Why I'm Pro-Second Amendment, Episode MLXVIII

Since I'm alienating the local liberals anyway, I guess I might as well direct your attention to this story on CNN.com, which, I must admit, warms my heart. At least one of the two innocent shopkeepers in this story would be dead if they hadn't been armed.

Liberal gunphobia is something that most people who grew up where I grew up simply do not and perhaps cannot understand. I suppose if I could wave a magic wand and eliminate all privately-owned firearms--including those possessed by criminals--I'd have to think long and hard about whether to do it. But, of course, in the real world criminals would be the last to surrender their guns.

I've puzzled a lot over the attitude liberals seem to have developed to firearms over the past 30 or 40 years. Seems to me that the liberal attitude about firearms--like the liberal attitude about drugs--should be that the government has no right to tell you what to do until you are a threat to others. If you get high and drive--or if you use a gun in a crime--then the penalties should be severe. But until that time the government simply does not have any interest in--or authority to--tell you what you can own or ingest.

But, oddly, many liberals I know are against stiffer penalties for those who use guns in crimes, preferring to take guns away from law-abiding citizens instead. This seems decidedgly illiberal to me. Many liberals seem to have come to believe that we can turn over our duty of self-defense to the state, but this is not true. For one thing the state is incapable of protecting individuals under many or perhaps even most circumstances.

Well, anyway, at least this was one gunfight with a happy outcome. Chalk one up for the good guys!