Generally, I try to stay away from domestic contemporary politics in this blog. It isn't that I don't have a lot of views on the topic, I do, but rather, that's not what the focus of the blog is about, and the very few people who stop in here don't do that in order to read my political views on one thing or another. And even in this post, I don't really mean to do that.
None the less, as the thought occurred to me, and as I've now heard the same thing from other people, including people I don't really know, I might as well note that the response to the recent Terrorist attack in Boston takes at least some people here off guard, just because we are pretty sure that things wouldn't play out the same way. That's not a criticism of Boston, but it shows that things really are not the same here.
In response to the attack in Boston by two radicalized Islamic Chechen brothers, the city was shut down. And, as we know, it was shut completely down. People were urged to stay indoors, and apparently they largely did. The fugitive brother who was on the run was discovered by a homeowner who noted that something was amiss with his boat and called the authorities.
Perhaps that's what would have happened here, but I doubt it. I suspect here that the city would urge people not to run around and remain indoors, but not seek to require it. Frankly, however, I think around here that a lot of people probably would arm themselves quickly, and the fugitives best chance for surviving the entire thing would have been to surrender to authorities as quickly as possible. Being on the lam would expose a person in that situation, here, to an almost overwhelming risk of getting shot by a regular citizen.
I don't say this in order to argue a political point one way or another, it just is. A fair number of people here have a gun nearby or on themselves all the time. In the same circumstances I suspect that number would dramatically increase. Wyoming allows for the concealed carry of firearms by everyone, without permit, if they meet the criteria for having a permit issued. Quite a few people believe, erroneously, that this means all Wyomingites may carry a concealed weapon and quite a few do. People would be surprised, even here, how many people casually have a handgun on them, or nearby, on any given day.
Our local newspaper, which is declining in quality and extent seemingly with every passing year, is owned elsewhere and runs anti gun material pretty regularly, probably part of the reason that the paper is fading away. Recently the paper's editor ran an article noting that, in the 19th Century, quite a few Wyoming towns banned the carrying of arms, in the open, on the street, the attempt being to suggest that there was no carry culture in the West at the time. The paper probably should have considered its point in context, but being able to discern and investigate is not the long suit of the paper. What the paper might have also noted is that the towns were tiny at the time, and based upon the amount of shooting of one kind or another, and the lack of local law enforcement, and the general do it yourself nature of the law at that time, that might have not really meant particularly much. At any rate, Tribune aside, there's definitely been easy familiarity with firearms in the West for quite some time,, and that's quite true now.
It's often pointed out that the 2nd Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bare arms, is tied to some sort of militia provision, with that being argued back and forth. Critics of the right sometimes suggest that the amendment is an anachronism, because in the day in which it was written access to firearms might keep a person alive if suddenly attacked by Indians. . . or perhaps the British or the French, and that such local attacks no longer occur. Maybe that's been over analyzed, however, as it now seems the greatest external military danger to average citizenry is in fact the random attack by Terrorist in our midst, which is difficult to do anything about. I'm not suggesting, or even beginning to suggest, that everyone should carry a firearm in order to guard against the extremely remote chance that they're attacked by a Terrorist. Indeed that risk is infinitely small. But rather, the only point in this post is to observe how different some things are in different regions of the country. Once again, here, I suspect that in short order the guilty's best bet would be to surrender as quickly as possible, as it'd be far more likely that such a person would otherwise get shot by a common citizen. Is that good or bad? Hard to say really, but it is different.
1 comment:
Very well said!
Post a Comment