Webloggin » Violence For Safety’s Sake

On Saturday, I attended a political rally in Saint Paul. I was there as part of the Minnesota Tax Cut Coalition. Across the Capitol grounds where the rally took place was a counter protest conducted by the Sierra Club and other champions of global warming (interesting side note: the counter protest to a tax cut rally was a global warming rally - go figure). All in all, is was a good turnout for both sides, a beautiful day for it and by and large, people were nice. Well known freshman Congress members showed up: Michelle Bachmann and Keith Ellison and it was an energetic event all around.

I of course, by nature of being me, wandered away from the center of the tax cut rally to mingle with my liberal friends across the grass. The conversations were a bit feisty at times but the atmosphere remained upbeat and positive. And of course, there were people on both sides of the spectrum who tried to ruin it by being combative, angry and intent on shouting down the other person. We had a rather large group consisting of high school students, professional activists, Vietnam vets, foreigners and one Bible thumping Christian. One Russian man gave a captivating and personal perspective on why he believed Russians owed a debt of gratitude to American Christians and rejected someone’s suggestion that the Russian people were worse off since the end of Soviet rule.

One of the more interesting debates I had was with a guy named Larry, a sort of mini-celebrity here who has been photographed waving banners over interstate overpasses. He had set up camp right behind the tax-cut protest and brandished three large anti-war signs. We had begun discussing war in which he rejected the notion that violence was an effective response to violence. I then proposed an example: what if a gunman, right in front of us, began shooting into the crowd? Would he not support someone using lethal force to stop him? He opposed that idea, believing that three or four unarmed people could and would rush and tackle the man and bring him down without harm.

We seemed to disagree on the importance of action vs. ideals. He’s more comfortable with risking further loss of life through soft vigilance. He disagreed that the killers life was of less importance than the life of one more victim. He was vehemently anti-Christian, but he described his view as Christ-like and his way of securing a spot in heaven; he wasn’t going to take the chance that God might hold it against him for saving lives by taking the life of the killer. He seemed to agree with my suggestion that while his perspective was fine for him and his moral or religious views, most people in a situation like that would appreciate a little lethal force to subdue the killer.

Which brings us to yesterday’s slaughter at a Virginia tech school. ‘Gun-free zones’ are the most dangerous places to be. The old adage, ‘when you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns’ rings true. I’ve had jobs that required handling large amounts of cash, I’ve managed stores and restaurants - nothing would make me feel more vulnerable than a sign in the window advertising that no one in this establishment is armed.

As of this writing, we don’t know much about the murderer or what his motives were. What we do know is that dozens of people were paralyzed and incapable of stopping him. He had free reign - for a brief period of time he owned the lives of many people on that campus and some will never be returned.

Can someone explain to me the importance of banning law abiding people from having a gun, if not on their body, then at least among their property? Who does this stop and what is it that it’s stopping? I can see that it prevents good people from stopping bad people.

We have laws against murder. We have laws against attempted murder. We have laws against assault. If a person is willing to and intending to disregard these laws, how does a gun ban change anything, except empower that person? We can prevent dangerous and insane people from legally possessing a firearm, but we can’t stop them from secretly possessing one anyway. But once they use it in a crime, suddenly the ban on that gun is completely irrelevant.

A few years back in Minnesota, we were debating conceal & carry legislation. The opponents were predicting a wild west scenario in the streets of Minneapolis. Why? If somebody is intending to kill others, especially random acts of murder, is he going to bother to go through the process of getting a license to possess a gun? More than likely, a person of that nature would avoid anything that might attract him undue attention. A license to carry a gun is not a license to kill or harm others. It does not relax restrictions on murder and assault. The alternative to a ‘wild west shootout’ is what we saw yesterday morning in Virginia. That being said, conceal and carry did pass and the wild west predictions never bore fruit.

Larry the Protester believed that would-be victims and their families, in the hypothetical shooting we were discussing, wouldn’t hold it against him for not taking an opportunity to save lives. He suggested that these people would focus their anger and hate on the killer. I responded by saying that if he had stood by while my little girl was shot, and I discovered that he could have prevented her death and didn’t out of some anti-violence principle, I could probably muster up enough anger and hate to harbor some his way.

So I asked my friend Larry the Protester if God (as he described Him) would forgive him for standing by and allowing others to needlessly die when he had the opportunity to use lethal force to stop the shooter.

Larry smiled and shrugged.

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