A crime wave is sweeping through America. While it's at it's worse in our big cities, it is stretching out across the country and splashing into the small towns and rural areas. Every day, ordinary citizens must take extra-ordinary risks just to get to work, go to school, or take a trip to the store. People don't dare use an ATM bank machine after dark, take a job in certain parts of town, nor let their children play in the front yard while the drug dealers drive up and down the street in front of the house. People who do an honest day's work stay locked up in their homes at night with the boob tube and we reward the elderly citizens by letting them live the last years of their life in terror of muggings.
You are responsible because you've given up the most valuable right you were born with, the right to defend yourselves against anyone who would use force to take what you own or to end your life. You allow the criminal to stalk the streets, to pick you as a victim, to rape you, rob you, beat you, and murder you without fear that doing so may cost him his own life nor even serious injury.
You let the criminal wreck havoc because you bought the pack of lies of the politicians, soft headed liberals, and even your teachers, priest and ministers. They all promised you that if you would pay your taxes, obey the law, and disarm yourself, then the government would protect you from the criminal. We have so much crime in America because every criminal knows that you won't defend yourself nor your community.
It was not always this way in America. This country was settled and built by people who took full responsibility for their own lives, who armed themselves, and carried those arms in public so that no one dared attack them. If the criminals formed gangs, the citizens formed bigger posses. For a long time in America, the man who decided it was easier to rob and pillage than work at a job quickly discovered that life could be a very short affair.
It doesn't work that way anymore because you stopped making it work that way.
The police don't guarantee that you won't be a victim of crime. They have never guaranteed that. They can't guarantee that. If you are the victim of a crime, you can't sue the police because they didn't do their job, even if you called them because you knew a criminal was coming after you.
Criminals will not commit a crime if they know a policeman is anywhere near by. But policemen can't be everywhere, and indeed we wouldn't want them to be everywhere. If we doubled and then doubled again the number of policemen walking our streets, they would have little impact on crime. Even in modern police states where the police closely watch all citizens, crime still happens, and it happens at rates similar to the crime rates in America.
If a criminal hurts you, the police will try to identify who the criminal is, and if they can prove he is the criminal after they catch him, they will send him to jail. Law enforcement is not about stopping or preventing crime, it's about catching criminals and putting them away so they can't commit any more crimes while they are held in jail. However, law enforcement has never been very efficient at catching criminals, it never will be. Criminals don't stop committing crime because they fear the police will stop them, they only stop committing crime if the victims won't let them get away with it.
When we suggest a return to armed citizen crime prevention, we are not suggesting that anyone attempt to take over the responsibilities of the law enforcement officer. We are not suggesting that you and your neighbors chase down criminals, try them in kangaroo courts, and inflict punishment on them for their crimes long after they crimes have been committed. That's the job of government law enforcement officers.
It's time that you start doing the job that has always been your responsibility, that you must prevent crime from happening to you by making it difficult or impossible for any criminal to commit a crime against you.
The only way to solve the problem of crime in America is for you, and other citizens like you, to make it extremely dangerous for anyone to commit a crime. We won't stop crime in the street until every criminal has good reason to believe that he is as likely to die at the hands of his next victim as his victim is of dying at his hands.
The criminal must not just fear his victim, he must fear his victim's neighbors as well. You don't have to solve this problem by yourself. Indeed, you can't solve this problem by yourself. You have to organize for self defense with your neighbors, and you have to take your organization to the streets and drive the criminals off them.
The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance, and that includes the cost of freedom from crime. But it's you who must be vigilant. You and your neighbors must let every potential criminal who enters your community know that you are vigilant, and that you are prepared to instantly deal with him when he tries to commit a crime. You have to do what Americans have done in the past whenever law enforcement broke down. You and your neighbors have to arm yourselves, you have to learn how to use those weapons in self defense, then you have to take to the streets in an organized fashion carrying your weapons, and you have to be prepared to use those weapons in your own self defense and in the defense of your family and your neighbors.
Self defense is still legal in America. In taking responsibility for your own defense, you will still want to cooperate and work with the police and the legal authorities. But whether you work with the police and local law enforcement, or without their blessing, the truth remains the same. If a criminal tries to rob you, rape you, or rub you out, the only person who will stop that crime before you become a victim is you. If you don't stop the crime, even if you are carrying a cellular phone and immediately dial 911, you will be a victim before the first policeman arrives, and the criminal will escape.
[NOTE: We have obtained permission from the author to republish this article on BuildFreedom.]
Copyright 1996--Mack Tanner. This original work may not be copied or distributed in any format without the specific consent of the author.
Disclaimer - Copyright - Contact
Online: buildfreedom.org - terrorcrat.com - mind-trek.com