A (very) small town in Western Pennsylvania is discussing an ordinance recommending “all heads of households maintain a firearm along with ammunition.” From CNN:
Under the proposed law, residents of Cherry Tree, Pennsylvania, would be asked to own guns and know how to use them. Cherry Tree, some 70 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, has about 400 residents.
The town council was scheduled to vote on the proposed “Civil Protection Ordinance” on Wednesday evening.
Since residents of Cherry Tree, like everywhere else, already have the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, it would be easy to dismiss this as a political exercise in redundancy. There is, however, an underlying issue with which I agree strongly: the need for a return to personal responsibility.
From his post on the Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association, Borough Councilman Henry Statkowski has three reasons for this proposed ordinance, and I’m quoting the second of them:
Second, law enforcement exists to provide for general public safety. The key phrase “general public safety” does not include personal protection – that’s an individual responsibility. The police are not always available when immediately needed, and are neither required nor able to provide for the individual safety of all persons and their property. The police might show up after all the damage is done, but they’re not going to be there when the homeowner needs immediate help (immediate means right now, not five, ten or fifteen minutes from now).
There’s a great deal of truth in that. The demands made upon the police today are extraordinary and unrealistic. They cannot be everywhere at once, and such an expectation can only result, ultimately, in a police state.
The “general public safety” has grown to include any number of things: noisy parties, kids opening Christmas presents early… truly, we’ve lost the ability to control our own environments.
Unfortunately, exercising Second Amendment rights doesn’t solve the wider societal abdication of responsibilities; we’ve grown dependent upon rules and agencies, and it’s hard to see a path back.
Thoughts?
Agreed. I would add that “abdication of responsibilities” is only partially accurate in that individuals’ rights to defend themselves and to police their neighborhoods have been actively limited by government and by the chilling effect of legal liability suits.
Part of America has grown dependent on their “entitlements”; others have had their freedoms diminished against their will.
Cherry Tree can expect a visit from the dreaded trial lawyers when the first homeowner shoots an intruder after the new rule is passed.
I agree that people have come to expect the police to be the immediate and absolute answer to more problems than they are maintained to handle. Too often I also notice that after a crime has occurred and makes the news, the heavy analysis of the case ignores the situation the police were in and demands to know how did they allow the crime to happen or why they didn’t do more.
Police in large urban cities with higher violent crimes have brought some of this expectation to where it is today. The attitude in large cities is that you should give up your weapons and leave it to the police to make things simpler and safer. You are told that the police are all you need in order to discourage more people from having guns, because for some reason in a city having a gun must automatically mean bad things. Out in small towns and rural areas, people better understand how long it takes for help to arrive. It is no different than depending on an ambulance to come when you call 911, but still having a first aid kit nearby.
An interesting side-note: the curriculum for the Concealed Carry Permit holder is very heavy, not with the mechanics of firing a weapon, but with conflict resolution – teaching prospective carriers how to avoid situations where they might have to use those weapons in the first place. So, while I certainly agree that recommending people own firearms and ammo won’t solve the problem, maybe learning how to use them properly (and how to avoid getting into situations where their use may be necessary) could easily make it a significant step down that road.
~EdT.