Support for the Second Amendment? In Philadelphia?

This week's Philadelphia City Paper (a leftish alternative weekly) has an editorial about guns.

Yes, I know what you're already thinking. ("Here goes Eric with another lengthy diatribe about the complete stranglehold that the anti-gun mentality holds on all of Philadelphia's newspapers.")

If you're thinking along such lines, you can stop right there!

Because this editorial is not the usual tripe to which I've become so sadly accustomed. In fact, it's so out-of-the-ordinary that I had to read the piece twice to verify that it wasn't carefully dissembled satire pretending to take the side of the "gun nuts" only to reveal the sarcasm in the last sentence.

Michael Washburn (not a token gun nut they're indulging this one time, but a regular writer and editor at Philadelphia City Paper) piece is titled "On the Defensive -- If we ban guns, only the criminals will be armed," and it's as serious and articulate a defense of the Second Amendment as I have ever seen anywhere (least of all in Philadelphia newspapers). Washburn begins by relating two accounts of successful home self defense incidents -- one involving a 79-year-old man who shot two burglars, and the other involving a woman who managed to successfully free herself from captivity, get hold of her gun and shoot two invaders bent on robbing and raping her and a female houseguest:

Cases like the two above illustrate the essential role of guns in protecting people who are physically no match for the aggressors, or who are confronting criminals possessing guns illegally. Cases within just the past few weeks -- listed online at the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog and in local media outlets around the country -- could fill every page of this City Paper.

Sadly, the notion of self-defense as an imperative -- even a right -- has eroded a great deal in our political culture. Those who exercise the right court the label "racist" -- because they might shoot a criminal who happens to be black -- or "trigger-happy," and many employers bar their workers from resisting thugs. Ronald B. Honeycutt, a Pizza Hut employee in Indiana who shot a thug trying to rob him during a delivery, learned this when Pizza Hut fired him. Attorney Rick Whitham told World Net Daily, "I hope the media will realize the incredible unfairness of a huge company telling its employees -- in essence -- they must agree to die for the company rather than use legal means to defend themselves."

But some people are sending that message on a wider scale. Look at the 79-year-old man in Dry Ridge. Gun control would have told him, in essence:

You're going to have to let the robbers do with you as they will. You might survive their blows, and you might not. You might avoid a fatal heart attack, and you might not. In the event that you survive, you can call the police, who may or may not catch the perps. Will the courts and jails keep them off the streets? Sheesh, how naive are you?

But this is one American who decided to cut out the middle man. Those of you who live in Philadelphia should be grateful that one of your fundamental rights is intact.

A wonderful, amazing piece.

My hat's off to the Philadelphia City Paper.

Is it too much to hope that this editorial might help empower closeted Second Amendment sympathizers at the Philadelphia Inquirer?

posted by Eric on 09.22.07 at 10:53 AM





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Comments

If the left in Phila doesn't "disappear him" his next editorial should be on what's going on in England vis a vis gun bans & self defense.

doug   ·  September 22, 2007 06:13 PM

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