| 22 September 2005 Second Amendment One of the most powerful storms on record is plowing across the Gulf, apparently headed spot-on for Galveston . It will come ashore within 48 hours. Reports suggest that Rita will find Texas better prepared than Louisiana was, but it is still going to be a slow-motion horror. And the aftermath is going to be sickeningly similar. And of course, some of the people who have to move are those who left everything behind just three weeks ago in New Orleans . The buses are rolling away, carrying those who do not have the means to go themselves. Those who can drive away from the storm have largely done so, as they did weeks ago, leaving most of their possessions behind. One of the things that amazed the people who paddled around flooded New Orleans , helping the dispossessed retrieve some of their cherished belongings was something common to most of the homes that had something worth saving. It was the guns, the sheer number of them. Shotguns, long-guns, handguns, pocket guns. Some with fine burled wood stocks, locked away in rugged cases, others in the drawer of the night-table next to the bed. One man said it was quite stunning. I marked that in passing, there being so much else going on. It is something that is part of the American collective psyche, and even if we don't think about it much, it is something. They are just part of the fabric of life. I was sitting on the Metro yesterday, hustling from one meeting to another downtown, when a couple of the Transit cops walked past me. They wore the dark blue tactical uniforms, light body armor, stern looks and Heckler and Koch semi-auto pistols on their belts. I thought nothing of it, nor of the complexions of the cops, since guns are one of the few things in society that don't have a racial context. Or maybe it does. The Second Amendment applies to everyone, doesn't it? And don't the disenfranchised have a special regard for protection? Then there are the stories about all the gunfire in drowned New Orleans , and the panic that rose as services disappeared and people got desperate. The story of armed bands shooting at the rescue helicopters was part of the chaos, and another is what happened on the bridge over Highway 90, two miles form the Superdome. The bridge crosses the Mississippi from the Crescent City to the suburb of Gretna , population 17,500. Out of food, water and good ideas, the authorities at the stadium suggested that citizens might want to walk to greener and drier fields. There might be buses waiting across the river, a way to get out. I talked to a pal who works for the Department and heard a surprising fact. There was water pre-staged in the city before the storm hit, but once the flooding began the locals could not tell what streets were open to move it to who needed it. A government that has excellent imagery of North Korea ought to able to get a picture to the New Orleans police, don't you think? But when the communications blew down, even if someone in authority had a picture of what was flooded, they could not get the information to anyone who needed it. But I digress. As things disintegrated at the domed stadium, a group of eight hundred people walked to the bridge. Upon arrival, with wheelchairs and strollers, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. The police began firing over the heads of the refugees. There were no buses in Gretna . The authorities there determined that the lawlessness of the city was not going to cross the river, and the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans . Talking to the United Press, Police Chief Arthur Lawson confirmed the story the refugees took back to the fetid Superdome. "If we had opened the bridge,” he said, “our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged." That is about as ugly and stark as it gets. But people do things they might regret later when their backs are up against the wall. The refugees had no weapons in their strollers, and there was no battle at the bridge, except perhaps one of conscience. I had nothing to read on the train, since I left my briefcase at the Bus Depot Building . I looked for the free abbreviated daily Post, but the rack was empty. There were only two other choices. The first was the slick glossy Apartment Living guide for Washington, and the other a poorly printed broadside. Since I have a couple apartments already and can't figure out which one to live in, I took a pass on the glossy and took a copy of the Maoist Internationalist Marxist WORKERS VANGUARD. The stack looked lonely. It was an entertaining read from the other side of the revolutionary tracks. The spelling was creative. “AmeriKKKa,” was one of the fun words, as were the initials “U.$.” The three letters seemed to show up a lot, in DemoKKKrat and RepubliKKKan. The editors seem to be pretty upset about a lot of things, and reading it made me appreciate the great strengths of both the First and Second Amendments. I think everyone should be able to say what they want, and we should likewise be able to ask them to leave our property quietly, if necessary. Politely, of course. Totally aside from the necessity of using firearms for the gathering of the abundant wildlife for food, this was a wild continent, filled with natural danger. Or at least that is the way we want to imagine it. The Native peoples of who lived here seemed to get along just fine without them, and there is a revisionist strain of history that considers that things were pretty well organized before the arrival of the Europeans. The Founders had presided upon a unique revolution. The leading intellectuals were men of property, which stands the Maoist ethic on its head. For them, firearms were an essential component of individual freedom, almost as important as the freedom of speech, to which it was linked. I had several e-mails in the queue when I got home from work. The news of the storm had me on edge. How could the weather here be so fine? One of the notes was from a pal with a question, and so I decided to put my concerns aside and answer. He had a question about personal security in the post-catastrophe phase of recovery. I thought about the Founders and began to peck away at the keys: “The Remington 870 is the 12-gauge classic pump shotgun, ideal for sporting, camp, home, or boat defense. My choice is the police version, since aftermarket parts can enable you to customize the piece to your unique needs. A custom sling that enables you to sling it out of the way when not dealing with miscreants within your home. The Chinese have a similar looking weapon on the market, a less than half the price. Don't be fooled: the receiver is of stamped steel, not machined out of a block like the Remington. I tend to support the shotgun for point defense purposes, since most folks, like me, are uncertain of their aim when awakened from a sound sleep, or are gripped by pure terror. Moving to a recommendation for holster weapon, I would lean toward the SIGARMS P229R-DAK double action pistol. It comes in 9mm with a 13-shot law-enforcement magazine (although the .40 cal S&W is available with greater stopping power). The P229 is the common choice for sworn agents of Immigration and Customs, Customs and Border Protection, TSA, the Coast Guard and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center , and other concerned citizens with $500 dollars or a valid credit card number. The pistol was acquired as part of the DHS Strategic Sourcing Program, designed to optimize cross-departmental acquisitions through collaboration of agency technical and acquisition experts. To win the competition, the P229 went through a comprehensive protocol involving environmental, reliability, durability, and other tests. Approximately three million rounds of ammunition were fired through 690 handguns of 46 different models during the testing, which took almost four months to complete. Additional testing was conducted through laboratory analysis and armory inspections. In all, the SIGARMS pistol was evaluated against more than 50 characteristics before arriving at a "must buy" technical rating. Take my recommendation: you don't want to do that at home.” Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra www.vicsocotra.com |