I have lived here in Lafayette, Louisiana for the past 10 years and have to say it has, in the past few years, become more violent, but I never really thought I would see last night’s events happen here. If anyone hasn’t heard yet, there was a tragedy in our Southern Louisiana town of Lafayette, Louisiana on June 23, Thursday night, when a lone gunman walked into a local movie theater and after 20 minutes, opened fire on unsuspecting patrons for no apparent reason, leaving 3 people dead and 9 injured. What on earth could make a person justify such actions to themselves as well as anyone else? Was it Terrorism, was it insanity or was it just pure evil spawned by this corrupt world we are now living in? Because the killer took his own life, we may never know the real answer to that question.
Like most of you I read the Local, State and National news every day, and I am not blind to what is going on in the world today. Also like you, I prayed daily that it would never come to the town I live in, but it has. What did alarm me is that there was apparently not a single armed person in the building that could shoot back at this evil and maybe even have saved some lives. Theaters and many other businesses state flatly that they do not allow guns in their place of business, leaving their patrons completely defenseless in the event of an attack. They try to say they are doing it to protect their patrons, yet they provide no armed security to their customer to protect them. So how is this protecting their patrons? The simple answer to that is that they are not. They are actually putting their patrons at an increased risk of attack because they are defenseless. How in any way can this appear to be the right thing to do for their customers? Oh yes, I have heard the argument that guns make some of their customers nervous so they are doing it for them. I’m sorry but that excuse just doesn’t hold water anymore. Placing the rest of your patrons at risk of being killed just to satisfy a hand full of people with a misguided sense of reality is no justification for doing it.
This is not 1956 and things have changed. No longer can you sleep with your door to your house unlocked or give a complete stranger a ride without putting yourself at great risk of losing your life. Terror has come to America and it must be addressed in a reasonable manner by allowing people to protect their very lives that these people want to take away. We must be allowed to protect not only our own lives, but the lives of those around us should the need arise. We can no longer bury our heads in the sand and just let it ride, but rather speak out about the need for self-protection from deadly force. You might say that if something happens then you just need to call 911 and the police will take care of it. As a former Deputy Sheriff here in Louisiana, I can tell you that the police cannot always save you and that it is up to you to save yourself in the case of a threat using deadly force. That phone will not do you any good against a person with a gun. Law enforcement can only do something after the facts and if you are dead then it is not going to help you at all. It is up to you to protect yourself by having a way to defend yourself from the use of a deadly weapon against you.
Concealed carry permits can be very costly and complicated to get, they can also take a while to be approved. I can tell you right now that as a result of these shootings here in Lafayette, Louisiana that the state will be flooded with applications for concealed carry for the rest of the year, if not longer. In the meantime, large corporations will not provide armed security and will still require their patrons to be unarmed. They will instead, leave them at the mercy of other psychopaths and terrorists, while all the time trying to claim the moral high ground. These corporations need to be held just as accountable as the murderers that commit the crimes, because they are doing nothing to protect their customers from this evil. In fact, they have done the complete opposite and made them completely defenseless in the wake of the ongoing violence. Fewer guns are not the answer!
So what is the solution you may ask? We do not need fewer guns, but rather more guns and here is why. How likely would you be to get into an argument with a person that might be armed? I dare say they you would think twice before doing it! There is a saying that says: “A well-armed society is a polite society.” And I tend to agree with that philosophy. Psychos and Terrorist are cowards and always look for defenseless victims to attack. If the majority of people are no longer defenseless then you take away their targets of choice. In doing this, you reduce the number of opportunities that they have to attack people. As a Deputy sheriff, it was amazing to me to realize just how many criminals rely on the fact that people do not want to get involved. People are afraid to say anything because they know that law enforcement cannot protect them. This is a sad fact in our society today and a testament of just how far off of the beaten path we have gone. When people are not afraid of criminals because they know that they can defend themselves, then Criminals will be less likely to act.
Constitutional Carry is (I think) the solution to the issue that faces us today. It allows citizens to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Without all of the paperwork and expense, people would more likely to take the dusty handguns out of their closets and carry them with them just in case. Some of you may be thinking “if more people carry guns, then won’t there be more cases of people using them in an irresponsible way to coerce or intimidate others? ” Actually, statistics show that just the opposite is true. States with more guns ad weaker gun laws have fewer gun related crimes than states with stricter gun laws. In fact the cities and states with the highest gun related crime rates are actually the states with the strictest gun laws on the books. Just look at Chicago for example. More guns, not fewer guns, are the solution and Constitutional carry is the answer. The senseless violence must be stopped and it is up to us to force the government to make the changes needed to allow us to protect ourselves in this new day and age, when evil is attacking us from all sides. Hopefully, if we do that then maybe we can prevent anymore incidents like the theater killings that happened in Lafayette from happening anywhere else.
The Sargent!
Let me also add that I do think that a simple course on gun safety and the rules for using deadly force should be required for anyone who wishers to carry a concealed weapon. Just something that shows that they are aware of the laws and how to use their weapon safely.