Dave Carter @ Ricochet:
It’s as common as it is entertaining to watch a politician steer his great procession of conviction and righteousness down a rhetorical road only to run smack into himself going the opposite direction.  The Barack Obama who makes it steadily more difficult for law abiding citizens to acquire the firepower needed to defend life and hearth, for example, necessarily crosses the path of the Barack Obama who makes military weapons available to Mexican murderers and drug dealers, breezily bypassing those pesky background checks and limits on ammunition capacity. The Barack Obama who now speaks into microphones of his support for the Second Amendment bumps, platitude-first, into the Barack Obama who spoke to Professor John Lott when they both worked at the University of Chicago, and said, “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.”
As is usually the case, the heart is revealed more by action than word, and the actions taken thus far will result in a situation that inescapably favors the lawless. Absent a groundswell of remorseful cutthroats who turn in their high capacity magazines and “assault weapons,” it will be the law-abiding citizen who is abused twice; once by his innate respect for the laws his government imposes, though they obstruct his ability to secure family and property, and once again by criminals who will exploit the vulnerabilities his obedience creates.
Perhaps the President, who delights in festooning the stage with various people to lend an air of unimpeachable credibility to his prescriptions, can invite the family of Maurice Renard Harris to the podium for his next speech advocating ever more impediments to lawful gun ownership. Mr. Harris, 36 and unarmed (thereby exuding the virtues so many well-protected politicians extoll), died in his Miami home recently while trying to prevent armed intruders from entering his 11 year-old daughter’s bedroom. He wrestled one of the men to the floor, where he was shot several times.
Police accounts say armed men gained entry into the home before midnight and, according to theMiami Herald, “…demanded cash. When Harris said he didn’t have any money, the men grabbed an unidentified item and headed toward a bedroom where the 11-year old-girl was sleeping.”
If only Mr. Harris had followed Department of Homeland Security guidelines for its own employees:
1. Evacuate (Have an escape route and plan in mind. Leave your belongings behind. Keep your hands visible)
2. Hide Out (Hide in an area out of the shooter’s view. Block entry to your hiding place and lock the door. Silence your cell phone/pager.)
3. Take Action (As a last resort and only when your life is in imminent danger. Attempt to incapacitate the shooter. Act with physical aggression and throw items at the shooter.)
And remember boys and girls,”Law Enforcement is usually required to end an active shooter situation.” Because your paternal government doesn’t want you to take matters into your own hands.
Or perhaps Mr. Harris could have borrowed from the University of Colorado’s guidelines for self defense in a gun-free zone and vomited on the attackers instead. After all, as Zen Master and Colorado State Representative Joe Salazar (D) advised, “It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, it’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at.” Granted, Salazar’s advice was intended for university campuses, but aren’t they the incubators of truly great ideas? Actually, no … not in this case.
