A friend of mine related an incident that happened to her and her son while traveling south on Highway 85 between Crestview and the cutoff.
Two males pulled next to her vehicle, one of them in a mask, brandishing what appeared to be a rifle. He pointed the firearm at her — and she did what any teacher would do, and waggled her finger telling him “no, no."
He then removed his covering and made slicing motions with his finger.
Thankfully, traffic allowed her to slow her vehicle and she contacted law enforcement from a discreet distance. She did not panic and she was armed herself.
Obviously, an unsettling experience — but what was more upsetting occurred when she relayed her story to her sister. The sister had nothing negative to say about the perpetrators, only disdain for the fact that my friend carried her own weapon.
She questioned my friend’s competency, wisdom, and lamented the proliferation of weapons in America.
She denied my friend’s self-evident right.
Actor Kurt Russell recently criticized gun control measures in an interview with Hollywood blogger and film critic Jeffrey Wells.
“… The problem that we’re having right now to turn it around … you may think you’ve got me worried about you’re gonna do? Dude, you’re about to find out what I’m gonna do, and that’s gonna worry you a lot more. And that’s what we need … I’m not concerned about what he’s gonna do — I’m gonna make him concerned about what I’m gonna do."
Not eloquent, but captures the right idea.
The sister would have my friend and family “shelter in place” or find the nearest “gun-free zone” and wait for someone else to defend them.
She would have my friend surrender her advantage, her right to self-defense, the “advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where)…the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms” as James Madison wrote.
My friend takes liberty seriously — freedom with responsibility.
God and her gun stood between her family and the threat posed by the two men shadowing her vehicle. The same God and weapon will stand between her and her sister’s ilk if and when that liberty is threatened.
Patrick Henry once said that “if we wish to be free — if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending … we must fight!”
Whether it is some radical Islamic reject, masked assailant or misguided statist serf, we need to "turn it around," as Russell says, and make them worry about what we’re gonna do.
The man in the mask should worry that my friend is a better shot and willing to defend herself when he terrorizes.
Her sister should turn around and learn from her example to be responsible for her own liberty.
An over-reaching government should hesitate before making any attempt to remove my friend’s weapon. After all, that is the “strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms.”
George Washington indicated “it should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn."
My friend should be proud to proclaim this part of her American heritage, not out of fear or anger, but with the resolve that she is preserving liberty and the spirit of resistance.
It is time for her and all Americans to turn it around.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: DORSEY: 'Turn it around' regarding gun control
