Requiescat in Pacem..

George “Bud” Day, Colonel, USAF Retired, CMH

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57595859/col-george-bud-day-medal-of-honor-recipient-dies-at-88/

God speed, Sir.

The LawDog Files: A simple question

The LawDog Files: A simple question

Why don't we defend our treasure?

Security is big business in the US of A probably because even our criminals are over achievers.
We defend banks, politicians, mafia dons, airports, ball games, and factories with armed and trained security personnel. The rest of us citizens have the right to arm ourselves and participate in our own defense to varying degrees.

The average school however is remarkably undefended on site. No armed and trained security here.  Indeed nearly every state makes it a felony for an armed citizen to  even be on school property.  Why don't we defend our youngest and most vulnerable citizens?

Since schools are very publicly known as "gun free zones" it is no wonder to me that schools continue to be targets of choice for the chemically altered, ego enhanced, reality deprived members of the whacko population.  I don't care how fried, twisted, or absent your brain is, the average school attacker knows he is going into the fish in the barrel, target rich environment when he picks a school to make his final point on earth.

When I am entrusted with my 7 and 8 year old grandchildren, I am ALWAYS armed.  If they are harmed while in my care it will be because I am dead.  I don't want to be the guy that had to watch them die while waiting for the 9-1-1 responder.

We allowed commercial airline pilots to be armed so they could protect themselves and therefore the passengers.  Why don't we let the administrators of schools take the obvious steps to protect the treasure we entrust to them?  I hasten to add that I do not believe that school personnel are in any way lax but they are constrained by the same insane laws that ensure  perpetrator will have ample time to live out his fantasy.  In all of the school shootings an adult is usually shot in the first few rounds and usually die because they could only bring their fists to the gun fight.

I believe with every fiber of my being that school shootings would drop off to nothing if the sickos knew that the people we entrust with our treasure were also entrusted with the means to defend them.

"The idea that ideas can be dangerous"

"Dangerous does not mean exciting or bold. 

It means likely to cause great harm. 

The most dangerous idea is the only dangerous idea: The idea that ideas can be dangerous.

We live in a world in which people are beheaded, imprisoned, demoted, and censured simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. 

Tough shit. 

That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence."

 DANIEL GILBERT
Psychologist, Harvard University

Often in life you find yourself with a choice between an easy thing you think you can do and a hard thing you are not sure you can do.  When you pick the easier thing and succeed you will always have the nagging feeling that you could have done the harder thing presumably resulting in greater success or accomplishment.  This can lead you to wonder if that nagging feeling is worse than the memory of trying and failing at the hard thing would be.