A Question of Safety

A Question of Safety

By Joe Harrison

The hot topic of the day seems to be whether women should carry firearms to insure their safety, especially from being raped. My 10 years in law enforcement taught me that there are some really sick people out there and they are not always so easy to spot. Your boss or coworker could be struggling with mental demons, urging him to carry out the sickest fantasies imaginable. We are now being told that women should not carry firearms to protect themselves as they may mistake someone’s intentions and shoot them by mistake. They should instead take advantage of things like call boxes, whistles, 911 and safe zones.

First of all, I would like a definition of a safe zone. Would that be something like the FEMA shelter at the superdome after Katrina. Everyone was told to go there, it was a government shelter and they would be safe there. How did that work out for you?

Where are these call boxes they speak of? I have never seen one. Is the woman supposed to tell her attacker to hold on a minute while I make this call? The same goes for 911. After the call is made, and they answer the plethora of questions they will be asked, how long before help arrives? Is there anyone out there who really thinks there are enough police officers in place to keep us safe? How much damage is going to be done while they wait? The average response time for a 911 call is 27 minutes. Do you want your wife, girlfriend, mother or sister at the mercy of an attacker for 27 minutes?

I barely have the patience to deal with the stupidity of the whistle idea. What is that going to do? Is she supposed to rely on her fellow citizens to come to her aide in places like New York and Chicago. They may video the incident so they can post it on youtube, but doubtful they would risk harm to help her.

No, none of this sounds like a reasonable option to me. I would like to be clear on one point; my wife is armed at all times. Not with some little pop gun but with a .40 cal loaded with hollow points. With me being a former firearms instructor, you can bet that she is more than proficient with it. I have trained her to shoot for the groin, no more threat from that guy. I have also trained her that once someone is a threat, they will always be one, so do not let them live to strike another day. For that reason, she also carries an extra magazine or two, if the first one does not get the job done, she will have more than enough opportunity to make sure that no one else is ever threatened by the scumbag.

Oh, and she is also the type of person that if she sees another woman in danger, she would not simply pass by, hoping not to get involved, that would be another news story about another dead attacker.

When the day comes where you can show me that you have enough law enforcement resources in place to keep us all safe, I may think about leaving our guns at home. For now, you can’t even keep the roads safe enough to drive back and forth to work every day. Criminals have no fear of consequences because the sentences are very light and they are released after doing a fraction of their time.

No it is now up to us as citizens to keep ourselves safe. It is up to us as citizens to take control again, our elected officials on both sides have failed us and they continue to do so. It is time to take our country back, one scumbag at a time.