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10A040
Our Best Protection
by Jim Davies, 10/10/2010
It's "troopers," say the ubiquitous bumper stickers; sported perhaps by drivers related to or dependent on a policeman, and so not entirely impartial. I always smile a little when I see one, for the word "best" is a relative word; it demands comparison. To whom can cops be compared? - everywhere, they hold a local monopoly! There is no competition, against which they might be evaluated, so leading to opinions like worst, worse, good, better, best. So perhaps the b-stickers are meant to placate voters and persuade them not to object when the local police budget is raised again, and taxes with it. Mind, it would be a courageous voter who spoke up at a town meeting to call for that budget to be reduced. He might just have his name taken down, find himself in traffic stops every time he drove at 31 mph. Powerful people, these cops. Almost able to write their own pay checks. The NBC program "Dateline" quite often tells a good tale, frequently about real-life crimes, as in the edition of October 8th; its transcript is here. A nice family in Cheshire, CT was robbed in 2007 and its mother and two daughters, horribly murdered. Townsfolk are outraged at police blundering, NBC reported. They "sense that the institutions of state government -- designed to protect -- had failed them. Home burglar alarm installers saw their business soar in the next few weeks. Applications for gun permits increased eightfold." So when actually faced with the possibility of being burned to death in their beds by pyschopathic thugs, it seems people instinctively know what is their true, best protection. The perps in this case were incredibly inept, but the cops were even more so. Alerted by two 911 calls, they were actually on the scene before anybody died; but "procedure" prevented them taking action in time to protect anyone. Guns, in contrast, are on the scene within seconds; they have only to be picked up and aimed at the home invader. And yet in the arrogance of our governors, this powerful self-protection tool is subject to their permits. No protection technique is perfect, and as I see it guns are a last line of defense, not the first. The first line, in a zero government society, will be the removal of motivation or incentive to rob, swindle or hurt people. How so? - absent government, nothing will impede enyone earning a good living who wishes to do so; no taxes will steal what he earns when he does; no permit laws will hinder potential theft victims defending themselves and their property with deadly force, and no police or "justice" monopoly will prevent the detection, apprehension and court industries depriving aggressors of their loot and publishing a record of their careers. In other words, "crime" will not pay. Consequently, there won't be much. |
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