Posted on 02/15/2013 12:47:23 PM PST by Kaslin
Late last year, I shared a very powerful article by an admitted liberal who concluded that gun control was impractical and illogical.
Now I want to share a New York Times column from another leftist. Justin Cronin also supports the right of gun ownership, but he offers a more personal reason for his support of the Second Amendment.
Here are some of the key excerpts from his column.
I am a New England liberal, born and bred. I have lived most of my life in the Northeast — Boston, New York and Philadelphia — and my politics are devoutly Democratic. I am also a Texas resident and a gun owner. I have half a dozen pistols in my safe, all semiautomatics, the largest capable of holding 20 rounds. …I’m currently shopping for a shotgun, either a Remington 870 Express Tactical or a Mossberg 500 Flex with a pistol grip and adjustable stock. …I am my family’s last line of defense. I have chosen to meet this responsibility, in part, by being armed. It wasn’t a choice I made lightly.
A “pistol grip”? A gun that holds “20 rounds”? An “adjustable stock”? Gasp, the horror! I imagine Obama is probably sending the BATF after this guy. Heck, maybe even target him with a drone.
So why does this self-described leftist own guns and believe in the right to self-defense? The answer is common sense, based in part on what happened when Hurricane Rita was heading toward Houston.
My wife and I arranged to stay at a friend’s house in Austin, packed up the kids and dog, and headed out of town — or tried to. As many as 3.7 million people had the same idea, making Rita one of the largest evacuations in history, with predictable results. By 2 in the morning, after six hours on the road, we had made it all of 50 miles. The scene was like a snapshot from the Apocalypse: crowds milling restlessly, gas stations and mini-marts picked clean and heaped with trash, families sleeping by the side of the road. The situation had the hopped-up feel of barely bottled chaos. After Katrina, nobody had any illusions that help was on its way. It also occurred to me that there were probably a lot of guns out there… Here I was with two tiny children, a couple of thousand dollars in cash, a late-model S.U.V. with half a tank of gas and not so much as a heavy book to throw. …Rita made a last-minute turn away from Houston. But what if it hadn’t? I believe people are basically good, but not all of them and not all the time. Like most citizens of our modern, technological world, I am wholly reliant upon a fragile web of services to meet my most basic needs. What would happen if those services collapsed? Chaos, that’s what.
We’ve already witnessed real-world examples of societal breakdown caused by government incompetence and failure.
I wrote two years ago to celebrate the superiority of the American system, which allowed Korean shopowners to protect themselves during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, and the British system, which left immigrant shopowners vulnerable and defenseless to rampaging mobs.
That argument gets more relevant and powerful every year. Indeed, there have been riots all over Europe, and I suspect that we’ll see more chaos and social disarray as the welfare state continues to collapse. And as I discuss in this NRA-TV interview, only a fool (or a victim of bad government) is unarmed when the you-know-what hits the fan.
Simply stated, would you want to leave your family vulnerable, and rely on the callow and feckless political class for their safety? I hope not, which is why I’m surprised that “protection during a societal breakdown” only got about 13 percent of the vote in my poll asking the most important reason to oppose gun control.
Let’s return to the NYT column. Our liberal columnist naively wishes guns didn’t exist (as if a pack of young, male thugs need weapons to terrorize a family), but at least he recognizes that his anti-gun leftist friends don’t know what they’re talking about.
…in the weeks since Newtown, I’ve watched my Facebook feed, which is dominated by my coastal friends, fill up with anti-gun dispatches that seemed divorced from reality. I agree it would be nice if the world had exactly zero guns in it. But I don’t see that happening, and calling gun owners “a bunch of inbred rednecks” doesn’t do much to advance rational discussion. Thus, my secret life — though I guess it’s not such a secret anymore.
Here’s a final excerpt that is very heartwarming, and this picture reveals that I obviously share the same sentiments.
My wife is afraid of my guns (though she also says she’s glad I have them). My 16-year-old daughter is a different story. …she asked to take a pistol lesson. …the instructor ran her through the basics, demonstrating with a Glock 9-millimeter: how to hold it, load it, pull back the slide. “You’ll probably have trouble with that part,” he said. “A lot of the women do.” “Oh really?” my daughter replied, and with a cagey smile proceeded to rack her weapon with such authority you could have heard it in the parking lot. A proud-papa moment? I confess it was.
If you want more practical information on gun control, I strongly recommend the famous Larry Correia article. And for wisdom on the issue of so-called assault weapons, John Lott is the oracle.
And if you want to laugh at the dishonest (or naive) liberals, watch this amusing video to see how they think gun control works in their fantasy world.
Then give your leftist friends this IQ test on gun control and see if they can figure out the right answer.
I bought a high cap pistol (13 shot Browning Hi-Power) during the riots back in 1968. It came with two magazines.
Never regretted it.
The “honest liberal” says he thinks the world would be better without any guns in it...
sure...
tell that to a 120 lb woman facing a 300 lb rapist.
This is why things must get worse before they can get better.
A lot of otherwise intelligent liberals have used the material wealth their educations have allowed them to acquire to retreat into a bubble, into a virtual world.
When they are forced to live in the real world, they come face to face with the absurd contradictions of liberalism.
A mass learning experience for the American population will come, sooner or later.
I love that quote as it is so very true.
bflr
My daughter can proficiently shoot and maintain all of my firearms. She likes my Ruger Sr9c so much, that I will be buying her one. She likes the AR15 better than my AK-pattern rifle, but she really enjoys shooting the Draco AK pistol. Best of all, my daughter does NOT listen to NPR like the confused liberal in the NY Times. She is a Texas gal who does not suffer fools lightly.
I don’t believe there is such thing as an “honest liberal” and frankly, I’d rather they weren’t armed.
bump for later
After living in Boston, New York and Philadelphia if the Rita/evac/traffic jam was the first time he thought people might get ugly in a disaster situation he must be very slow on the uptake.
It’s good to see a bit of “rightness” has rubbed off on Mr. Cronin concerning guns. He is one hell of an author, and from what I’ve been told by my brother who teaches at U of Houston (Cronin teaches English at Rice), he’s a pretty decent fellow to speak with and very open to discussion without the usual lefty no facts B.S.
And for anyone that likes “older” works of Stephen King, before he went off the rails in every book, check out Mr. Cronin’s books. He spins some great tales.
The money question: Simply stated, would you want to leave your family vulnerable, and rely on the callow and feckless political class for their safety?
This is something liberals do not understand. The leftist political class will abandon their useful idiot voters in a nano-second to protect their worthless hides. They won’t care if you’re shot, murdered and sliced into a million pieces.
The No. 1 constituency the political class cares about is themselves. They’re weak, chicken-shit hedonists. The liberal who wrote this piece senses the danger that he’s facing. Good for him. PROTECT YOUR FAMILY!!! Now come over to our side and learn how to slit throats with a knife. You might need that skill someday.
There is no such thing as an “honest Liberal.” Honesty requires a rigorous pursuit of the truth, of which liberals are incapable!
“Another Honest Liberal...”
Is there really any such thing as an honest liberal?
(They are honestly scu*bags, but they are not honest.)
IMHO
“Is there really any such thing as an honest liberal?”
I believe that the Lord blesses individuals with an opportunity for salvation. It does happen. See the road to Damascus as an example.
This liberal has seen heaven’s lightning bolt and may be waking up. He should be welcomed and taught the way.
“This Liberal has seen heaven’s lightning bolt and may be waking up. He should be welcomed and taught the way.”
Liberals do not wake up. They only say and do things to further the revolution.
If someone still adheres to a political philosophy that
has resulted in the murder and torture of millions upon millions of human beings in the last century, there will be no welcome here.
Regards
IMHO
I remember that quote very well. I don't even remember the rest of the episode, and I was a DS9 fan. But it was a remarkable statement coming out of Majel Roddenberry's shop, which had been so relentlessly liberal and "proggy" for what, 30 years?
If you also remember the confession of the notorious ex-governor Kolos, who was discovered aboard Captain Kirk's Enterprise, that episode also dealt with huomi savagery; but it was couched very differently, as "some people" (like the Nazis) "can act like that, at times." The 1998 statement is much more sweepingly ascriptive.
Not for long, if he keeps popping op-eds like that one. They'll start by snubbing him in the faculty lounge and proceed to raising discreet questions about his excellences and his syllabus: Is it really needed at Rice? As much as, say, a couple of adjuncts in demography and city planning. And Uralic languages. He is, after all, slightly old school.
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