The Idiocy of the Innocent

“Self defense is justly called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the laws of society.”  Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England.

I have a hard time holding my tongue sometimes when I hear supposedly rational people make totally idiotic statements.  Recently at a social gathering, the ever hovering liberals were proclaiming their moderation and moral superiority by the fact that they had decided that they would only own small capacity handguns and would rather die than use something more effective.

I replied that the fact that they had decided to die after six shots (they won't even own semi-auto pistols) was no reason to force that decision on me.  I have decided not to die until a whole lot of my attackers are dead and that means a lot more ammo has been expended.  In an attack, any attack, ammo is time and time is life.  The more ammo you have the longer you will live.  Period.  If your ammo lasts longer than the lives of your attackers you will survive.

The most maddening thing about his interchange was the fact that these idiotic notions were being mouthed with all of the false moral authority only a liberal can muster by people who have never once in their life carried a gun in anger or been in serious danger.  

As I held my tongue, my mind wandered back to a Central American port in 1970.  Twelve of us were in the back of six-by being transported to the local military police headquarters for our evening's duty.  Out of nowhere, there were hundreds of people on the streets.  We were trapped in the truck in the middle of a mob.  We were armed with nightsticks and not even sidearms, much less our long weapons.

By the grace of God, our host country troops protected us even though it looked as though their hearts weren't in it.  If the mob had been more determined our local security detail might have disappeared.  It is unlikely that they would have risked dying to protect a truck full of gringos.

Given a chance, that mob would have killed every one of us and drug our bodies through the streets.  They didn't care that we were basically nice people and had nothing against them.  They didn't care that we had wives and families at home.  They didn't care that we had brought them food and medicine.  They hated us with a pure white hot rage just because we were Americans.

We weren't saved because of moral persuasion or the mob's respect for their military.  That mob had zero respect for anybody especially their country's military.  But, they did respect the dozen or so hard faced, dead eyed, brown skinned troopers with submachine guns.  The mob knew that many of them would die if they advanced and they decided to live a while longer. That is the ultimate rule of self defense from a mob, if you advance you will die.

Sitting in the back of that truck, I cursed every single person in the chain of command that put me on a Latin American street on a Saturday night in the middle of an angry mob with nothing but a nightstick.  If I had had a weapon in my possession and the crowd had tried to take me or one of my unit, I would have used it.  Frankly, at that moment, if they had advanced further, I would have pulled the trigger on a cannon into that crowd and cheered if a gunship had strafed the survivors.  Sure, I might have had some bad nights afterward but I would be alive to deal with it.

Those moments in the back of that truck so long ago were reality.  Life or death reality.  Something most liberals have never faced. This mob that hated us because we were Americans.  But, the face of a mob is the same in any country and ideology makes no difference.  Islamic mobs in the Middle East who hate because you are Christian are the same and domestic American mobs who hate you because of your race or class are no different.  The basic decency and humanity of all people of all races disappears when they join the mob.

Facing a mob, any sane human being will pull the trigger on any weapon he can get his hands on. And, any sane human being who had lived through a mob would never voluntarily be without an effective weapon again.