Horror stories are coming out of New Orleans, with roving bands of looters stealing guns and shooting at police and rescue workers.
Some bloggers are taking these shocking incidents as an opportunity to once again deride that old Robert Heinlein quotation, "An armed society is a polite society."
Of course, no society in which thousands are trapped in 15 feet of floodwater without food or shelter is apt to be particularly polite. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that "society" in New Orleans has broken down all together and ceased to exist for the time being.
And, in such a situation, guns can come in pretty handy to ward off gangs of looters. Here's a brief media roundup:
USA Today:
Some bloggers are taking these shocking incidents as an opportunity to once again deride that old Robert Heinlein quotation, "An armed society is a polite society."
Of course, no society in which thousands are trapped in 15 feet of floodwater without food or shelter is apt to be particularly polite. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that "society" in New Orleans has broken down all together and ceased to exist for the time being.
And, in such a situation, guns can come in pretty handy to ward off gangs of looters. Here's a brief media roundup:
USA Today:
Looters have been prowling here practically since the rain stopped Monday. Some residents have armed themselves to protect their property.The San Antonio Express-News:
A detective told the New Orleans Times-Picayune the looting was "ferocious" and was only going to get worse.The Advocate:
So it wasn't a big surprise when people picked up guns to protect their businesses and homes. That's what happens when folks know the cops aren't coming.
Employees at A.J.'s Produce Co. on Chartres Street in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans, spray-painted bright-red stern warnings for would-be thieves right on the sides of the building.The Houston Chronicle:
"You loot, we shoot!" they read. "Looters will be shot!" And "loot and die!"
"We had a few come around, but the boogie man scared them away," said 59-year-old John Allen, who sat in a lawn chair guarding the building about 10 a.m. Tuesday. "The signs did the job."
Managers at the Covenant Home nursing center were prepared to cope with power outages and supply shortages following Hurricane Katrina. They weren't ready for looters.And one more, from those gun lovers at the The New York Times:
The nursing home lost its bus after the driver surrendered it to carjackers. Groups of people then drove by the center, shouting to residents, "Get out!"
On Wednesday, 80 residents, most of them in wheelchairs, were evacuated to other nursing homes in the state.
"We had excellent plans. We had enough food for 10 days," said Peggy Hoffman, the home's executive director. "Now we'll have to equip our department heads with guns and teach them how to shoot."
John Carolan was sitting on his porch in the thick, humid darkness just before midnight Tuesday when three or four young men, one with a knife and another with a machete, stopped in front of his fence and pointed to the generator humming in the front yard, he said.The stories of armed looters on the rampage are indeed appalling and repulsive, but they don't lead me to cry out for gun control. It's at times when law and order dispappear that criminals will be able to get guns most easily — and law-abiding people will most need one close at hand.
One said, "We want that generator," he recalled.
"I fired a couple of rounds over their heads with a .357 Magnum," Mr. Carolan recounted Wednesday. "They scattered."
He smiled and added, "You've heard of law west of the Pecos. This is law west of Canal Street."
This is the difference between opportunistic criminals and citizens engaged in self-defense. Had Mr. Carolan not had that gun, those thieves might well have injured or killed him regardless of how quick he was to comply with their order. Those same thieves might now be less inclined to threaten others who have what they want, so Mr. Carolan has likely saved more than just himself and his valuable generator, and prevented an ongoing cycle of violence. Contrary to those who refuse to acknowledge that gun control has no effect on the perpetrators of crime, in the hands of rational,trained individuals guns prevent crime. I hope we learn from Katrina that the right of the people of New Orleans to bear arms may have been one of the few things to prevent a complete and utter descent into anarchy.
I hope, but am not betting on it.
What are the motives of people who talk about the deterrent effect without also weighing that against the facilitation effect?
And gun CONTROL doesn't not equal banning firearms. Gun control is about making it harder for criminals to get guns and prohibiting the kind of guns that aren't necessary for hunting or self-protection.
Would Langrty and Gaijinbiker really feel safer in a country where anyone could walk into a New Orleans 7-11 and walk out with a 96-ounce Coke, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, four mortars and a pack of hand grenades? I doubt it.
The honest debate, then, isn't about whether or not gun control is good, we can all agree that it is. Rather, the debate is about how far to take gun control.
America is clearly a society with a greater degree of latent civil disorder than most other 1st world countries, which is why a large number of people feel the need to be prepared (viz., to have arms ready). I think I can fairly confident that we the big one finally hits in the Tokyo area, we will see a civil and cooperative society and not a descent into lawlessness.
To some degree, the availability of weapons itself perpetuates insecurity, which is why Australia has now banned handguns. While individuals in Japan would no doubt buy hand guns if they were allowed to, individual ownership has both positive and negative external effects (by creating uncertainty about the threat each individual poses). I suspect very few would feel safer if a hand gun ownership program was introduced to Japan, which is why there is no pressure for gun ownership here.
Imagine you are a New Orleans National Guardsman stationed in Basra protecting Moqtada Al Sadr's vile militia as it swaggers about town enforcing Islamic law. You tune into CNN to find your hometown blown into anarchy and people being interviewed in tears, begging for the National Guard to come save them from the rape, plunder and pillage going on.
The same sort of American childishness that allowed the conflation of 9/11 and Saddam will now allow the conflation of anarchy in New Orleans and the disastrous policy priorities of the Bush administration.
Perhaps he who rises on the shoulders of the ``Idiot America" will also fall by it.
Since you seem determined, BB, to see everything through the monocle of who gains/who loses politics, I'll I'll tell you who is looking really bad right now: Louisiana's Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans' Mayor C. Ray Nagin. Both are Democrats. Each has directed relief efforts from the comfort and safety of Baton Rouge. Nagin left N.O. long before the arrival of the storm, and appeared to be largely unconcerned about the thousands of people who could not afford to leave the city. If I had been in his shoes, I'd have holed up in the Superdome or elsewhere with my constituents, and I would have done so with each of my officials having a satellite phone. This way, accurate descriptions of the situation in the city could be relayed to officials both within and without N.O. I would also have been able to coordinate the efforts of FEMA, the National Guard and relief organizations. Right now, each of these groups has supplies ready to be distributed to N.O., but a combination of inaccurate information and poor planning have hobbled their efforts. This isn't the Federal Government's fault, although Blanco and Nagin may well request that the Feds take over. If the situation remains disorganized weeks or months from now (which I doubt), then Republicans may begin to see valid criticism. Up to now, however, it has about "apples &oranges" to do with Bush &Cheney.
My point, again, is that the inability of the government--be it fed, state, GOP or Democrat--to prevent or effectively deal with the disaster will contribute to a kind of inchoate anomie that has a way destroying national political careers.
But the Bush Administration is neither small government or conservative, and can't fairly claim, after making all the political hay on 9/11, all the hullabaloo about homeland security, and blowing through a budget surplus to record deficits, that preparedness for something like Katrina is NOT its responsibility. In the stinginess towards NO over the past four years while earmarking hundreds of millions for a pork-barrel bridge in Alaska, we see the same vote-driven, cost-ineffective expenditures as we see iin all the misdirected "homeland defense" spending.
When are people like you going to wake up and see that it is this Administration that is the threat to your precious conservative values?
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