I think this is a great example of what a good portion of Canadians believe and what should be the 'norm'. The legal use of firearms by properly trained individuals has a place in society and would help keep society safe; as it does else where in the world.
Could guns help keep the peace?
- 7:57 am, August 12th, 2011
Charles Adler | Sun News Network
I received a call on my Corus Radio show this week from a fellow named Sean.
He said he had an M16 rifle, the U.S. military's weapon of choice.
As he was watching the riots in London, he was fantasizing about being up in a tower and shooting the very first person that tries to loot a store. Sean said he thought if he could do that, there would instantly be some self-correcting behaviour and the looting would come to an end.
He wanted to know whether I ever fantasized about being what he called the "social janitor," the guy who goes into the human sewer and cleans things up. I told him when I see the news clips out of London, I naturally think about Charles Bronson and a scene from Death Wish II.
The killer was wearing a huge crucifix and Bronson looked at it and then looked him in the eye and asked him if he believed in Jesus. And the squirming, cringing low-life who had been cornered like a rat said, "Yes."
Bronson then said: "You're going to meet him." And then turned his lights out. Shot him twice. The party was over for the bad guy.
Now Bronson, in the role of Paul Kersey, wasn't wearing a badge. He was a vigilante, a social janitor as Adler nation's citizen Sean would put it. The character's family had been victimized. His wife was killed. His daughter was violently raped, and he decided to take justice into his own hands in New York City.
It was a time when the Big Apple was becoming one very rotten place indeed for a law-abiding citizen.
Fast forward from New York City in the 70s and 80s to London, England this week. While I am not asking for people to fulfill Sean's fantasy of becoming social janitors and climbing on rooftops to pick off thugs and looters, I do honestly wonder what would have happened had the shopkeepers been armed.
I am wondering whether there might have been some quick and orderly self-correcting behaviour. I'm even wondering if the scumbags who did the looting would have dared to do it if they felt the people who own those small business establishments were trained in firearms.
There won't be any looting in Switzerland, ever. There won't even be a fantasy. Swiss families are protected by what's in their culture, their laws, their heads, their hearts and their gun racks.
There are 700,000 assault rifles registered in Switzerland. And you can bet your bullets Zurich and Bern and Geneva will never look like London.
Do you remember what the South Central neighbourhoods in Los Angeles looked like in 1992 during the so-called Rodney King riots? Were there some pockets of life untouched by hoodlums? Yes there were. It's where shopkeepers and homeowners chose to defend themselves with firearms.
You don't need social janitors when society is allowed, trained and encouraged to protect itself.
