Concealed Carry

The acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin raises the question of the value of being armed in public and, specially, of carrying a concealed weapon.

Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein once wrote that an armed society is a polite society. That statement, however, rests on the twin assumptions that the vast majority of people are actually armed while out in public and that they are emotionally stable.

There are also a number of other issues to consider.

First, there is no deterrent value to a concealed weapon. Second, handguns are almost as hard to use as, for example, are violins: training and frequent practice are necessities. Too many of those who carry weapons in the public space have less training than they should and practice only infrequently.

Even worse, a significant fraction of armed citizens are emotionally unstable, if not actually mentally ill, and some of them are just plain nasty, bullies or criminals. Some, too, are drunk - which brings to mind the fact that saloons in the old West required customers to check their guns at the door.

The Supreme Court has ruled that being armed in public is subject to State law and most, if not all, States permit such behavior. From your correspondent's perspective, it is desirable to know when another person is armed. When armed citizens begin to behave in strange ways, including showing signs of aggression, that knowledge provides a cue to vanish into the woodwork at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

Given that being armed in public is generally legal, open carry is just about tolerable to your correspondent. Concealed carry, however, is an abomination.

For those armed citizens who think that it is clever to carry a weapon without a safety or with the safety not engaged, I hope that you trip and fall, and, as you hit the ground, that your weapon discharges and you shoot yourself in your most personal parts. That way, at least, you will have the rest of your life, as a non-participant in the gene pool, to contemplate your stupidity while looking ruefully at your Darwin Award.

Zipper Failure

As Henry Kissinger famously said: "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

Among those for whom power and inappropriate sex are mixed, we can include politicians (President Clinton, Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina), businessmen (Mark Hurd formerly Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett Packard and Harry Stonecipher formerly Chief Executive Officer of Boeing) and high ranking members of the military (including former Director of Central Intelligence General David Petraeus)

That powerful people have been exposed with their zippers down - when they should be up - is nothing new. That all too many of them, after a brief period of seclusion, can attempt to return - sometimes successfully - to public life is an indictment of us as citizens.

Governor, now Representative, Sanford is a prime example. Less than four years after word leaked out of his adulterous affair with an Argentine woman (including the use of State funds for personal expenditures), the citizens of the 1st Congressional District of South Carolina overwhelming voted to return him to Washington DC.

Meanwhile, in New York City, two notorious zipper artists are running for office: Eliot Spitzer (Client-9 of a notorious high end prostitution ring) wants to be New York City Comptroller and Anthony Weiner (texter of pictures of his crotch to single women) wants to be Mayor.

In her column this week (click to read), Peggy Noonan discusses the life of former British Minister of War John Profumo who resigned from the House of Commons in 1963 following a sex scandal about which he lied to Parliament. Rather than attempting a political comeback by sleazily claiming personal redemption as a result of his travails, he simply spent the next forty years quietly doing his best to make the world a slightly better place. Most importantly, he sought no publicity and until 2003 never spoke publicly of his disgrace.

What a contrast to current American practice!

Were the voters of New York City and the nation to refuse to accept that the return to office of disgraced politicians, your correspondent might be less inclined to refer to New York City and Washington DC, respectively, as Sodom On The Hudson and Gomorrah On The Potomac.