One should never write when one is angry. But sometimes it’s the best way to get a point across, and this lame-assed story for Rolling Stone by leftwing goon Robert Dreyfuss has given me cause to hurl something heavy through my computer screen with rage.
The attention of this blog has been turned toward issues regarding firearms many times in the past, including these articles on concealed-carry firearms and discussions on gun control such as the recent Colonel Jeff Cooper post.
And on September 13th, there was a school shooting in Montreal about which I wrote in this post. At the end of the relatively short comments section, I chimed in on October 2nd with an observation on the Amish school shooting that had happened that day, saying: “There are no good solutions to the problem of suicidal people who wish to take others down with them; we’re feeling the same problem with Islamist terrorism. But I’m really beginning to wonder if it isn’t time to start permitting teachers to carry concealed weapons and to offer defence courses as part of their training.”
It would only take a sufficiently trained and armed teacher ten seconds to neutralise a threat to herself and her students, and it would only take consistency of this approach across the nation’s schools to constitute a potentially useful deterrent to aggressors in the first place. Israel and Thailand have successfully armed their teachers with good results in response to school terrorism.
Today it appears that a Republican state representative in Green Bay, Wisconsin has suggested doing the same thing: “Sometimes when people are intent on harming others, the only reasonable response you could have is to confront them with firepower to stop them,” says Frank Lasee.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who realises instinctively that teachers and students are currently defenceless, giving aggressors carte blanche in the schoolroom in much the same way that unarmed citizens are at the whim of armed aggressors in their homes or in the streets. But Robert Dreyfuss in Rolling Stone magazine begs to differ – not because he actually cares enough about the issue to consult statistics, refer to facts or even think the damned thing through – but because he’s a leftwing GOON with a leftwing reaction void of any of the rational processes required to come to a decent conclusion.
“It happens every time. A gun nut or some deranged students kill some kids at school, and pro-gun advocates are right there with the solution: Arm Our Teachers …. Frank Lasee [is] the pol who proposed this lunatic idea,” his cheapshot article fires back. Yet his own solution is conspicuously absent, like so many leftist criticisms, and his sarcasm and typecasting are equally vacuous of constructive discussion points. One could perhaps rewrite his article thus: “It happens every time. A kitchen knife-wielding nutcase or some deranged students kill some kids at school, and antigun activists are right there with pathetic cheapshots instead of solutions.”
Indeed, the thought has probably never occurred to Dreyfuss that guns may be tools without a moral bias which are simply utilised either to good or evil purposes by their user, who is morally responsible. Indeed, the thought has probably never occurred to Dreyfuss that individuals are morally responsible. It seems he didn’t actually think to think at all before writing it.
This little article was, itself, a bit like a school shooting. Dreyfuss came in, picked up his computer and started firing away on the keys at those who advocate the freedom to own firearms, leaving nothing but chaos of thought and a confused audience. Of course, he also shot himself in the end, as these comments to his own post at Rolling Stone testify:
“What next, armed security guards at banks? Air marshalls with guns on planes? Oh wait… I’m sure teachers can just use the aforementioned ‘really sharp pencils’ to fight off people with guns.”
“The assumption that violence will increase, such as having ‘firefights’ in school, if responsible adults on campus were armed, reflects only ignorance and an emotional knee-jerk reaction to the problem.”
“Some word processor nut strikes again.”
If you’d like to have a sensible debate about this, Dreyfuss, let’s take a look at the facts concerning the widespread issuance of concealed weapons permits in the general populace of 38 US states and the effect it’s had on violent crime in those respective states. What’s that? It’s devastating to your narrow, skewed leftist worldview? So sorry.
John Wright
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