Large Fierce Mammal

If your anger goes forth, withhold your sword; If your sword goes forth, withhold your anger. ~ swordsman’s axiom

Last week’s tragic attacks on school children in the United States and China have been met with the predictable media frenzy and polarized posturing on both sides of the gun control demarcation line. It happens every time and I’m about as fed up with it as I can get.

I am a highly skilled shooter and gun owner, as well as an accredited hunter safety and firearms trainer. I am also trained and skilled in methods of dealing death employing means that make a lot less noise. These are a part of my Martial training, and as such, they represent components of the package that goes to making me ME. I don’t practice any of them out of a burning need to hurt or kill. Quite the opposite actually, because the learning of your own measure has to come before the moment of Truth, only at the end of rational, intelligently approached preparation, and the internalizing of the Fact that he wins the greatest victory who succeeds without need to engage in battle.

I am a hunter, and so have demonstrated that I carry within me the willingness and ability to take the life of a fellow creature. I am honoured to have the Love of the finest Woman I could ever imagine, and we have worthy dependents who look to us for everything they need. While I have never yet been called upon to do it, and expend every effort to minimize the chances of ever having to, I have no doubt that if push came to shove, I would inflict every manner of mayhem within my power, up to and including taking the life of any person who attempted to harm any of mine, and the only thing that would save the attacker from my wrath would be immediate retreat or complete surrender. I am not an executioner or vigilante, nor am I a walking anti-personnel mine treading the Earth in anticipation of some hapless nutter triggering my fuse. I am simply a creature of Nature, vigilant to avoid conflict, but willing to fight to the end. My philosophy and motivation in this is sewn throughout this website for all to see.

Chase the Rabbit, generally held to be among the meekest of creatures, and you will soon learn that its conflict resolution skills begin with fleetness of foot. Yet corner it and seek to take it in hand while it still draws breath and it will teach you of other skills – those of tooth and claw. As is said, the thorn defends the rose, yet it is peaceful and does not seek conflict.

As I sit at my desk writing this, I am in the company of one exceptionally fine Woman, and six trusty companions of the canine persuasion. Every one of those I just described has the ability and willingness to do as Nature has prepared them to do, and yet I am comforted instead of concerned. Yesterday, Mrs. LFM and I attended a movie in the company of two Gentleman friends, one a law enforcement official who works armed daily, both of whom own firearms and a selection of other lethal implements, and are possessed of the skill and willingness to employ them should the need arise. They know the measure of us, and we know the same of them. We live in a country wherein the tools of defense permitted to be carried by law abiding citizens such as we are limited, but limitations notwithstanding, that portion of the theatre occupied by our company was made a safer place because, put to the test, everyone in it would fight to the end, as Nature intended, with bare hands, teeth, knees, and elbows if needs must.

I recently had cause to interact in a matter that involved a local man with serious anger management issues, and a seemingly bottomless inability to end relationships without attracting the police. His propensity for employing the internet and text messaging to harass and threaten anyone he got mad at – and women breaking up with him after inevitably discovering what an ass hat he is were a particularly sore point – led to his arrest and confiscation of all means by which he could perpetrate his bullshit. I mention this because this man’s case is far from rare or atypical in the world, and yet there has so far been no public outcry in favour of banning computers, cel phones, iPads, or the internet in general, on the grounds that if it just saves one woman from harassment, then it’s worth it. I may be going out on a limb here, but I suspect that even if this man, or another thousand like him, had successfully badgered anyone into ending their own life using the same tools, there would be no such outcry.

So, that brings me to an article I read this morning, and that I feel represents a shining example of why the problems that led to the recent attacks on school children are unlikely to result in any kind of meaningful response. Written by David Callaway for USA Today, it bears the title Kids died in Connecticut school shooting, but not in China attack. Column: Time to take a stand on gun control.

The article opens with these lines:

Several hours before Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 children and six adults Friday in an attack on a school in Newtown, Conn., a 36-year-old man a half-a-world away in China attacked 22 children at a primary school. None of the kids died. The reason? The man in China had only a knife.

Troubled or deranged attackers are not an American phenomenon. Guns are. Guns make the attacker more lethal.

Motherfucker.

Two men decided on the same day to take a weapon in hand and attack defenseless children. I will stand here before you right now and tell you that I don’t care what was in the hands of either – gun, knife, baseball bat, rock, or pointed stick. What was in the hand matters not a bit because the outcome was the result of what was in the mind.

Children were attacked using lethal weapons wielded by two unconnected men on opposite sides of the Earth, and the Great Truth Mr. Callaway sifted from it all was that the incident in China represents conclusive evidence that gun control needs to be revisited. That somehow, if the crazed among us were limited to cold steel, the world would be a kinder, gentler place. That stabbed and slashed children are somehow better off than dead ones. Mr. Callaway, you are too far from me and not worth the effort in any case, but with all due respect, and with the utmost sincerity, I would ask that you promptly invite your largest best male friend to kick you in the taint three times while he is simultaneously imagining planting a fence post in hard packed earth. As you bask in the afterglow of that, I want you to meditate on how much better off you are than if he’d shot you instead. Imagine that instead of doing it by invitation, he’d assaulted you for reasons of his own. I think you’ll come to realize it’s not the method that matters to the target, only the outcome and how the why might have been changed for the better.

If a month ago I had gathered up and disposed of every potentially hurtful item in my possession – every firearm, blade, and bludgeon – and employed all my eloquence to convince every one of my worthy Comrades to do the same, the world would not be a better or safer place, the events under discussion today would still have occurred, and bastards such as those who planned and perpetrated the late unpleasantness would still go abroad unhindered. Focus on the issues that caused this, if you can find them under the bullshit.