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“I did not have sex with that woman…” President Bill Clinton.

“I am not a crook,” President Richard M. Nixon.

“There’s no there, there,” President Barack Obama.

Regarding the as yet untold story about what happened that fateful day last year on September 11th, 2013, in Benghazi, Libya, President Obama said, “There’s no there, there.” Well, he seems to be getting pretty lonely with that perspective, as even his strongest supporters seem finally to be getting curious. The president is distancing himself from an awful lot these days. The Benghazi attack (during which he won’t even say where he was and what he was doing), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeting of the Tea Party and others (says he knew nothing about it), and the Department of Justice (DOJ) seizing Associated Press (AP) reporters phone records (again, he denies knowledge and says it’s a DOJ situation), which could include tapping twenty phones used by up to 100 reporters.

The President, who called questions about the attacks and murders in Benghazi a “side show” and a “political circus,” is back peddling, in circles, faster than any clown in that political circus. The President says the IRS and the DOJ are independent entities, as if they are not a part of the Executive Branch, which, if I recall my social studies correctly, the President heads. Is the President in control of anything? Is the dodge going to be: I’m not guilty; I might be ignorant or incompetent, but in no way am I guilty? Maybe some of those little peons down there, but certainly not me way up here!

When President Obama said his would be the most transparent administration in history, I saw no evidence of it. However, now I finally see it. If there is anyone who still can’t see through the false statements, elusive explanations, and evasive statements, then they have their eyes shut. In order to see it, one need only open his eyes. Just ask Tom Brokaw.

To apologize for something that occurred nearly thirty years ago, which was based upon an entirely different context, is a truly absurd result of political correctness run even further afoul of sanity. One innocently participates in a marvelously silly, albeit well-produced, training video three decades ago, sanctioned by the professional agency in which one works, and intended for the purpose of morale-boosting. As a result, a city’s leftist contingent of apologists for bad behavior cannot wait to jump on a fabricated issue. Create a crisis and then don’t let it go to waste. If anything, this should have been explained away with logic and rationality, not an integrity-compromising apology. Is there no reason left in some cities or honor in some city leaders? Must everyone guzzle the progressive Kool-Aid? Must everyone of substance be made to kneel before the leftist horde’s social justice lust is satisfied?

Thirty years later, here come the social justices and political correctivists with their manufactured outrage and usurpation of the term “homeless” in order to criticize, corrupted by the warped lens of presentism. They accuse people of disparaging the “homeless,” when that term wasn’t even in common use when referring to street folks at the time. I defy anyone to find a police officer thirty years ago who referred to those living and committing crime, say, under a bridge, as “homeless.” Even twenty years ago, this was not a common term for these folks. Aside from “inside-police” terms based upon observed behavior, these folks were referred to as vagrants, derelicts, vagabonds, hobos—wastrels, for the more literary types—and the sure-to-rile, and, God forbid judgmental, but arguably accurate: Bum (Insert ominous music here). Calling these folks, “transients,” was probably as “politically correct” as it got back then.

These luminaries of social outrage cry foul that anyone would dare to poke fun at the “homeless.” Well, if homeless advocates even approached being honest, they’d have to admit that’s not what happened. Humor at the truly homeless’ plight would be an affront. There are of course too many people who are homeless due to horrible life’s circumstances that are not their fault. In fact, it is these truly homeless people who have been insulted by those advocates, and homeless practitioners, who insist on applying the term “homeless” to people who are such by design. “Homelessness” for these people is a consequence of their reckless actions and foolish, self-destructive choices. These people, even if we concede they are well intentioned, have usurped the term “homeless,” and have inserted it into the issue as a euphemism for an irresponsible lifestyle.

The woman who has been beaten and forced to leave her home with her child; they are homeless. The kid abused by a family member and kicked out of the house; that person is homeless. However, the thirty-five year old, able-bodied man or woman who’s been repeatedly cited for drinking and urinating in public, arrested fifteen times for shoplifting, trespassing, and assault, who has no home as a result of how they’ve chosen to live their lives, eschewing any social responsibility, is not legitimately homeless. On the contrary, they are walking insults to the really needy and truly homeless.

Interesting how we’re currently hearing that some poll ostensibly finds that 90% of Americans support Obama’s new gun law, in particular, the expanded background check, which would amount to virtual gun registration.

However, something interesting happens on the way to subsequent polls; People became informed, and their positions began to change. It’s easy to support background checks when presented in a void. They seem like the “common sense” gun laws the liberals are consistently touting.

Once people begin to understand the unintended consequences of background checks such as: Do I need to pay fifty bucks for the forms and have my 15-year old son get a background check when I buy him a .22 rifle for his birthday? Then do I have to maintain the forms? For how long? What will happen to me if I don’t maintain the forms, or if I lose them? Has my 15-year old son or 16-year old daughter committed a felony I’m unaware of, or has she been committed to a mental institution without my knowledge? Unless she was transported by the local public school to Planned Parenthood for an abortion, I, as her parent, am likely to know about such important issues involving my child, making a background check unnecessary.

People also engage in these mental self-deceptions when they consider, “Just how many bullets do people need?” type questions. It seems people tend to create clean and tidy little scenarios in their heads as to what comprises a self-defense situation such as a home invasion. It appears that many people believe one robber will break in and seven bullets, from a handgun, or non-scary, non-assault rifle, should do the trick.

Well, what if two armed criminals commit the home invasion? What about three, or four. In my experience home-invasion robberies normally include more than one criminal. They use speed, terror, and violence to intimidate their victims. The only thing that will turn the tables on these thugs is when the victim becomes the predator, surprising the criminals with superior firepower.

The left is currently involved in a grand deceit: If you don’t believe exactly as they do, you want to make it easier, as our illustrious president said, “to gun down our children”. Yes, that’s what we conservatives and libertarians want. Give me a break!

Many on the left—even the far left—admit that none of the current proposed new gun laws would have made a difference in any of the high-profile shootings of the recent past. Does this deter them? Hell no! What in the world does logic have any place in this argument? Do something. Do anything. Will it work? Who cares? Just do it!

Let me close with a necessary cliché: The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. As someone who’s dedicated over two decades to being a good guy with a gun, this is anything but cliché to me.

Why does the social justice capitol known as the City of Seattle hire so many racist teachers and administrators? You may be as surprised to hear this question, as I am to pose it. But this must be the case considering the news report for the past few days in the Seattle media. It seems the Feds believe that minority students—wait, let me amend that—certain minorities (it’s not all minority groups) are punished more often and harsher than their white counterparts. So, why doesn’t Seattle stop hiring so many racists to teach their kids and administer their schools? Wouldn’t that be the simple solution?

One Seattle teacher interviewed on a radio news report blamed the termination of a program, five years ago, which focused on so-called “racial justice,” in the schools. I’m just a dumb cop, but I always thought equal justice was the American standard, and as far as I know, Seattle is still in America. Anyway, what would I know about this subject after working in the criminal justice system for twenty years?

Or, could it be that the Feds are setting the table to expand their influence in this town and proclaim that Seattle’s educators and administrators are also racists who abuse their authority, and who need oversight, just like they did to Seattle’s cops. Who’s next, Seattle City Light workers?

Could there be factors other than racism that account for the disparity in punishments? Of course there could be and most likely this is the case. Who believes that Seattle’s teachers, these bastions of liberalism and social justice adherents, are a racist lot? Perhaps some of them may be guilty of the soft racism of paternalism, but certainly not of punishment disparity according to race.

You may notice that the reports are conspicuously lacking a specific villain. The folks advocating for the existence of racism in Seattle Public Schools tend to use passive language. They tell us only what is happening, but they don’t tell us exactly who’s doing it. You can be sure if they could find one Republican or conservative within the school system, they’d certainly blame him or her. But since there are virtually none (at least none willing to admit it), they can’t accuse anyone of doing anything, just that something nefarious is afoot. At least with the police department, there are plenty of evil, racist conservatives to blame.

Listening to the news today, an item came on that most people probably filed away in their subconscious memories. Not me; it was a kick in the gut. I love the Seattle Police Department, which I’ve proudly served for over twenty years. Sadly, the City’s mayor doesn’t share my sentiments.

A Seattle U. professor–and common sense–discredited the now infamous Department of Justice (DOJ) report on the Seattle Police Department (Not that you’d know this facet from Seattle’s media) use of force. Despite this, today’s newscast announced that the mayor said the city is about half way through implementing its 20/20 Initiative in order to, “reform the police department,” with regard to its excessive use of force. Trying to fix something that isn’t broken is the surest way to break it.

Professor Matthew Hickman, a criminal justice professor and former DOJ statistician, found there may have been excessive force in closer to 3%–may have been–compared to the DOJ’s ludicrous conclusion of 20%. For a year, Professor Hickman studied all of the cases compared to the DOJ’s study of approximately 1/4 to 1/3 of the cases. Also, the professor made his methodology known; the DOJ refused to disclose how they arrived at their results. This flawed report generated the embarrassing and insulting consent decree, to which Seattle’s leadership surrendered its police department’s integrity and hard-earned sterling national reputation.

The insult is to one of the finest, and cleanest, police departments in the nation. It’s bad enough when such disparagement comes from outsiders such as the DOJ, but when the cops’ own boss is the source of perpetuating corrupt information, it is nothing less than shameful.

Once again Seattle’s shrill leftists have given the city’s mayor another chance to either show courage or buckle to pressure. Which option do you think he took? You’d think perhaps his honor had learned his lesson after the DOJ disrespected him on such a grand scale, even after he’d bent over telling Eric Holder, “Thank you sir, may I have another,” costing the city unnecessary millions, and sending the SPD into the tailspin in which it now finds itself.

The use of the drones would not have been much different than that of any other police aircraft flying over any American city for the past many decades. The SPD used to operate aircraft; this is not all that new to the city. Any legitimate privacy concerns would have been addressed by policy and oversight. One policy could address exigent circumstances, and another could address investigations up to and including the obtaining of a warrant.

Instead, the mayor was like one of those inflatable Christmas yard decorations. Pull the plug and he deflates to a useless piece of plastic crumpled on the law.

(I wrote this essay several months ago in support of the right to carry concealed weapons on college and university campuses. I thought it might be timely to print it here.- SP)

The English 200 class slogs along in the oppressively hot and humid classroom. Of course, the air conditioning picked today to take a vacation, as the summer heat arrives early. There is likely not a single student focusing on the class. For most students, tomorrow’s final will be their last. Afterward, most students will be free for summer fun, for summer jobs, or at least free from campus worries until September.

Suddenly there is a loud explosion in the near distance. After a moment of shocked silence, students scramble helter-skelter. Some hide under desks, some dash toward the door despite more explosions and nightmarish screams coming from the other side. Students begin to realize what is happening. Some yell there is a shooter loose on campus, while others just yell hoping the shooter will not select them.

When a student or professor faces such a situation, perhaps hiding behind a bookshelf in a dark corner, what are they to do? What could they do? What would they wish to do? The explosions, screams, and shooter’s footsteps grow closer. In this critical, life and death situation, something else screams for an answer: at this very moment, would the student or professor rather have a gun, or not have a gun?

This timely incident in Durant, Oklahoma, which occurred during the writing of this paper, may provide an answer. A 12-year old girl was at home alone when she heard someone breaking into her house. She called her mother who told the girl to get the Glock handgun, hide in the closet, and call 911, which she did. When she heard the intruder come into her bedroom, she fired through the door wounding the burglar. “According to Bryan County Undersheriff Ken Golden, the shooting was justifiable and there were no wrong actions on the girl’s part. He said that she armed herself with the Glock pistol after her mother told her to do so over the phone.”

Bryan County Sheriff’s Investigator John Bates said, “The girl defended herself and did what a person should do if an intruder enters a home because she armed herself, hid and dialed 911. According to Bates, she was still on the phone with the dispatcher when she shot Jones. ‘She did everything you would want your kids to do if home alone,’ Bates said. ‘She did the right thing. What else can you ask your child to do?’” [1] While this didn’t happen on a college campus, it is easy to see how similar the two situations are.

Although the right to bear arms is a constitutional right, America has undergone a cultural shift over the past several decades, especially in urban areas. In a paper dedicated to training human resources professionals on how to respond to legally permitted employees who carry concealed weapons in the workplace, which is similar to the college campus situation, the author describes the reactions of employees to word that a fellow employee brings a gun to work with him: “But he hasn’t been a problem in the 8 years he has worked here—right? Asked Rob again. “You got it boss,” said Connor. “In fact, he has been a model employee. “Just what I needed,” grumbled Rob. “I’m sorry boss, but it is mass hysteria. Everyone is talking about the shooting at Tech and it’s getting worse by the minute.”[2] This hysteria is just that, hysteria, not rationality.

The issue at hand, however, is an individual right the Framers recognized in the Second Amendment. Although a debate has raged for years regarding the, “militia clause,” in 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Washington D.C. gun ban marking the first time it had specifically recognized the Second Amendment pertained to individuals. Since Amendments One, Two, Four, Nine, and Ten all incorporate the phrase, “the People,” when recognizing rights, is it logical that James Madison meant, “the People,” for all the Amendments except the Second?

With regard to the Court holding that governments may ban guns in “schools,” an article titled, Supreme Court strikes down a gun ban and raises questions for college campuses, provides information on an issue that may affect colleges or universities with regard to their current campus gun bans. The authors present issues surrounding the definition of, “campus” and “school.” Proponents of being able to carry guns on campus hold that, “a major question, says Robert L. Clayton, a lawyer who specializes in higher education, is the definition of the word “school,” which in academic parlance usually refers only to elementary and secondary institutions.” [3] The argument is that college campuses, which can cover many locations throughout a city or area, is different from a single location elementary or secondary school.

A gun, like a car, is a tool, albeit intimidating to the uninitiated, which people use for positive, and sometimes negative, purposes. Consider the following: good people with guns have been responsible for the U.S. winning its independence from Great Britain, for freeing the slaves, for defeating the Nazis, thus liberating millions worldwide. People acting with positive motives, armed with guns, have been responsible for countless acts of individual self-defense (including defense of others) across America. “Guns [are] used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year — or about 6,850 times a day.” [4]

Gun control advocates work to sway children and young people toward thinking negatively about guns. This includes using public institutions such as schools, primary, secondary, and college, to do so. The ubiquitous sign, “Gun-Free Zone,” is one method gun opponents employ. Often institutions post these signs among other signs, which prohibit criminal activities such as, trespassing, drugs and public alcohol use. It seems logical to ask if this has an overt, or at least subconscious, effect on children, and adults, which negatively influences their views on firearms in general.

The negative influences on children, and adults including college students who have grown up with “Gun-Free Zone” signs bring up a broader issue of the efficacy of the gun-free zones they announce. Common sense is all that is necessary to conclude they do not work for the purpose intended, unless that purpose is to make people who already follow rules obey.

Admittedly, gun-free zones do one thing well: they keep law-abiding citizens, those who are more likely to protect students rather than harm them, from carrying guns on campus. Does anyone truly believe “Gun-Free Zone” signs prevent criminals, intent on mayhem, from bringing a gun onto a college campus? Any person would have to question the intent, if not the intellectual honesty, of anyone who suggests a simple sign would prevent an armed madman from entering any open campus. That criminals intent on harming people on a mass scale are much more likely to target a facility that prohibits guns is obvious. When was the last time a crazed shooter showed up to wreak havoc at a gun show or a police station?

Gun bans on campuses and sanctions for violating them are not likely to prevent crazed killers from carrying guns onto campus. “For example, expelling students or firing professors for violating campus gun-free zones represent real life changing experience for law-abiding citizens… But even assuming the killer survives the attack, it is absurd to imagine that after facing multiple life prison sentences or death penalties for killing people, the threat of expulsion from school will be the penalty that ultimately deters the attack.” [5]

Opponents to carrying guns on campus, who are often people who advocate for gun control, do raise some legitimate concerns, which deserve reasonable responses. Some legitimate concerns in the ostensible defense of campus gun bans are listed below.

1. What level of training do those who choose to carry have?

2. Is there a danger of accidental shootings?

3. Innocent bystanders might get shot.

4. The police will respond to save people.

It is important to understand that the vast majority of students, faculty, and staff will continue unarmed and unaffected by this issue as they always have. The right or ability to carry a gun will not turn a campus into a quasi-Switzerland where the government mandates gun possession. “Every male when he turns 20 years old is issued a military rifle and required to keep it at home. Universal service in the militia army is required. When one is no longer required to serve, he may keep his rifle or pistol… the crime rate is very low. This is in part because of, not in spite of, the high rate of firearm ownership” (Switzerland, 2003, paragraph.). [6] Similarly, the campuses where concealed carry has already been authorized have not turned into an academic Wild West. If they had, the media would certainly have trumpeted it.

It seems logical that, as with other activities, those most interested in any activity are those most likely to want to learn more about it. A person interested in coin collecting, muscle cars, or crocheting, will be the people most interested in obtaining books, magazines, and perhaps taking seminars and classes to learn more about the activity. With individuals who are most likely to choose to carry firearms on campus, they would most likely have an interest in guns and self-defense. These are the people who would be likely to seek, or already have obtained, training. It seems logical that they would be prone to practice regularly with their guns, and to keep apprised of innovations in firearms use, safety, and self-defense training. They will also be required to have concealed carry permits (except in Alaska and Vermont), which require a significant background check.

The dangers of accidental shootings are also valid, at least on at least a prima facie basis. Whenever there is an increase in any activity, there may be an increase in various consequences of that activity including negative ones. There may be, but not necessarily will be. Obviously there are far more car, bicycle, and other accidents on campus than there are those related to firearms where government or colleges authorize carrying a gun. In fact, according to the National Safety Council, accidental shootings in general do not make the top five causes of accidental deaths in America, and accidental death is ranked number five in overall causes of death.[7] Further, for all age groups, and this includes deaths only, while 43,000 people were killed in car accidents, only 600 people died by gun accident.[8]

Again, pointing to similar reasons related to individuals interested in guns and self-defense, would not these people be more likely to handle guns safely, and to be aware of those who do not? Would responsible people who would choose to carry firearms on campus want to see anyone injured accidentally or otherwise? Are they interested in the negative publicity gun misuse would generate?

Gun control advocates often offer shrill predictions that lead will fly, and people will be ducking a hailstorm of bullets. This simply does not happen. Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio said, “…he heard the ‘blood on the streets’ warnings when Texas first passed the concealed handgun law. ‘They said we’d have shootouts at every intersection,’ he said. ‘None of that has happened.’” [9]

“I have not found a single instance when a permitted concealed handgun was improperly used at a school. And neither the National Education Association nor the American Federation of Teachers has been able to point to a problem.” [10]

People, who say they do not need guns on campus because the police are there, are not considering the reality. For example, “The average police response time for in-progress burglary is about 4 min…” [11] Just think of how many knife stabs or gun shots a criminal can commit in that time.

At a Northern Illinois University campus shooting in 2008, police arrived in six minutes. Even with this good response time, the murderer killed five people and wounded sixteen during the attack. At the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, not knowing the whereabouts of the suspect, the police did not have the incident under control for hours, while the university community hid to protect themselves. “The slaughter at Virginia Tech and other public schools occurred in some of the few areas within their states where people were not allowed to carry concealed handguns.” [12]

On the other hand, there are many examples of armed citizens taking action when a criminal opens fire. These get little publicity from the mainstream media. For example, during the Appalachian School of Law shooting in Virginia in 2002, two armed students and an unarmed, off-duty police officer, stopped the rampage by taking the shooter into custody. Gun control advocacy being so prevalent in much of the conventional media, out of 280 stories reported on the incident, only four reported that students armed with guns stopped the incident. [13]

“Overall, the problem with gun control laws is not too little regulation, but rather that the regulations disarm law-abiding citizens.” [14] Why do gun bans work on law-abiding citizens but not on criminals? It is because law-abiding students, faculty, and staff, if authorities discover them carrying a gun, risk firing or expulsion, while the criminal does what criminals do: break the law. Even if the shooter were a member of the college, should he survive, facing multiple life sentences or the death penalty, the above-listed sanctions are not likely to present much of a deterrent.

Most rational people recognize a right to self-defense. This being the case, it makes no sense that a college student while on campus would not enjoy a commensurate right to the most practical, efficient, and effective means to carry out that defense of self and others.

If the college cannot guarantee students’ safety, then should it prohibit students from taking steps to protect themselves? Utah Republican State Senator Michael Waddoups put it this way, “If government cannot protect you, you should have the right to protect yourself.” [15] If handguns were not the most efficient, effective, and practical means of self-defense against criminals, then law enforcement agencies would not equip their police officers with handguns, they would choose something “better.”

Gun opponents do have some legitimate concerns. One is the belief that signs prohibiting guns will prevent any criminal from carrying a gun onto a college campus. The second issue is the assumption that law-abiding citizens who carry guns on campuses make colleges less safe. Data shows guns make communities and citizens, including campuses and students, safer. “According to a 1997 study of National Crime Victimization Survey data, ‘robbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist at all.’” [16]

A gunman is closing in. The gunshots are growing closer. The screams rise and then some fall all too suddenly. Maybe the hidden student has already seen fellow students or a professor shot. At this critical life and death moment, would that student rather have a gun or not have a gun? The answer seems obvious.

As always, I speak for myself and not my city, department, mayor, or chief. After the media skewering I received from Seattle government in 2011 for daring to speak against its radical social justice agenda, it is no secret that I am a Seattle police officer. I have served the citizens proudly for more than two decades now.

What I have to say in this column affects me as a cop and you as a citizen. The current dash by left-wing gun control radicals even further to the fringe, racing to exploit the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, is as shameful and frightening as it is expected. Once again, the ends justify the means.

I only have personal experience with the City and Department violating my First Amendment rights, and not my Second Amendment rights. However, I figure if Seattle’s political and administrative liberals, who are ostensibly free speech supporters, would so readily violate the speech rights they purport to revere, surely they would not hesitate to violate gun rights they obviously detest. An ineffectual “gun buy-back” program will initiate new “gun-safety” efforts later this month. Can more insanity, or perhaps more appropriately, inanity, be far behind?

It is not enough for police officers simply to have decided for themselves as law enforcement officers that they will not enforce Second Amendment-infringing laws and policies. Cops should be particularly explicit in announcing that they will not stand by while the government makes criminals out of law-abiding citizens. They need to think ahead of time where the line is that they will not cross.

One top cop who recently gouged his line in the Linn County, Oregon sand is Sheriff Tim Mueller. His eloquent defense of his citizen’s liberty and gun rights, in a letter to Vice President Biden, should inspire all officers. Sheriff Mueller minced no words when he declared neither he nor his deputies would enforce any laws abridging the Second Amendment. Hooray for this brave Sheriff. He is a true American leader.

Saying one will not enforce a particular law may seem somewhat frivolous, or even insubordinate. However, as is the case in Seattle, the liberal government had no problem not enforcing marijuana laws (before legalization), and enforcing/not enforcing the traffic crime of Driving While License Suspended 3^rd Degree, according to a biased social justice criteria. Laws abridging a constitutional amendment certainly rise higher in importance than pot and traffic offenses.

Some aspects of the current gun issue stand out. One is a disconcerting disconnect regarding the link between self-defense and the means to self-defense. There is nearly universal acceptance that people have the right to defend themselves and others from those who would do them harm. This being the case, how do those who advocate for gun control reconcile their support for self-defense with their opposition to the most practical means to that defense? If handguns, rifles, and shotguns were not the most practical and effective means of personal defense, governments would be arming their law enforcement and military with something else.

We are fortunate here in Washington to have an exceptionally explicit state constitutional right to bear arms, especially when compared with other states such as New York. Having said that, even states like Washington need to be careful. How do I know this? The federal constitution also provides strong gun rights protections, but regardless of the Constitution, we have an enemy that will never fail to exploit death and disaster in order to attack the Second Amendment and law abiding gun owners.

When we have states passing ludicrous gun and magazine capacity restrictions and even confiscation laws, and a federal government considering doing similarly, but with executive orders, can the people of any state in the union truly be secure in their right to keep and bear arms? Outlaws do not obey laws! They’re outlaws. Do we really have to keep saying this?

I have long attempted to provide an opposing viewpoint to Seattle government’s extreme liberal bias and its policy of forcing its radical social justice agenda down its employees’ throats. In 2011 the City and Department violated my First Amendment rights. My Department ordered me not to talk to the media about a published article they had conceded I had a right to write, and they launched an official investigation into my private political speech, exclusively in order to insure I keep my mouth shut.

In the end, these bullies discovered a loophole that apparently allows the City to avoid liability, which they can now use to violate any of its cops, or other city employees’, free speech rights. Neither the Seattle, nor Washington state, governments are friends of the Second Amendment or the Washington Constitution’s gun rights. But your cops are. I, speaking for at least one of them, will never enforce a law which makes currently law-abiding gun owners, criminals, nor will I ever comply with any order to confiscate your guns.

As a person who uses a gun every day to earn a living, I feel compelled to make further comments regarding the gun-control lunacy. For the life of me, I’m trying to figure out where this situation differs from those who advocated for Japanese (and to a lesser extent German and Italian) interment during WWII.

Think this is an over reach? Well, the effect and scope, certainly, but not the concept. Think about it. What resulted from the Japanese internment was, based upon the emotional madness of the time, the taking of American citizens who had broken no laws, and treating them as if they had broken laws. The gun control advocates are now subjecting law abiding citizens to the same requirements as sex offenders.

Today we have newspapers publishing law abiding citizen’s names and home addresses, including those of police officers, prosecutors, judges, and domestic violence victims, simply because they possess a legal firearms permit of some sort, and are exercising their Second Amendment rights.

The gun control advocates’ argument, ostensibly, is that we should know whether or not our neighbors have guns because we might send our children there to play. If that argument is to hold, then shouldn’t we be publishing the names and addresses of all those patients for whom doctors have prescribed controlled medications? You can see how carrying on with the logical fallacy, if this, therefore, that, we could come up with myriad items we might want to know about our neighbors before we send our children to play there.

Donald Kaul whose opinion piece appeared in the Des Moines Register says, “If some people refused to give up their guns, that “prying the guns from their cold, dead hands” thing works for me.” He went on to say that GOP leaders should be dragged behind a truck around a parking lot until they see the light. This guy isn’t just anti-gun, and totally ignorant about the Second Amendment, he suffering from gun derangement syndrome. Believe as I do or you should be tortured or killed. Apparently, ‘ol Don doesn’t abide gun violence, but Chevy truck violence is fine. I suppose, just as long as they’re dragging the “right” people. Let’s say we accept Mr. Kaul’s opinion piece as simply hyperbole, aren’t those on the left always calling for non-violence and civility?

Publishing the names and addresses of people who haven’t done anything illegal may be statutorily legal in some jurisdictions. However, that does not change the fact that it is morally and ethically repugnant. Those who publish gun owners names should be dragged … Now, admit it. Doesn’t that sound just a little bit silly?

When I first heard about the horror in New Town, Connecticut, it sucked the breath right out of me. An evil force is alive and well in the world. Obviously, it is the tender ages of the child victims that make this an especially diabolical crime. As a police officer, I was told from day one in the Academy that responding to crimes and accidents, in which children are the victims, will be worse than any other. They were right.

Any tragedy involving children so young, aside from the initial in-your-face horror, strikes a primordial cord in adults, triggering our species survival instinct. These little kids–all of them–should outlive us. It’s not natural and it’s not right for them to die like this. When children die en masse by other ways such as, fire, school bus crash, or natural disaster, this is horrific. When we find out the deaths involve human negligence or recklessness, it becomes harder to deal with. But when the perpetrator of the innocent deaths has committed an intentionally heinous act, it turns our minds, not to mention our stomachs, inside out. We try in vain to make sense of the incomprehensible.

Another instinct is to do something about it. It must be stopped! We say it in a manner as if all of these types of horrible crimes could be stopped. However, as it is with lightening, you can take steps to prevent being struck, but someone’s going to be struck sometime. Let’s not allow the “do-something” disease to take hold.

I was hoping the anti-gun folks would hold their tongues and show some respect for the people the family and friends who are still mourning their unthinkable tragedy, before co-opting it for their personal political gain. I knew that hope would be in vain. Nothing is off limits to the radical left. The problem with their approach is, even if they learned that the gun was the solution to the problem, how many people think they would admit it?

Society learned long ago that the answer to a criminal with a gun is a cop (or a law-abiding citizen) with a gun. The tools may be the same, but it is the intentions of the users that set them apart. For some reason, the left refuses to learn what history has already taught us. And while the gun might not be the entire answer, it is an essential part of the solution to violence. Do I have a vested interest in protecting these kids? Of course, I do. I’ve dedicated my career to it. And what has my professional training been to deal with “active shooters” in a school building? It is to run in with a gun and stop the violence.

When people look for solutions to such horrendous incidents, they should be solutions that will actually work. The leftist utopia of a gun-free society has been folly ever since the Chinese invented the first gun in the 6^th Century.

Guns are here to stay, and rightly so. If people have an unalienable right to liberty, which obviously includes a right to self-defense, then it is only logical the people have the right to the most efficient and effective means to personal protection: a gun. If guns weren’t the most effective, they would have found something else with which to arm cops and soldiers.

It surprises many people, and not just those on the anti-gun side, to see colleges and universities adopting concealed gun carry policies. The premise argued is that, since the institution cannot guarantee to protect every person while on campus, they can hardly deny people the right to protect themselves.

This goes for society as well. If someone can guarantee that when I walk home from work through a city park, I’m not going to be accosted by some armed assailant, only then will I’ll consider giving up my gun—probably not, but you get the idea. No one can guarantee your safety in a school; how could anyone guarantee your safety simply while out in public?

Now, this following scenario obviously doesn’t apply to little children, such as those in Connecticut, whose lives were taken by sickness and evil. Kids have to depend on adults to make the correct decisions to protect them. Let’s not let them down by ignoring the real answers.

Consider you’re in a college classroom. Suddenly you begin hearing pops and bangs, and screams. After the initial shock, you realize there is a gunman in your school. You dash into a closet, suck back as far as you can into the deepest, darkest corner. You try to be as quiet as possible, although you are certain people can hear your labored breathing, and even your pounding heartbeat.

The pops and bangs die down, but the screaming continues throughout the building. Then you hear your classroom door open. People scream. There are more shots fired and then no screams. You hear footsteps getting louder as they approach the closet. Let me ask you: at this very moment, would you rather have a gun or not have a gun?

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