I know that the pro-gun control crowd would scoff at the point I am about to make, but I believe it is a legitimate argument to make in support of the right to bear arms.
I found this news story on the Drudge Report. A Maryland couple were attacked in their home by, of all things, a rabid bear. While the bear was attempting to enter the home through a window, did the occupants call 911 and wait for the police to arrive? Heck no, the husband blasted the bear with a shotgun they keep in the home.
I grew up in a little mountain town in northern California. Our house wasn't on the town water system. Instead, we had a small pump in a creek below our house, which pumped water to a holding tank on the hill behind our house, and then the gravity feed from the tank down to our house provided for some great water pressure. Every once in a while, the pump would quit working - usually in the dead of night - and I or someone else from the family would have to go down the hill to the creek and take a look at the pump. This involved walking through some very isolated forest and down a trail to the creek; a trail used by bears and humans alike. If you went down that trail to the creek and the pump, you needed to take two things with you besides tools: a long stick, and a gun. The stick was to whack the trees and bushes on your way down there to let the bears know you were coming. The gun was just in case you happened to come upon a mama bear and her cub. Black bears usually run the other way when they see you, but what if just this one time, they don't? That's what the gun was for.
My parents continue to live in the forests of northern California, and when my 62 year-old mother (sorry for spilling the beans, Mom) goes for walks by herself, she always takes a .38 revolver with her. Why? Mountain lions, that's why.
The motives of a vicious animal may be different from a vicious criminal of the human variety, but the results of your encounter with either of them is likely to be the same. It is better to take the gun with you and not need it, rather than leave it at home and end up needing it very badly. Politicians like Hillary Clinton and yes, Rudy Giuliani, would love to take that access to a gun away from you.
As an aside, that Maryland couple is lucky that the 2nd Amendment doesn't give us the right to arm bears. Get it?
Good Day to You, Sir
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson
3 comments:
Gun control=using 2 hands
'nuff said...
I heard scratching at my office window just before dawn the other morning, and looked out. A bear was scratching at the front of the house. I picked up a shoe -- the nearest thing (and I was only barely awake) and threw it at him, and he ran off.
We respect bears here, but they're a part of living in the mountains, and we're not deathly afraid of them. A rabid bear, of course, is a different story (as a grizzly would be).
My mother takes walks in the desert areas near her house and due to mountain lions, is usually armed with a cell phone and a gun. And at 70, I'm glad she is.
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