A Note To Gen Z From An Old Fart

 Ranjit Singh tells those students asking for more gun control Dear Gen Z: Get armed, get trained, start carrying, because you are your own first responders. I get it, you are students, and you haven't been given much in the way of history, or civics. You have been protected by...what? You don't know but you ascribe it to "society." You have bought the Koolaid that the police and fire departments are the "first responders." So, Singh is throwing ice cold water on all that and on you.

Well, wake up! Nobody is coming to save you. It is not that the police and don't want to save you, but that they really can't. It is not their jobs.  They are the ones who draw the chalk outlines and investigate the crime after the fact.  They are not your bodyguards, and frankly you don't want them to be.

Here is the truth: if a criminal wants a gun to commit a crime, he will get one. It doesn't matter if guns are not allowed in your "safe zones."  It doesn't matter if guns are banned entirely. The cartels smuggle fentanyl and other drugs into the country, and they can smuggle a few guns too, even full auto assault rifles.  So there will always be guns. Besides, zip guns (I won't show you, but you can look it up on the internet) can easily be fashioned from things you buy at the hardware store. Cartridges can easily be manufactured as well.

When it comes to guns, there is a generational gap as expected. In the wake of the murder of a UNC professor that resulted in a lockdown, there were the usual demands for gun control and even some theatrics from UNC students, especially the editors of the UNC student newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel. A couple of weeks later, there was an unrelated brandishing incident on campus involving a housekeeper that resulted in another lockdown. There were even more histrionic demands for gun control after that.

Some of that is understandable, but what doesn’t compute is the demand for gun control that has repeatedly proven to be ineffective. Gen Z should look at the recent past and see the numerous failures, from Orlando in which the assailant had been interviewed three times by the FBI, the Charleston massacre in which the FBI dropped the ball on the attacker’s background check, Sutherland Springs in which the US Air Force failed to submit a disqualifying domestic violence record to NICS, the Parkland attacker who could have been stopped on several occasions, the Buffalo white supremacist, or the countless incidents of criminals, likely including the UNC murderer, acquiring guns illegally through theft, straw purchases, or other circumvention or willful violation of the law.

When — not if — a criminal or a maniac acquires a gun and proceeds to commit a crime, what would you like to do? Be a sitting duck, locked down in a room with your classmates like fish in a barrel, hoping that the attacker doesn’t breach the door before the police find him? Or would you like to have a chance to fight back, whatever the odds of your success maybe?

So, I am just an old man, and of course, you've got it all figured out. But take it from someone who is old enough to remember, and before I become old enough to forget, carrying a gun gives you options in those extreme cases. Your kitchen has a fire extingusher, right? You have insurance for your car, your health, your home or apartment, right? Carrying a gun is the same thing. You should also carry a knife and a flashlight. Because you never know, and you want to have options. Besides, carrying a gun is a civic duty, like voting.  You will want it someday, believe me.  Now I'll shut up.