THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

THE LESSON OF THE TEXAS SCHOOL NON-SHOOTING | 2002-11-23

"Be afraid of no man who walks beneath the skies

As long as I am by your side I will equalize"

That poem was etched on each Colt revolver in the Old West.

The Colt came to be called "The Equalizer."

Studies show that a gun often saves women's lives today by being an equalizer

"Whereas a woman may be severely beaten, even killed, if she resists by using her fists - where the man likely has her outmatched," - says gun expert Professor Lott -- "by far the safest course of action is to have a gun. A woman who behaves passively is 2.5 times as likely to end up being seriously injured as a woman who has a gun. "

All this is the direct opposite of the establishment position. You have heard that official position a hundred times and you will hear it hundreds more: cooperate with the criminal. Give him anything he wants. Invite him home to rape your daughter.

Above all, no one should fight crime except a uniformed representative of the government. That is the liberal solution.

No liberal solution ever works.

School shootings are celebrated regularly by the media as reasons for banning any honest person from being armed. In Texas, a school superintendent walked up to a boy with a gun and took it away from him.

According the official position of the National Education Association, that superintendent should be fired. He gave his students the worst possible example. Yet no one in the NEA had the guts to criticize him.

On Flight 93, September 11, 2001, the honest passengers broke the "no resistance" rule. They attacked the hijackers and died doing it. This kept the plane from being used as a weapon against the White House or some other target.

Once again, no liberal organization has had the guts to attack the Flight 93 passengers for their "vigilante" action. But official advice insists that they should have cooperated and waited for a duly credentialed and uniformed government employee to take action.

If a single honest passenger had had a gun on Flight 93, no one would have been killed. Oddly enough, that comment never appears in the press.

The liberal-European approach to crime is to have government, and only government, DO SOMETHING! In Europe, the crime rate has skyrocketed. Anywhere liberals rule, the crime rate shoots up.

Americans leave it to honest people to do something. The last thing any sane person would do when citizens are in danger is to spend government resources on an effort to prevent them from defending themselves.

So naturally disarming honest people is the first response of liberals and Europeans.

Americans leave it to the people to do something. Our greatest contribution to history has been in teaching the world that the best things come from what our government does NOT do.