Where’s Denny Crane When You Need Him?
In December 2008, the ABC series Boston Legal came to a conclusion. It was William Shatner’s best performance since Star Trek.
Shatner potrays Denny Crane, the founder of a fictional law firm Crane, Poole, & Schmidt (with its headquarters in Boston — hence the title). Denny was one hilarious character. He was a conservative Republican, and supported the Second Amendment. In fact, he also carried guns on himself and kept a few in his office. He even shot a few people throughout the series, including a man who took one of the associates as hostage. While the police tried to negotiate the release of the hostage, Denny got a rifle and shot the hostage-taker. A video of that scene can be shown here (curiously, with what appears to be Arabic subtitles — perhaps as a warning to jihadists):
Later, he told the hostage, “It’s a good feeling, you know, to shoot a bad guy. Something you Democrats would never understand. Americans — we’re homesteaders. We want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys. And save the life of someone you love.”
Unfortunately, the Boston area has strict gun control, which means that in the aftermath of the Boston bombings, residents were practically defenseless from the terrorists, who were armed and dangerous. Prior to a shootout with the authorities, they committed a carjacking, taking a hostage in the process. Would they have succeeded in the carjacking if the people of Boston had been allowed to carry firearms? Because an armed citizen (whether it be the carjacking victim or the homeowner who discovered Dzhokhar Tsarnaev‘s presence in his boat) might have turned the tables on the Tsarnaev brothers. But instead, the authorities wanted people to stay indoors while they conducted their house-by-house search. Only then when the authorities allowed people to go outside was the terrorist apprehended.
It is ironic that the same area where the American Revolution began has strict gun control. Meanwhile, Boston Mayor Tom Menino is co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, even going so far as to do a commercial for his organization with New York City Michael Bloomberg (the organization’s other co-chair) for Super Bowl XLVI. In addition, 27 mayors from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are members of the organization.
What would Denny Crane say? Or better yet, what would the Founding Fathers say?
Meanwhile, here’s another Denny Crane clip, in which he promotes the Second Amendment in the closing arguments of a civil trial case involving the expiration of the assault weapons ban.
Image: William Shatner; source: Flickr; author: Keith McDuffee; Comic-Con 2012.jpg; Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license