"There obviously was a massive police failure on Sunday.
"But don't blame the cops alone.
"There was a massive citizen failure, as well.
"How could one of the victims, a honeymooning Frenchwoman, have been
stripped and sexually violated, while her husband was held down and forced to
watch without decent men and women coming to their aid?
"What the hell is wrong with people, anyway?
"Those who saw what was happening and did nothing are no better than
the animals who committed these crimes."
"But the shame does not belong to her.
"The shame belongs to us."
First: "What's wrong with these people?"
I'll tell you what, Mr. Dreher: (1) those bystanders are just like the herds
prey animals in Africa. If I'm not attacked personally and directly, I can't see
the threat to myself. If every zebra in the herd turned on the lioness that
attacks the weak one, there's be no lions today. (2) those bystanders also, in a
very real sense, made rational decisions -- just like the criminals did, believe
it or not. Hear me out: the citizens of New York have been deprived of the most
effective form of self defense, private handguns, by lying politicians,
irresponsible courts, and police administrators who implied that they'd provide
police protection against such predators. But as New York Police Commissioner
Howard Safir finally admitted yesterday, "If I put 10,000 cops in Central
Park, we couldn't cover every single area." (3) as for my claim that the
criminals are making "rational decisions:" they knew that none of the
law-abiding citizens in the crowd had the means to stop them, so they could
rationally take anything they wanted with no risk to themselves. Don't you
realize that the city of New York has consciously chosen the rule of the jungle:
disarm the citizens, and the streets then MUST belong to predators like these,
willing to use force against those unable to resist?
Second: "Those who...did nothing are no better than the animals
who committed these crimes."
No, I don't think so. (1) The criminals took conscious decisions to rape
innocent women and assault the men. They chose to act to violate the rights and
persons of the victims. (2) Those who failed to come to their aid were doing
what the nanny government mindset has indoctrinated them to do: passively wait
for "someone" in authority to "do something." "You have
no right and no ability to defend yourselves," the Schumers of the world
tell us every time a TV camera comes near. Yes, there is certainly a moral
culpability in failing to act, but it in no way compares to the level of guilt
of the criminals (I DESPERATELY want a harsher word, but "animals" is
an affront to the lower orders).
Third: "But the shame does not belong to her. The shame belongs
to us."
Here, Mr. Dreher, you have quite squarely hit the nail, but not, I think, in
the way you believe. Our shame is in trading freedom for security. Our shame is
in believing what we know must be a lie: that the police can and will protect
us. Our shame is in electing people who freely tell us sugary lies, claiming
that guns are the problem, and that piling more and more restrictions on honest
people who have violated no laws will magically take predators like these
rapists out of our lives. Our shame is that not a single armed citizen was there
to stop the rapes. Our shame is that we tolerate a government that says no armed
citizen has the right to be out in public. Our shame is tolerating on the bench
judges who put the Wendy's murderer back on the street. Our shame is in
tolerating lying newspapers and television that tell us the object, an inanimate
gun, is the source of evil acts and not the person who uses it against another.
Our shame is in tolerating newspapers and television that simply repeat the
government's lies, like "12 kids a day," instead of calling the
politicians to account for their claims.
Our shame, Mr. Dreher, is far broader, far older, and far more deep-seated
than the failure of shocked people to aid their sisters and brothers.
Last: I challenge you. I challenge YOU to become part of the ANSWER. I
challenge you to use your position, for the people of New York, to tell the
truth about the points I've raised. I challenge you to become a modern
pamphleteer: to tell your readers some of the millions of stories of lawful
citizens who defend themselves every year with privately-owned guns - and
without firing a shot some 92% of the time. I challenge you to tell your readers
that women WITH GUNS defend themselves against rape some 200,000 times a year. I
challenge you to DEMAND that Schumer, Boxer, Feinstein, Clinton, Lautenberg, and
the rest live as they would have us live: without firearms protection.
Well, Mr. Dreher, you have the opportunity. What say you, sir?
What say you?