“Gun-free zones”

I’m not a gun aficionado.  I suppose, in a way, that my father and my brother were.  But I’m definitely not.  I haven’t fired a weapon in more than a decade; I haven’t been hunting since I was a teenager.  I have no objection to guns and hunting; I just do different things.

The other day, though — was it in Texas? perhaps even (oddly) at the entrance to the Alamo? — I saw a sign indicating that I was entering a “gun-free zone.”

I think such signs are unwise.  Imprudent.

I don’t necessarily advocate packing heat, or that churches be bristling with concealed weapons.  Certainly I’ve never taken a gun to church.

But the sign that I saw the other day disturbed me.

Good people, seeing such a sign, will probably comply.  People carrying guns with an intent to do harm surely won’t.

And what that means is that would-be killers can enter a theater, or a church, or a school secure in the knowledge that nobody there will be able to fire back.  They’ll have unconstrained leisure to murder defenseless people for as long as it takes the police to arrive.

I think such monsters should be left in uncertainty.  Might there be somebody here who can fire back?  Maybe even somebody with real skill?  Might I be killed within minutes or even seconds of opening fire?

Barry Goldwater was once asked if he really would have used atomic bombs against North Vietnam.  Probably not, he responded.  But, he continued, why assure the enemy that you won’t?  Let them wonder!  Let them worry!

The horrific killing of nine people at that church in Charleston, South Carolina — in an area of the city that I actually know just a bit, since one of my sons lived in Charleston for a while (and loved it) — has brought this matter back to my thoughts.