"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
- Thomas Jefferson (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria)
Choices. We've all got a lot of them to make. Christopher Entzminger-Joyner made one that saved his life. The state agrees that he acted in self-defense.
And now he's going to prison ("Norwalk man gets two years for self-defense shooting") -
A Norwalk man who shot three men while trying to defend himself from local gang members in South Norwalk, and was subsequently picked up with a pistol while out on bond, was sentenced Tuesday to two years in jail.
Christopher Entzminger-Joyner, 22, of Taylor Avenue, pleaded guilty in November to illegal discharge of a firearm and carrying a pistol without a permit.Read the whole article. It's going to make you sick. Christopher, a 22 year old black male - who had no previous entanglements with the law - gets jumped, and defends himself with a gun. An American citizen of majority age chose - twice - to retain the tools necessary to ensure his personal safety, and he's going to prison for those choices.
How do you think that's gonna turn out? Is previously-clean record Christopher going to "learn his lesson" and become a better person, or is he going to come out as damaged goods?
Wow, that's a tough call. Not.
He's going to become another young black man with a prison record for gun charges. What are his chances of finding a job, a wife, having kids and becoming a contributing member of society? Zero. They're gone.
Of course, we will never know if he'd have chosen that path anyways, but now - because he chose to ignore Connecticut law and save his own life - we know with almost perfect certainty that this path is gone.
Accept The Challenge
As I noted in an earlier post, a friend of mine had to make the same choice -
Let that sink in: Her affirmative act of acquiring and possessing the means to save her own life would have instead resulted in her forfeiting her liberty.
Leslie followed the letter of the law, and ended up dead.It's the old saw, "I'd rather be tried by twelve than carried by six." How did this country become so messed up that this is a choice we must make? Self-defense or prison?
I can say that I, for one, am never without a weapon that can be used to save my life. I'm more fortunate than most of my fellow Californians, in that I have a personal and (more importantly) professional life that allows me to legally have a gun with me at almost all times, even though my county will not bless me a CCW permit. Granted many times when traveling, the gun is in a locked container, but it is always within arm's length away, and can be in my hand and loaded in just a few seconds (Yes... I practice this. Often).
And when I'm in areas where my safety, "Spidey-sense" is going off, I willfully break the law and have the gun out of the case and loaded. I'm simply not going to die and burden my family with choosing between a coffin or an urn for my burial.
Ain't gonna happen. At least not because the State said I couldn't protect myself.
What are YOU gonna do, fellow Californians? Fellow Americans?
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