2220bd13   
   XPost: alt.society.liberalism, talk.politics.guns   
   From: kurtnicklas@gmail.com   
      
   Why Liberals Should Support Armed Self-Defense   
   By Jeffrey Goldberg Mar 4, 2013 6:32 PM ET   
      
   U.S. Vice President Joe Biden recently had some advice (delivered   
   through the good offices of Parents magazine, of all things) for women   
   who are afraid of crime. “If you want to protect yourself, get a   
   double-barrel shotgun,” he said, during a Facebook video chat.   
   The vice president said he told his wife, Jill, that “If there’s ever   
   a problem” -- at their home in Wilmington, Delaware -- “just walk out   
   on the balcony here, walk out, put that double-barrel shotgun and just   
   fire two blasts outside the house.” He went on, “You don’t need an   
   AR-15. It’s harder to aim. It’s harder to use, and, in fact, you don’t   
   need 30 rounds to protect yourself. Buy a shotgun. Buy a shotgun.”   
      
   He later expanded on his theory of home defense in an interview with   
   Field and Stream magazine. “Well, you know, my shotgun will do better   
   for you than your AR-15,” he said, “because you want to keep someone   
   away from your house, just fire the shotgun through the door.”   
   Biden’s advice is both generally and specifically bad. It is never a   
   good idea for a woman, or a man, to fire shotgun blasts into the dark.   
   It is a particularly bad idea to fire a shotgun through a door. It is   
   very specifically a bad idea for Jill Biden to fire a shotgun from her   
   balcony into the dark because she might shoot a member of her   
   husband’s Secret Service detail.   
      
   But the vice president is one of the few Democratic politicians today   
   who acknowledges, even implicitly, that the desire of millions of   
   American citizens to participate in their own defense by arming   
   themselves is both morally and practically legitimate.   
      
   Counterproductive Moralizing   
   Many Democrats find joy in caricaturing gun owners -- even of the non-   
   absolutist variety -- as mouth-breathing barbarians. This smug   
   moralizing has become almost pathological. It is also   
   counterproductive, because demonizing the more than 40 percent of   
   Americans who own guns (the vast majority of whom secure them   
   responsibly) isn’t an effective way to advance sensible legislation to   
   regulate civilian-owned guns.   
      
   The gun-control debate after the Dec. 14 massacre at Sandy Hook   
   Elementary School in Connecticut has been mostly a non sequitur. Few   
   of the reforms suggested would have prevented the shooting. But it is   
   true that universal background checks, a more stringent mental-health   
   reporting system and certain other measures could at least marginally   
   reduce the frequency of mass shootings. It is also true -- although   
   Democrats are loath to admit it -- that an armed and trained adult at   
   Sandy Hook would have had a fighting chance of stopping Adam Lanza   
   from killing 20 children and six staff members that day.   
      
   An important, and overlooked, fact of the Sandy Hook tragedy is that   
   it took police 20 minutes to arrive at the school. The police are   
   spread too thinly across many American communities to stop shootings   
   in their first moments. And armed civilians have been instrumental in   
   stopping shootings at New Life Church in Colorado, Pearl High School   
   in Mississippi and elsewhere.   
      
   This hasn’t stopped some Democrats from arguing against armed self-   
   defense. Some left-wing commentators, members of a class not   
   previously known for its love of the police, think their fellow   
   citizens don’t possess adequate faith that law enforcement will   
   protect them.   
      
   On the Nation magazine’s website, Bryce Covert wrote: “Agreeing to   
   ignore the instinct to pick up more guns means trusting that the   
   police will show up to answer your call, that you’ll be treated fairly   
   by our criminal justice system, that our laws will be enforced in a   
   way that truly prevents violence. Our system fails at many of these   
   goals. But the alternative is each citizen being a private army of   
   one, on the defense against all others around him.”   
      
   Defending Yourself   
      
   Shortly after Sandy Hook, a blogger at the Washington Monthly, making   
   the unfounded assumption that the police provide Americans with   
   flawless protection, asked, “Isn’t one of the fundamental reasons of   
   forming any kind of government in the first place to provide for a   
   common defense, instead of having to bear the totality of that burden   
   all by yourself?” Yes, but this misses the point entirely. When the   
   government’s provision of defense is inadequate, as it usually is   
   during a mass shooting, you have to defend yourself.   
      
   I haven’t quite fathomed why many self-described liberals are so   
   emotionally invested in the belief that a suitably trained and vetted   
   person with a gun shouldn’t be allowed to participate in his or her   
   self-defense. So I turned to Dan Baum, a self-described liberal and   
   author of the new book “Gun Guys: A Road Trip.”   
      
   “Gun Guys” is a rare thing -- a book that attempts to understand,   
   rather than caricature, gun owners. Baum, himself a gun owner, takes   
   us into the collective psyche of a portion of the U.S. that its   
   coastal elites don’t seem to understand. In the second installment of   
   this column, I’ll share some of my conversation with Baum, who thinks   
   that his fellow liberals are allergic, as he puts it, “to the thought   
   of individuals being vigorous and empowered and capable enough to use   
   a gun.”   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)