Sipsey Street Irregulars: Baltimore riots highlight ‘progressive’ paradox on guns and police

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Baltimore riots highlight ‘progressive’ paradox on guns and police

Korean merchants, Los Angeles Riots, 1992. "I don't know if I am wrong or not. People say I am wrong. What am I going to do? Just sit down and die? I am going to protect my store and my family and myself."

As Baltimore erupts in violence, and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake promises a safe haven for destroyers (thwarted only by the occasional armed citizen protecting life and property where the police fear to tread), an inescapable observation strikes. High-profile shootings of black males continue to occur in cities where “progressive” Democrats run things. Yet in spite of that, they embrace “gun control,” that is, a system where police are the “only ones” trusted to keep and bear arms. . .

None of us can foresee the future and predictions are always dicey things to make, but if I had to venture one, I’d say U.S. cities are in for an interesting summer. If that’s the case, we shouldn't be surprised to see members of the productive sector, who in turn will soon come to understand the “authorities” are useless at providing protection, reapplying old lessons learned from when Korean merchants refused to stand by while their livelihoods went up in flames.

For background on the Korean grocers for those too young at the time to remember see: Pocket of Tension; A Target of Rioters, Koreatown Is Bitter, Armed and Determined

"I want to make it clear that we didn't open fire first," said David Joo, manager of the gun shop. "At that time, four police cars were there. Somebody started to shoot at us. The L.A.P.D. ran away in half a second. I never saw such a fast escape. I was pretty disappointed."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Ferguson had armed store owners protecting their strip mall shops, too. In Baltimore no armed store owners, but signs in front of shops stating "black owned business" seemed to offer protection from the thugs.; April 29, 2015 at 8:44 AM
Anonymous said...: Remember that many of the LA Koreatown defenders WERE arrested, and got off only because everybody swapped weapons often and nobody talked while apprehended.; April 29, 2015 at 9:20 AM
Anonymous said...: Gun Control?? In Baltimore guns are everywhere.; April 29, 2015 at 5:49 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Baltimore riots highlight ‘progressive’ paradox on guns and police

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