Why I Am Willing

A friend and co-worker with whom I enjoy frequent -and sometimes spirited- polite debates, recently pointed out that some folks make entirely too light of the prospect of killing another person face-to-face. There was even a hint of a whiff of the inference that *I* might be taking life-taking too lightly. Allow me to explain.

If I am awake, generally speaking, I will be found in Condition Yellow, at least. My Little Friend or one of his big brothers will be hiding in Condition One somewhere *very* close by.

I did not start this way.

In a previous part of my life, I owned zero weapons (for those in UK: a knife carried about the person is a tool, not a weapon). I walked around in Condition White just like those around me. A little time and a few near-death experiences in the US Navy, combined with reading about 'accidents' involving my shipmates, started to wake me up a little. Reading the self-defence stories from old Guns & Ammo magazines (similar to websites like this) shook me a little closer to awake. Mostly, it was thinking that did it. When I began to consider that the only thing between me, my wife, and my kids, and eternity was a piece of warm steel and plastic, It began to sink in.

I bought a rifle, and something that had been missing without me knowing about it clicked into place. A man with a (n evil assault) rifle can't be told to Give Them What They Want. I had all the appropriate Life Experience boxes ticked, but I finally realized another part of the responsibility of being a Man when I took this pile of sticks and tubes to the range and killed some paper with it.

Armed with my own weapon at last, reality began to dawn in earnest. Here I held in my hands the power to destroy. What would I be willing to do with it? Would I give it if the Government demanded it of me? Would I use it in defense of me and mine? Would I use it in defense of the country as a Militiaman?

At first, it was a new thing to have a 'gun' in the house. It stayed unloaded. I got used to the idea of it being there. I left it loaded and then, on nights when the News was ugly, by the bedside.

Now I have an undisclosed nonzero integer number of guns, including one I can usually (at the farthest) reach out and grab. Usually one is ready to Go on my person. Even in my house.

How do you get here from there?

By thinking.

You have to understand one thing about someone who is willing to use deadly force on you to get what he wants (drugs, money, car, etc.): They are not worried about your kids not having a daddy. Not worried about how you will get home without your truck. Not worried that the cash in your pockets is food for your kids. You are not a People to them. You are a Mark. A target, a rube, a Thing to be used to achieve whatever end they have in mind. They do not regard you as the same type of entity as they are. To the criminal willing to kill an innocent, the innocent is NOT a person with the same rights and dignities as they have.

Since they will not class themselves with the decent people of the world, they deserve the appelation Col. Cooper gave them: Goblin. They are a subhuman race comprising all ethnicities and sexes.

To kill one is a last resort. You might even want to give up that wallet. But to remove a Goblin from the world is not the same thing as killing a People, as far as the righteous shooter is concerned. No sleep need be lost over a Goblin. If a People dies, their family is bereft of a breadwinner. Society is down a productive member that was going about at the very least driving the engine of the national economy. If a Goblin is put down, society is improved. They are parasites that may at need be removed with a 9-gram pill. to remove one from the picture means that they will NOT harm another People. Their recidivism rate is reduced to zero, instantly. Another wallet, truck, life, or innocence will not be stolen, which all means: another life will not be stolen.

This boils down to the libertarian concept of property rights: all your property came at the expense of your life. If you buy a car that costs 3 months' wages, that car is, in a very real sense, 3 months of your life in tangible form. Would you like it if, at the end of your life, someone came along and said "I'll be killing you 3 months early" and offed you, just because they wanted to?

Would you go softly into that night?

Would you let yourself be killed a year early? If you knew that you would be hit by a bus next year, would you sacrifice that year to the whim of someone who hates you?

Would you? I wouldn't.

Then why would you let them take your truck & boat? Didn't you give an entire year of your life to pay for them? Sure they can be replaced. That's not the point. The point is, you have a natural RIGHT to the fruit of your labor. "They" have NO right to take it from you. It's the same as killing you early. If you don't understand the concept of the right of property, then you don't understand that it is worth defending from those who would

steal

your life.

Would you have a moral problem killing a coyote that was eating your chickens? Would you have a problem putting down a rabid wolf?

Would you?

Then you may not be able to understand the concept of a hooman been as a Goblin, and the moral equivalent of a rabid dog.

Would it have been unjust for someone to kill the japanese Crazy who killed 7 folks recently, while he was still in the process of so doing? If so, then

a) your moral compass has a Leftist Magnet stuck to the side of it and

b) you are wrong.

It doesn't matter if you don't think you are wrong, because it doesn't change the fact that someone who will take the life of an innocent is NOT the same as someone who will take the life of a murderer.

Changing tacks...

Every time a People so much as draws his weapon, however justified, the LawyerSharks begin to circle. Every bullet fired leaves with the weight of the GSR left on the Righteous Shooter a weight of lawsuits, legal fees, and even possible jail time. This must be considered. It must also be considered that when a People confronts an armed Goblin it doesn't always turn out so great for the People.

A citizen who will go about armed must consider under what circumstances he will introduce a Goblin to his Little Friend, and under what circumstances he will not. Do you consider your own car to be worth the risk of your life? Does it matter to you that you are as likely as not to be shot once you exit the car, in order to keep both it, and the Goblin's trail, clean? If you consider your wallet not worth even the killing of a Goblin, reach for it instead of Mr. Glock's finest. If you consider it worth the effort to aim at a Goblin who is going about shooting people in Luby's at lunctime, reach for the thing that Works Every Time. Do you make a home invader a sammich and give him what he wants, or do you drop him without so much as a by'er'leave? What do you give when a thief says "give it to me?" You must consider, or you will end up being jacked up for unjustified actions whilst a Goblin rightfully claims victim status against your Perpetrator.

I have thought about it.

I don't like killing anything more sophisticated than cockroaches.

But if you insist on breaking into my house in the middle of the night, you have a few 10mm surprises waiting for you. If you tell me to give it to you, you may not like what you get.

If I joke about it, it is not kidding. Soldiers have told grizly jokes whilst walking past piles of corpses since the beginning of time, to cover over their own inner musings. If I whistle past the Goblins' graveyard, don't think me flippant. It's not a decision I have made lightly, but I have made it.