Now that the RNC is taking its job seriously, the citizen’s legal independence from her public servants, the way constituents need them. One of the greatest fears of a free people is that their voices are not heard or worse, ignored; the Republicans lost Congress for that at the top of the list. Safer streets is one of those most parsimonious goals where all you really need to do is get out of the way, a conservative value. The answer is not more guns, it is more official respect for the liberty and the citizen authority of the people in every community. Note that I didn’t say civilian authority, I said citizen authority.

In Los Angeles, Angelinos felt the loss of seventeen year old Lily Burk. Lily was stalked and abducted, and after repeated attempts to coerce her to obtain money from her credit card, Lily was slashed and clubbed to death, then abandoned in her vehicle in the Skid Row district of Los Angeles.

Letters to the editor of the July 30, 2009 edition of the Los Angeles Times talked of capital punishment, longer sentences, three-strikes, repeat offenders, and other thoughts. These are purely reactionary responses and not pro-active responses for safer streets. Liberty purists do not think entirely in terms of after-the fact, but during-the-fact. How to manage thugs after their thuggery may speak the language of Justice later, but it is silent on the subject of personal safety now. This is where the Republicans come in.

California is one of the few states which balks at the citizen’s legal independence from her public servants, and does so to the detriment of the populace; gun control. Here, people are disarmed of ugly rifles, black rifles, automatic rifles, big bullets and big cartridges, handguns, where they can be carried, who can carry, how they look and feel, and much more, none of which touches violent criminals. It never will touch them.  Read the news reports of murderers such as the beast who murdered Lily Burk and you find not only a history of recidivism, but also the name on a list of persons prohibited from owning and possessing any sort of weapon. It doesn’t work, does it? It didn’t. It won’t.

This is because this not where crime is fought.

It’s not the police, it’s the legislature and city councils, the boards of supervisors who disarm the constituents for the thugs. Before you bite my head off, think about how many thugs are soon to be released thanks to poor management. Think about whose fault it is, and think about who has to live with the consequences of such poor performance. Think about how voices were not heard, observers who could see this coming. Think about what is likely to happen next when you turn these beasts loose in town where self-defense is vexed and even punished.

Forty states have found safer streets, and more than thirty-seven states have petitioned for Sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment with emphasis on how their constituents’ gun rights will be better respected; this, because the armed citizen is not a liability to a community, but an asset. This, because police and gun owners are allies; this, because everyone wants the same thing, safer streets. Most important, those servants realize that they work for their constituents and not the other way around. In those states, the servants affirm their citizen’s legal right to be armed with a sidearm nearly everywhere. It works when officials simply get out of the way. It works when they respect citizen authority. It works.

It is not so much a matter of guns, guns, guns, it’s all about officials who are so stubborn that they become part of the problem. With poor fiscal management, disarming the public, punishing slight variations in a weapon, a mistaken carry in an airport, and now early release, you have to see how the return to values of getting out from under these practices – getting out form under our very own pubic servants—is the beginning of turning things around, and it will be a great plank in a liberty platform.

Would Lily be alive today if she had been armed? Think for a second. I teach my kids the forties rule of the hatpin doctrine. It is the habit that you always have cash, you always have a dime for a phone call or a charged cell phone, an extra change of underwear, some food in the car, and a Hatpin, one of those real long, strong ones with a big raisin on the other end. Some people have a black teardrop on one end, other people prefer pearl. My mother was never without some sort of lovely hatpin to accent her hats. Not only does it make a good personal weapon, but it is also a symbol of another era of greater independence. It is not to be on the offensive, but to be on the defensive. You might say Mom was a slightly hardened target.

What am I really teaching my kids? I know that I am not teaching my kids Arithmetic when I show them how to balance their checkbook, I am teaching them self-discipline that adds up. When it comes to armed self-defense, it doesn’t mean that every seventeen year old has a gun, but the spirit of fighting back. Predators roam, with more on the way. How are your kids to be prepared? How is the nation to be prepared?

No, not every soul should have gun, but those cities who get out of the way and who affirm their citizens’ second amendment right, their refusal to be a victim, and their legal authority to act in time of grave danger have not regretted it. There are millions now who legally carry concealed handguns, and you would not know it if they sat next to you. They are not the aggressors.

You see, gun ownership isn’t about being hair-trigger belligerent, it is all about realizing that no matter what government promises, you will always be on your own, and preferring it that way anyway. It is to know and to accept that no one will ever be able to do what only you can do, no matter what they promise. It is to refuse bureaucratic help for personal dignity no matter how much the program wants to ‘help’ you.

It is this spirit which permeates one’s whole value system, and extends well into how they will face aggression alone. Because, in every sense, they are alone.

Americans may know their workplace benefits and the price of gasoline, but how the family will meet, manage and survive an encounter with violence is them most neglected area of household management.

We don’t know if Lily Burk had a hat pin with her or what she was taught to do, and we cannot know this early the facts of every such case of abduction or murder, but we do know that dependency on officials to the exclusion of the citizen is cultivated and taught. Dependency is now a genuine foe of all our freedoms, and it began with how crime has been grown as a formula to pass around with others who think they have a good thing going in governance. Part of that has been to advise victims to ‘give them what they want.’ Part of that has been to ‘avoid conflict’. Part of that is to assume that resistance is to ‘settle disputes in anger’.

Officials this next election need to recognize citizen authority to act and to stop compelling citizens to give thugs what they want. The Republicans need to step up and repeal a great deal of gun control’s laws and the dangerous values it espouses. Republicans, you need to call your office.

Safer streets – and safer campuses, safer airports, safer wilderness and safer workplaces – come under the authority of the citizen before that of the trustees. Vexing the armed citizen is to challenge that very authority. Safer streets also come from the understanding of the thugs that their target may now more likely be armed, a more hardened target, armed with not only lethal force, but also armed with knowledge, the authority to act in the absence of police, and most of all, the community spirit to tolerate absolutely no more.

Copyright 2009 Canada Free Press.Com