Anti-Gun Cops in Seymour Should Be Seen More And Heard Less by Doug Wrenn

Anti-Gun Cops in Seymour Should Be Seen More And Heard Less

By Doug Wrenn

March 03, 2008

Being a movie buff, and particularly one of westerns, I often seem to see prophetic irony. Take for example, Eli Wallach in "The Magnificent Seven," when he quipped of the helpless villagers he was plundering, "If they were not meant to be fleeced, God would not have made them sheep." And likewise with one of the bad guys, challenging Wyatt Earp and company in the movie, "Tombstone," when he succinctly observed, "Wearing a badge don't make you right." Previous life experiences have also created a condition in which the little hairs at the base of my neck stand up at very uneasy attention whenever I read a reporter from a liberal newspaper calling anything "sensible." It's kind of like Bill Clinton deeply philosophizing and pontificating about the true meaning of the word, "is." So just imagine my understandable dismay and consternation at reading Lauren Garrison's misleading piece, entitled, "Police Offer Sensible Self-Protection Advice" in the February 27th edition of the New Haven Register. Indeed, more sheep were getting fleeced, the guys with badges were not completely right, and there was nothing at all "sensible" about their anti-gun bias-driven, so-called "advice."

In Seymour, Connecticut, Randy Stone, who teaches self-defense classes for the Seymour Land Trust, as well as Officer Joe DeFelice and Lt. Paul Satkowski of the Seymour Police Department assembled to address a concerned gathering of town residents who wished to learn how to better protect themselves, their families and their homes. Certainly, not all of the advice given by these officials was bad. Other parts of it however raised havoc with those little pesky neck hairs of mine.

Stone recommended that home invasion victims consider utilizing such common household objects as a rolling pin, hairbrush, flashlight, salt, pepper and household cleaners as weapons against intruders. I recall in my youth as a cub scout, a self-described self-defense expert came to speak to us. He was a black belt in some martial art, and was impressively and menacingly dressed in his traditional martial art garb. One scout leader asked "Grasshopper" what one should do if approached by a perpetrator with armed with a gun or a knife. He simply answered, "Run!" I sure hope this Bruce Lee-wannabe didn't charge the scout pack any money for his presentation.

The saying goes that Abe Lincoln made all men free, but Sam Colt made them all equal. When attacked by an intruder, your best friend is distance, and the various items from the kitchen and spice rack that Stone recommended to the sheep in his audience will indeed, guarantee them a fleecing. Sure, left devoid of a better weapon, I'll use whatever I can get my hands on if attacked, but that's the point. Everyone should already be armed, ready, and trained with a better, and for that matter, a superior weapon, and only one such weapon comes to mind. Despite being awoke and simultaneously groggy and adrenaline-filled in a possibly dark room in the wee hours, if you are big enough, strong enough, quick enough and agile enough to take on your attacker, good for you, but such is still a risk, especially given the unknown factors of who your attacker is. He could have just come out of a ten year prison sentence of weight-lifting, or he could be high or even "dusted," which means you and a small army won't take this guy down, not even with all the kitchen ingredients needed to bake a ten layer cake. Even if those items work, you are still positioning yourself to be too close to your attacker. And what if he has a knife or a gun? Congratulations, you just brought a baking utensil to a gunfight. P.S., you're dead. No offense, Mr. Stone, but Harry Truman gave better advice than you: If the heat is too hot in the kitchen, get out, and don't go further looking for more utensils. Whatever struggle may ensue, it will most likely not be a food fight. And let's face it; many of us are not in the greatest shape. Some folks, such as the elderly, the chronically ill or disabled, children, and many women are simply too weak to adequately defend themselves against an intruder at close distance with any instrument, other than possibly a gun, and even then, preferably from a distance. A gun affords the added protection of distance. Wares from your local market's "Households" aisle do not.

Art Linkletter told us that from the mouths of babes, often times come gems. Ditto with bureaucrats, especially in the liberal northeast. Lt. Satkowski offered these following gems to the fleeceable sheep:

-A gun in the home increases the risk the murder of a household member by five times.

-A gun in the home increases the risk of suicide by a household member by three times. (I have dealt with suicidal people. Trust me, lack of access to a gun will not deter them if they are determined enough to kill themselves, and let us not forget the lethal and ample access of kitchen utensils!)

-A gun kept in the home is 22 more times to be used in a homicide than for self-defense.

-Even very young children are strong enough to operate a gun. (That is true, but the risk does not have to be great. In fact, a gun owner safely allowing a child to hold and look at his gun while being supervised whenever the child so requests depletes the child's curiosity, and lessens the risk of danger. More on that later.)

I suppose Lt. Satkowski would prefer that the good, little sheep stay nice and warm in their beds and call 911, so that he and his colleagues can show up later, to write a report and spill coffee on the corpse of the helpless victim, now lying on the floor in a puddle of blood and with a chalk line drawn around his or her body where they fell and took their last breath after 911 failed them. (Bear in mind the sage words pf President Reagan, who once noted that the scariest words he ever heard muttered were, "I m from the government, and I'm here to help.") By the way, have you ever dialed 911 in a big city? I have. And after literally ten minutes of recordings, both in English, and in Spanish, telling me to stay on the line because my call was "important"(Yeah, right! No kidding, Einstein! Why do you think I'm calling?), I actually finally got to speak to a dispatcher.

Call 911? Tell that to the single woman in a Hartford suburb, who dialed 911 in the middle of the night, originally because she thought she heard somebody in her yard. Six minutes later, and yes, only six minutes later (I know, because the 911 dispatcher stayed on the line with the woman during the entire incident, and I heard the tape in its entirety.), the cops arrived and caught her assailant, as he was still in the act of raping her in her own bedroom as the cops entered the bedroom with the victim's infant just a few feet away. Or tell that to the woman in rural northeast Connecticut, who frantically dialed 911 to report that her enraged ex-beau was currently ramming her house with his pick-up truck in an attempt to get to her. One lone State Trooper arrived thirty minutes later, and long after the perpetrator, tired of his deadly and unchallenged antics left of his own volition and with impunity. Tell that to the mad gunman in Los Angeles, who opened fire on helpless children in a private Hebrew school, which was unprotected by armed security. The first two schools that the gunmen sought out did have armed security, and thus he was deterred until he found a hapless and collective set of victims, most likely in a politically correct, "zero tolerance," "No gun zone." I guess the shooter didn't get that memo. Or tell that to the many unarmed people killed by a gunman on a rampage, and the very few who survived because they were armed and took him out. Isn't it funny how those stories so often get squashed by the so-called "mainstream press"? Look at any school shooting, and at the recent home invasion atrocity in Cheshire, Connecticut, foisted upon the Petit family, that made national news. We now know that as the Cheshire Police were set up outside at the house and awaiting their SWAT team, the two intruders allegedly were still busy completing their dastardly work, raping, beating, burning and torturing their four victims, three of whom died, and later, just mere feet away from armed police outside the walls of their invaded home. We saw a similar situation at Columbine High School. Dead cops can't help anybody. They need to concern themselves with their own safety first. SWAT teams are needed for such situations, and they don't set up quite as readily as instant oatmeal. Recall, too, the LA riots of the 90's as the outnumbered LAPD set up a perimeter while murder, arson, looting and mayhem continued unchecked within the core of that well-guarded perimeter. For the various mass shootings we have seen on college campuses, all with their own campus police departments, what good were they in the end? During the Virginia Tech rampage, buildings were ordered into lockdown. Meanwhile, one such building still contained the shooter, and he apparently did get the memo. He chained the doors from the inside, trapping his victims like sitting ducks and preventing cops from entering, even if they would have tried. More reports, more spilled coffee, more chalklines, more dead bodies, more fleeced sheep. Wearing badges didn't make them right either. In fact, the US Supreme Court has correctly ruled that police are not intended to protect society individually, only collectively. It stands to reason, as common sense dictates that police certainly cannot be everywhere at once, and are more often than not thinly stretched, given the population and area they are required to presumably protect. Thus, the burden of self-defense is more than just a right; it is also a duty. A little closer to home, my town has been plagued for several months now by a serial burglar. One day, however, the bad guy picked the wrong house. The owner was not only home, but also armed. The bad guy skeedaddled, and the burglary was foiled with nobody getting hurt. The homeowner then called police, who showed up, and of course, did what they do best: write a report. The cops believe the same burglar has struck several homes since then. They're still befuddled, and he's still on the loose, but he hasn't returned to the house in which his career, and his life, both almost abruptly ended. Meanwhile, there are too many fish in the ocean, and too many easier sheep to fleece. And currently, that's just what he is still doing to his heart's content. In short, 911 just doesn't cut it.

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