First time I met him, he showed me the gun. We’d exited an Italian restaurant and he and I walked a few paces behind the others. “Let me show you something,” he said; and out of his pocket he pulled a small handgun, almost a Derringer. Maybe it was a Derringer; it’s not like I got all up close and personal.
“This,” he said, “is in case we run into any bandits.”
And I’m thinking: Just how many bandits do you run into in this corner of rural Pennsylvania, anyway?
In the years since, I don’t know that he’s run into any. But he’s ready, in any case. He not only carries the Derringer with him at all times, strapped beneath his sock; there’s also a .38 under his armpit. And, sometimes, a .45 in the glove compartment.
Old school, for sure. But I pity the “bandit” who ever makes the mistake of giving trying to rob him, or breaks into his house.
All this, I suppose, makes him feel safer. And make no mistake, it’s all perfectly legal; the guns are registered, he’s got himself a concealed carry permit, he’s not some wild-eyed black helicopter type, waiting for his chance to take on the gub’mint.
Except that there is a little bit of that wild-eyed paranoia to this - isn’t there?
I ask because I’ve been sort of following the flap over guns in county parks, and the fact that county commissioners have opted not to ban all guns from the parks, concluding that they couldn’t prevent properly licensed citizens from bringing their concealed weapons to the park, anyway. Not without sparking a lawsuit, at the very least.
And all that’s well and good. I support gun rights; and in any event, the guns we need to worry about in county park and everywhere else are generally not wielded by law-abiding citizens who are permitted and registered. This was just sort of a broad brush approach that commissioners, apparently, thought could be effective against those wielding illegal guns. It might have been effective - but you simply can’t cast the net that wide.
All of this said, however, I’ve been struck by the tone of some who argued against the ban, as I always am whenever the subject of guns comes up. Frankly, I think a lot of the folks who yell the loudest about their guns tend to be more than a little paranoid - and maybe even harbor hero fantasies.
To me, the argument for concealed carry is: If someone messes with me I’m going to defend myself. Period. It is pointedly not that I’m going to protect all the unprotected; it is pointedly not - as was argued in a letter in today’s Era - that if only some student or professor at Virginia Tech or Northern Illinois University had been packing, they might have saved humanity, might have stopped the killers dead in their track via a virtuous heart and deadeye aim.
I think a lot of these guys fancy themselves closet Lone Rangers. Fine so long as that fantasy remains in the closet; but you gotta ask, even if some Second Amendment champion did have his piece on him at Northern Illinois - what are the chances he (or she, but probably he) would have been able to stop the killer dead in his tracks, versus the chance of a gun battle that, frankly, might have resulted in even more people getting shot?
Rights are rights and they mustn’t be infringed. We talk about the right of free speech even though there are many among us who would gladly support the suppression of some speech, depending on who was doing the suppressing. But if you truly respect the principle, you have to let it roll, despite the misgivings. And the exact same thing rings true here. Would that the paranoid fantasies didn’t float so close to the surface; would that you didn’t get the idea that down deep, many of these “gun enthusiasts” would like nothing better than to run into a few bandits. We can hope they never get that opportunity; but you have to let it roll, despite the misgivings. The county commissioners, belatedly, did. So good for them.
