin
This past weekend, Norway totally failed its people. The 85 deaths of adults and children in a summer camp in Norway were the result of a crazed madman and the foolish and illogical gun regulations that keep the Norwegians as defenseless victims. Consider that if adults at the camp or the camp counselors had been permitted access to weapons for self defense purposes, over 80 individuals might still be alive.
To own a gun in Norway, one must document a use for the gun. One would think that self defense, which is why most gun owners in Colorado Springs cite as the reason they own a gun, would be a primary reason to allow a Norwegian to have a gun. But no! In this and other socialistic and left learning governments such as Canada, Britain and New Zealand, self defense is not a legitimate reason to have a gun. Almost never is a Norwegian permitted to own a gun for self defense! Rifle and shotgun ownership permission can be given to “sober and responsible” persons 18 years or older if hunting and shooting sports are cited as the reason – but not self defense! Where is the logic in that rule? Does this make sense to you?
Persons under the age of 18, but over 16 may apply for rifle or shotgun ownership license with the consent of parents or guardian. For handguns, however, the lowest ownership age is 21 with no exceptions allowed. You can have a shot gun but not a handgun? Where is the logic in this?
A shotgun is a preferred weapon for home and personal defense. This deadly weapon is easy to use – point, shoot, and pull the trigger! If you aim at “center of mass,” you will usually hit the target at which you are aiming. Not so with a handgun which fires only one round at a time and it must fly straight at its target to be effective. You have one chance with a handgun to hit a target whereas you have hundreds of chances with a shotgun as each shell has hundreds of steel or metal pellets that strike as one. If someone wants to do major damage, the shotgun is the way to go.
Also consider that in Norway, if you inherit a gun, you must get permission from the local police chief who may not grant permission. You lose that inheritance from your relative. In Colorado, if your grandfather wants to give you a gun he can do so.
Socialistic countries brainwash their citizens to fear guns. Not here in Colorado. My ancestors came to Colorado from Tennessee in 1903 and all in the family knew how to use a gun. They also used them for self protection. My grandmother told me that she shot some “raiders” who attacked their wagon train on their way here and without guns to defend themselves they would have died right outside Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
At eight and ten years old, my father and his older brother were responsible to hunt food for the family. They used guns to do so. That is what they did back then and they didn’t need to ask their country for permission. Permission came from common sense, the right to self defense, the Constitution of the United States, the second amendment and in the case of my father and his brother, from their parents who trained them to use a gun.
Socialistic and left learning countries like Norway, Canada and Britain restrict citizens’ right to a gun thinking it will prevent gun violence. It hasn’t and the shooting this weekend proves that fact. It isn’t the normal every day citizen who engages in gun violence but the criminal.
Think Norway’s policies aren’t stupid? Picture yourself at the camp totally defenseless as you watch the gunman blow away your two best friends. Wouldn’t you be praying that someone would save you? Don’t you wish a camp counselor or one of the adults around had a gun to help protect you and possibly take out the gunman before he killed you or more people? Would you like to be as defenseless a victim as those 85 people were due to the gun policies of the country? No, I didn’t think so.
I should add that I am not against gun possess and ownership. But with freedom comes responsibility. And that is something we don’t talk about enough.
Um .. Israel’s gun control policies are more strict than the US’s. For example, you must be licensed to “to acquire, possess, sell or transfer a firearm or ammunition”, “a record of the acquisition, possession and transfer of each privately held firearm be retained in an official register”, and “licensed gun makers are required to keep a record of each firearm produced, for inspection by a regulating authority.”
Furthermore, while Israel possesses 7.3 firearms per 100,000 citizens, the US possesses 88.8 firearms per 100,000 citizens.Israel also ranks #79 out of 181 countries in private gun ownership. The US ranks #1.
And the US experiences 3.21 gun homicides per 100,000 people. Israel? 0.72.
Could this be that in Israel every man & woman is required to serve in the Israeli armed forces? Meaning they are trained? And “well regulated”? (that one part of the 2nd amendment gun zealots refuse to acknowledge).
Furthermore, unlike Israel which has a cohesion of culture, the US is a much more fragmented multicultural population that lacks any sort of common ground. These days we are less a United States than a Divided States. And libertarians really aren’t helping that matter.
http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/israel
Thanks to Obama, race relations are worse now than when George Bush was in office.
Israelis know what its like to live without protection and I say good for them that they ALL have guns and know how to use them.
That is one country that won’t suffer fools like we have in the Administration and Congress. I applauded BIBI when he gave the smack down to Obama and I hope Boehner does the same thing with the debt ceiling!
BRAVO!
(Just don’t go confusing liberals with FACTS and REALITY. They’ll suffer an attack of VAPORS if the GOOD GUYS ARE ARMED…)