Plans backfire. It happens to everyone sooner or later. Sometimes that means disaster. Other times, it works out beautifully. This is the latter kind.
The original plan was an anti-gun petition. Ho-hum, right? It was some anonymous zealot — calling himself “Jim” — trolling Second Amendment Rights defenders with a petition calling for open carry at the RNC convention in July.
That led to another petition, one specifically calling out the DNC convention. As you might have guessed, it took the other petition’s arguments and flipped them in the other direction, calling for a complete absence of firearms carried by any person whatsoever for the duration of the Convention.
Here’s how the logic works on both sides.
The RNC — the pro-Second Amendment party — has an event where guns are present. The logic is (and has always been) that good guys with guns provide safety from bad guys with guns. In this instance, the good guys with guns will be already present on scene, should trouble arise. (Said differently, they will not be “a phone call” or several minutes away.)
Having armed citizens on the scene — unlike the sad story told in so many mass-murder situations — puts a potential attacker at risk.
If Sandy Hook, Aurora, Fort Hood (or far too many others) had responsible adults with means to adequately respond to the threats they faced (ie: firearms), these tragic slaughters would have ended very differently. The fact that these tend to happen in places where the attacker knows his victims are forbidden to carry a weapon to defend themselves is already well documented.
What about the other petition? Is it valid?
It’s a put-up-or-shut-up proposal by The Citizens Committee For The Right To Keep And Bear Arms (CCRKBA), it is designed to expose Democrats’ hypocrisy about guns.
The constant refrain by the Left is that “guns do not make us safer”. Guns (to them) are inherently dangerous. Private individuals, they argue, should not need to have their safety protected by gun rights.
Here’s the rub. Politicians are private individuals. In practice, they are exercising the exact same right by proxy, simply because they have the means and money to do what the rest of us cannot.
They hire other individuals who carry guns to secure their safety on their behalf. Ordinary citizens can’t pay someone else to secure their safety by proxy. So citizens must shoulder the responsibility of owning a gun themselves, being trained themselves, being alert to danger themselves, and — if necessary — functioning as their own private security detail.
Politicians, as mentioned, have these same things done for them by proxy.
In the end, the benefit is the same. The private individual (whether ordinary citizen or politician) has his or her personal security defended by capable gun-owners. Same benefit, different delivery.
But Democratic politicians actively oppose the rights of a private citizen to do what we just described. Democrats pretend to hold a belief that people are “basically good.” This lie is exposed when they refuse to trust responsible citizens with lawfully-purchased firearms.
This petition calls out the hypocrisy in the simplest of ways. If you do not believe a citizen should have the lawful right to defend himself from threats by the use of firearms, put your money where your mouth is.
Do not take for yourself — by proxy — any rights of self-defense you do not believe the average citizen ought to hold. If guns are as dangerous as you say, insist that all security details for the duration of the DNC abide by your own deeply-held convictions.
Insist — and I would add, publicize — that in keeping with your belief that guns are the great evil you say they are, the DNC Convention itself will be a gun-free zone. But, in so doing, make it a truly gun-free zone.
It would have a bitter enough pill to swallow if it merely insisted that security (police, Secret Service, private security) be forbidden to bring firearms to the event.
The petition actually went farther still. Here’s a quote from the petition (courtesy Brian Anderson):
- There shall be no armed security allowed at the Wells Fargo Center, for the duration of the Democratic National Convention. No police or sheriff’s deputies, state troopers, federal law enforcement in or out of uniform will be allowed.
- In the event of protests within the immediate vicinity of the Wells Fargo Center, police should not be asked or expected to respond.
For those interested either in reading the petition (written in plain English, it is short and to the point), or signing it, you can find the link HERE.
