Great Canadian Opinion On Armed Protection

RackMaster

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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


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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.
 
I have called into Adler's radio show on occasion and at times find his opinions interesting and the on air debates exhuberant. His format is similar to Hannity or Limbaugh light.

I see what he's getting at here, take back the power from the streets by creating the sense that what may be waiting behind that closed door had better be worth risking your, (the criminal) life. Have the legal authority and ability to defend what's yours. What he fails to do is reference a real situation in our home country where this would have had an impact. Looting and stupidity in Vancouver after the Stanley Cup is the closest we've had to civil unrest in recent months.

Don't misunderstand, I completely support the right to bear arms unfortunately it isn't a legal right up here, yet. Certainly there are rights our southern cousins have that we envy and the second and fourth amendments are but a few that would be favoured.

What I think is being missed in this piece is that there is a cavernous difference between owning a firearm, being trained on its proper handling and use and actually pulling a trigger while someone is coming at you.

I would be more concerned with Sean the caller and his sniper fantasies.
 
Agreed with you on the last bite Elle. I'm fine with gun ownership. I have an issue with the whole "social janitor" fantasy. Vigilantism sounds cool but it isn't. You don't just own a gun just so you can roam the streets like a "Hobo with a shotgun" (yes, it's an actual movie) and start shooting people. I own guns to protect myself and my family from the small percentage of society that might do us harm. But that doesn't mean I feel obligated or even desire to go seek them out and start killing. It doesn't and shouldn't work like that.

If a storeowner had shot a rioter, yes it might have stopped them in that particular area. Then again, it might have enraged the mob and kept the riots going.
 
If I owned a business and you came in through any opening except the front door during normal business hours, I'm going to assume you are there to do me harm and will respond accordingly. I don't care if I've got gold bars stacked in the front and a hooker giving free blowjobs, you better step through the door with some form of decency and respect for being on my property.
 
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