wusthof knives lgBecause all right-thinking people know, as received wisdom from the bien-pensants of the press, that crime proceeds always and everywhere from guns; that criminals would not exist if it were not for “root social causes” that can be cured with liberal (no pun intended) application of public “investment”; and that a gun in the home is always more hazardous than simply trusting in the warm heart of your fellow man, and the ever-ready forces of The State.

And criminals, Hollywood teaches us, are always high-functioning businessmen, scientists and military officers, driven by grade-school morality-play greed and lust for power. TV criminals, unlike the 3D flesh-blood-and-attitude variety tend to be white guys, rich guys, and usually well-connected WASPs who just want to be whiter, richer, and even better-connected. Cops watch these films, and wonder why they can’t spend their days arresting those guys in their nice clean labs and boardrooms, instead of, you know, the actual criminals they see every day. Real-world crims tend to be sketchy, marginal, disproportionately minority, low-IQ and often mentally-ill individuals, who tend to be found in dysfunctional and filthy places. Real criminals often have no more reason behind their crime or ability to explain it, than a shark with its similarly primitive nervous system has.

And then we get this. Hollywood detectives would be closing in on the wealthiest inhabitant of the mid-sized (by NH standards: pop about 7k) town, or on the nearest particle physicist or genome sequencing guru. WeaponsMan suggests they’re going to find it’s someone bug-house crazy, whom everyone would have locked up in 1990 if not for the Glories of Deinstitutionalization which have left us with no place to lock him up. Here’s what he did:

Authorities say a man and a woman whose bodies were discovered in a central New Hampshire home were those of a 39-year-old man and his mother, who were chopped to death.

The victims were identified as 59-year-old Priscilla Carter and her son, Timothy. Their deaths were ruled homicides.

Homicides! No $#!+, Sherlock?

Obviously this was caused by the loose gun laws in the Granite State, where a Boston-values prosecutor can’t even convict a guy for shooting a criminal on his own property, no matter how histrionic the closing arguments. A sure sign they’re clingin’ to their God and guns, although in this tragic tale, somebody didn’t cling to the latter and got sent to the former prematurely:

Autopsies were performed Saturday. The medical examiner’s office determined Priscilla Carter’s cause of death was multiple chop wounds and blunt force injuries, while Timothy Carter’s cause of death was multiple chop wounds. The office did not say what kind of weapon was used.

via Medical examiner: Woman, son were chopped to death | SeacoastOnline.com.

If you’re a writer for, say, the Associated (with terrorists) Press or the Boston Globe, the official lack of definition of the weapon is a great excuse to pencil in “assault weapon” or the old newsroom standbys, “AR-47” or “AK-15”.

Exercises for the reader:

Exercise 1

Reenvision this scene, but with Timothy or Priscilla Carter as a gun owner. To steal a subtitle from Laurence Gonzales,  “who lives, who dies, and why?”

Exercise 2

You live in this town. Here’s the authorities’ position: “Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeff Strelzin said no one has been arrested in the case and that authorities continue to investigate.”  Translation: “Beats us with a stick.” And the guy’s still out there. Pick from one of the following options: 

        • Move out. Preferably to somewhere which has no bad naughty evil people, or the guns that inspire them to violence, like Chicongo (well, we’ll think of a place. The Emerald City?).
        • Put your faith in your fellow man and 911, like the Carters did.
        • Get a Brady Campaign/Bloomberg approved rape whistle and be prepared to blow it vigorously.
        • Sign up for tae kwon do at the local dojo.
        • Get a double-barreled shotgun and be prepared to fire it into the air, out the window.
        • Get a handgun or carbine and some instruction on how to use it.

Nothing much hangs on your decision. Just life or death. (After some creep kills you, the mutilation adds a bit of horror for your survivors, but you won’t feel a thing).

The Carters, poor, doomed wretches that they were, didn’t even know they were playing this game. You do. What’s your move?

This entry was posted in Lord Love a Duck, Weapons Usage and Employment on by Hognose.

About Hognose

Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF).

One thought on “Ah, the wages of loose gun laws!

Aesop

Swear to Buddha, if I had the inclination, i’d set up an online newspaper, just to show what it looks like when you get this stuff right, if not for the fact it’d be like shooting dolphins in a rain barrel, and it’s 40 years too late.

Why there isn’t a banner headline on something like this proclaiming

“Inspector Clouseau Lives!”

baffles the ever-loving stuffing out of me.

And I’m changing my word processor’s default from “Chicagograd” to “Chicongo”, after my personal state department issues the requisite apology to the government of Zaire.