Vicki Lawrence And Judge Joe Brown Defend Our Second Amendment Rights — And On National TV, Too!
by
Larry Pratt

Well, now. This is news! And good news, too. I mean, how often do you see anybody on national TV actually making sense when they talk about guns?

Right. Hardly ever. But, on ABC’s Politically Incorrect program (11/3/99), comedienne Vicki Lawrence and television’s Judge Joe Brown had many common sense things to say about owning firearms. Judge Brown was raised in one of the toughest neighborhoods in South Central Los Angeles. He graduated with top honors from UCLA’s Law School.

On this program, discussing the most recent workplace shootings in Hawaii by a man who legally owned the guns he used, Lawrence adamantly opposed taking guns away from responsible citizens saying: “You’re not gonna ever get them off the streets. You’re not gonna get them away from the gangs. You’re not gonna do that. So, why are you gonna take them away from me?”

When the host of the show, Bill Maher, disputed the notion that victims of gun crime would have been safer if they had been armed, Judge Brown, said: “Well, let’s put it this way. I tell you what. I would have felt a lot better if when (in Hawaii), somebody walked in and said, ‘All right, this is going down. I’m going to blow you away,’ that somebody else (armed) would have been able to say, ‘Well, you know, make my day. I got my stuff. Let’s see if it works.’ See, that way you’re not holding your butt in your hand. You got something else showing.”

When another guest on the program suggests that the shooter in Hawaii should have been legally limited to only two guns (instead of the 17 he reportedly owned), Judge Brown says, to applause from the audience: “I mean, what difference does it make? If he had one or two, he could have done the same damage, but if you had your own, you could have stopped it. You want to give Big Brother more authority than he’s already got? Goodness!”

When guest Peter Frampton, the rock-and-roll guitarist from England, says it is “ridiculous” to advocate that teachers in our public schools be armed, Judge Brown says: “Tell you what, down in Arkansas a few years ago, some kid went amok with a pistol, and he started shooting the school up. The principal went out, got his .45 out of the trunk, drew down on the kid, he threw the gun down, [and this] stopped the tragedy.”

“Now see, I’ve noticed this. I’ll tell you as a criminal court judge, when you’ve got armed citizens, the crime drops.”

What Judge Brown is alluding to– though his geography is a little off– is a 1997 shooting in Pearl, Mississippi, where Luke Woodham shot two students to death and wounded seven others at Pearl High School. During this carnage, Assistant Principal Joel Myrick got a handgun from his truck, blocked the road as Woodham was on his way to kill some other students, and ordered him to the ground at gunpoint until police arrived. Myrick has said he has no doubt Woodham would have killed more people if he had not been stopped since he had 36 rounds of ammo in his pocket when he was finally subdued.

Referring to the slaughter at Columbine High in Colorado, Lawrence says: “Okay, let’s talk about teachers. What if somebody had had a gun at Columbine? Could they not have shot those guys instead of getting on a cell phone?…. I ain’t going into a public school unless I’m armed and dangerous.”

So, let’s hear it for Vicki Lawrence and Judge Joe Brown– two of our citizens who are not afraid to defend our Second Amendment rights. And on national TV, too. What a breath of fresh air.