Editorial Discusses Responsibility and the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment isn’t about hunting. A lot of people want to argue like it is, but that’s simply not the case. It’s about defending ourselves and our nation from tyranny. That includes the tyranny of a rampaging maniac intent on hurting and/or killing as many people as possible.

It’s unfortunately rare when someone who has a gun is in a position to act, but it does happen, and it happens a lot more often than many realize. They don’t realize it often times because the bad guy is stopped before a lot of people are hurt.

Recently, in Michigan, a former Marine used his concealed carry weapon to stop a mass stabbing.

In Pennsylvania, an editorial offers some respect for that Marine and his decision to act.

“The only that separated me from the other gentlemen that had stepped in as well was what was I was carrying in my hands,” Derrick Perry said. “I think I would have ran out there or walked out there and helped either way. … It was just a moment of ‘I got a duty to protect.’”

We are not saying that everyone needs to bear this responsibility, or that everyone is well-suited to bear it. We recognize that a society that allows people to pursue their opportunities and exercise their liberties will depend on everybody taking on different responsibilities — the responsibilities they are best equipped to fulfill.

But we believe that the men, women and children of Traverse City should appreciate that Derrick Perry understands that he not only has a right to own and carry a firearm, but as someone willing to train and educate himself on the use of firearms, he has an opportunity to shoulder the responsibility of helping to keep his community safe.

A couple of years ago, I got the chance to meet and chat with Stephen Williford, the gentleman who engaged the Sutherland Springs killer. It was nice speaking with someone who had acted.

I don’t remember his exact words at the time, but he talked a little bit about the importance of considering how you will live with yourself if you don’t act when it’s needed. It’s true, too. As they say, “A coward dies a thousand deaths. The brave but one.” Or some variation of that sentiment, at least.

Ernest Hemingway had thoughts on that, too.

“The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one’…. (The man who first said that) was probably a coward…. He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he’s intelligent. He simply doesn’t mention them.”

― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Not everyone is equipped to be “the brave” in a situation like what Perry faced.

Carrying a firearm is a grave responsibility, but it also empowers you to act in the face of someone trying to massacre the innocent. It gives you the opportunity to be both brave and effective.

Many who don’t know any better think that if someone has a knife, you should be able to take them down without a gun, that any inability to do so is the result of a lack of training. That’s what you get when all your knowledge of conflict comes from action movies where the hero is equipped with plot armor and the bad guys are universally incompetent.

No, a knife is a deadly weapon, as are many other things, and having the means to act is a responsibility, and while the editorial notes that not everyone is up for that responsibility, I argue that everyone who is has a duty to step up. God forbid you ever need to act as Perry did, but I promise you, acting is far better for your mental well-being than not acting.