Strange Days Indeed!
Six years ago when I was on a Jamaican vacation, the London subway bombings occurred. This year, it was the attack on Norwegian youth attending a leadership camp at the hands of a Timothy McVey copycat terrorist, who also apparently had a mad crush on the Unabomber.
No need to get into the well-discussed motives in the above-mentioned cases, which exist as proof positive that terror in today’s world seems to come in all flavors: foreign and domestic, left wing and right wing.
“Batcrap crazy evil” seems to be an equal-opportunity employer, so any of you who espouses one side of the aisle as superior to the other when it comes to these tragedies, do us all a favor stick a sock in it.
Okay, now that I have gotten that out of the way, both in 2005 and last week, it was interesting to see and hear the reactions of the gathered vacationers who hailed from Maine to California, Canada to Australia, representing the working class to ruling elite.
Aside from the obvious shock and sadness associated with hearing about such an event, the overwhelming sentiment that became pretty obvious was that no one could believe that in this day and age so many supposedly intelligent adults would gather that many young people in such an isolated place without any real security in place, and no way to get help in a fat hurry if the situation called for it.
All of us were gathered in a small Caribbean location with virtually no military or strategic value in the grand scheme of things, yet we had been subjected to more security checks, examinations and scrutiny on the way to the beach than one would have thought possible 10 years ago. After the unspeakable horror of 9/11, even the low-key Jamaicans understand the importance of armed security in the right places, but the damn Norwegian government somehow missed the memo?
Then word came that one of the first victims of the crazy Scandinavian was a police officer. An unarmed police officer, because, get this, in Norway, they are not allowed to carry sidearms without specific permission from the precinct chief, for a specific cause.
Hell, even Andy Taylor had a gun near by at all times, whether he carried it with him or not wasn’t important. Yes, Barney Fife’s lone bullet was as close as his shirt pocket, and every now and then the good people of Mayberry actually needed him to chamber that thing.
Talk about ducks on a pond.
Of the assembled group, few believed that there was really a rule prohibiting the cops from routinely carrying guns. Yes, there really is such a rule.
The most interesting single comment from the folks on holiday (at least to me), was a self described liberal from Pennsylvania who said while she would likely have no problem using deadly force in such a situation to save a close friend or relative, she would be hard pressed to do the same for a stranger or someone she did not know well, because, get this, “Who am I to judge?” she meekly asked. (And no, she was not a French National)
And we wonder how the Nazis took over most of Europe without more bloodshed? That mindset right there.
“Hey, it is not my family, I better not judge, much less, fight back.”
May those of such laissez faire attitude be standing between the terrorists and the rest of us the next time such an attack occurs, and you better believe another attack will occur.
John Q. Homicidal Terrorist reads the newspapers, and when he sees that one worm with a few guns can bring an entire nation to its knees by easily taking out five dozen of their best and brightest because their parents embrace a Kumbaya philosophy of pacifism at all costs, he is likely going to be loading up his family truckster and heading that way as quick as he can get there.
The last thing the Quaker State lefty said before I walked away was, “You see… this attack shows us the world needs more gun laws!”
Sadly, the gunmen in these cases always choose to break those laws.
Even more sadly, the dead victims always seem to obey them.You Might Also Like:
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