- In June, a new book will be published that I urge every
American to read. It's called "Guns Save Lives: True Stories of
Americans
Defending Their Lives With Firearms." The author is Robert Waters.
The publisher is Loompanics Unlimited.
-
- If your politically correct bookstore doesn't have it
by June, tell it to order the book for you.
-
- This is not a dull, scholarly study, nor is it a book
of arguments. Robert Waters has just done a fine job of reporting. He
tracked
down 14 people who had been forced to defend their lives, their families
or their employees and businesses with a firearm. He interviewed them and
others involved in the cases, including police. Then, like a good
storyteller,
he tells you what happened, blow by blow.
-
- These are exciting stories, some of them terrifying.
To summarize just one, imagine that you are a woman with two small children
in the house. You're home recuperating from recent surgery. You go to the
front door, and a man shoves his way in and begins to stab you with a knife
- in the chest, in the arm, in the eye.
-
- Your screams bring your 11-year-old son down from
upstairs,
and he hurls his frail, little body on the back of the thug who is trying
to kill you. The thug shakes the boy off and begins to beat him. This gives
you the chance to stumble downstairs and retrieve your pistol. It is a
mother's love that gives you strength through all your pain and fear to
climb back up those stairs, gushing blood every step. You know only you
and that pistol stand between death and your children. You shoot the
bastard
four times. He drops, paralyzed from the chest down.
-
- This time the guy was sentenced to life without parole.
I said "this time" because he had a record of felony convictions
that should have kept him in prison. That is a common theme. In almost
all of these cases, the bad guys were convicted felons who never should
have been let out of prison, but were by a badly run criminal justice
system.
-
- I say it plainly: If you rely on the criminal justice
system to protect you and your family, you're relying on a flawed system
that has resulted in the deaths and serious injuries of literally thousands
of innocent people who were murdered or assaulted by people with many
convictions
on their records. The revolving door of our prison system still has not
been completely shut, though some progress in some states has been made.
Even so, there are still many idiots in black robes who seem to have far
more sympathy for the criminals than for the victims.
-
- Incidentally, if you want a reason to never vote for
a liberal governor, that's it. A liberal governor is going to appoint
liberal
judges, and unless you are a career criminal, that's the last kind of judge
you want sitting on the bench. It breaks your heart to read these stories
of good, decent people who were terrified and often badly injured before
they could save their lives with a firearm.
-
- I don't make any bones about it: I hate the gun-control
crowd. They are liars and deceivers at worst and fools at best. The men
who took up private arms to win their liberty from British tyranny wrote
the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights to make sure every American
would also have a firearm for self-defense and for the defense of
liberty.
-
- Scholarly works that have been done - more than 20 of
them - show that anywhere from hundreds of thousands to 2 million Americans
defend themselves or their property with firearms every year. Yet deaths
from firearm accidents have steadily decreased until they are next to dead
last on the list of accidental fatalities.
-
- Of course, if you buy a gun, learn what the laws are,
learn to use the weapon, and learn to use it and store it responsibly.
That goes without saying. This nation was created by intelligent and
responsible
people for intelligent and responsible people. Don't vote for one single
politician who even hints he or she might want to limit your right to own
and use a firearm in self-defense. This is a no-compromise issue.
- ___
-
- Charley Reese can be contacted at
- briarl@earthlink.net.
- © 2002 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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