Weapons ManSome people wonder why others choose to arm themselves in defense of self, home, and family.
It’s a reasonable question, and our (we hope, reasonable) answer is that the roots of self-defense are in personal agency and responsibility. And recent revelations about the way fugitives are pursued, or more honestly, often not pursued, indicate that there’s an epidemic of not arresting violent felons going on.
We call it Conwalking.
Here it is by the numbers:
Sources of these numbers:
- http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2014/03/11/fugitives-next-door/6262719/
- http://cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/2013-wrd.pdf
- http://www.usacarry.com/186873-reasons-carry-gun/
- http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/31/report-obama-administration-released-68000-convicted-criminal-aliens-last-year/
We didn’t document the gun-capacity numbers; we just know those.
These revelations make those who arm themselves for self-defense look a lot more rational than the low rates of crime in most jurisdictions would suggest. After all, an extremely rare event like the bestial crimes USA Today describes as being committed by these “walked” cons will probably never happen to you. It’s what Nicholas Taleb famously calls a “Black Swan” event; even events that are extremely improbable are not impossible, and when the “impossible” happens, you can be ready.
Or you can be meat.
In the jurisdictions USA Today’s looked at, about 1 in 6 murderers appears to have been conwalked from somewhere. That’s a number well outside the probabilities of random chance. These cons are serious, career criminals, and they will keep committing crimes of increasing depravity and violence until they’re incapacitated by old age, incarceration, or a cop’s or chosen “victim’s” bullet.
The cops and prosecutors who perpetrate this epidemic of Conwalking, come in several kinds. Some of them have a cozy symbiosis with these walked cons, some of them are responding to political or cultural pressure, but many of them are simply overwhelmed with too many crooks and too few resources,
The resource issue will not go away. Prosecutors will not suddenly get bottomless budgets to fund extraditions and investigators and assistants to go bag and tag these guys. Even cities that don’t admit they don’t want the bulk of their fugitives back, unlike Philadelphia where they’re upfront about it, really don’t want their fugitives back. (Baltimore, for instance, puts in NCIS that they’re willing to extradite. Then, when somebody bags the guy, they usually say “never mind.”)
The cops can’t be there to protect you. They can only be there to avenge you. And they lose their ability to do that, in many jurisdictions, if your perpetrator moves across a state line or two. The cons know this: they’re one Greyhound away from impunity.
So who can protect you? Who can protect the members of your family who do not have fangs and claws of their own? In a world of Conwalking, every free citizen must answer these questions. And not to answer them is to answer them.
The fear factor in play.