California mountain lions not the only dangerous predators
By Dave Workman
By Joe Waldron and Dave Workman
The other day, Mary Zeiss Stange-writing in USA-Today, revealed the downside of a law in California that stopped mountain lion hunting in the 1970s. She clearly advocates a resumption of cougar hunting.
Her article detailed increasing, and sometimes fatal, encounters between the big cats and humans.
She noted matter-of-factly, A key reason for reintroducing regulated hunting is that it would reinstill in predators a fear of humans.
Thats a fear they clearly have lost if theyve gotten to the point of seeing people as prey ...in the food chain.
The article was headlined, When animals stalk humans, hunters should shoot back.
Stange may not have intended it, but her piece dramatically explained why restrictive gun laws have put honest, law-abiding citizens at the mercy of predatory criminals who clearly do not know the meaning of the word.
That is, until they happen to be begging for mercy from some legally-armed citizen theyve just tried to rob, rape or murder.
Since California outlawed mountain lion hunts, people have been attacked and sometimes killed by the big felines.
To cougars, a defenseless human is nothing more than a source of protein. Were food. To remorseless violent thugs, an unarmed victim amounts to very little more.
Before those in the gun control fringe start wailing about right wing rhetoric, lets take a look at England, where handguns have been banned for many years, and Australia, where handgun possession is so regulated as to make it impossible, indeed illegal, to use one for self-defense.
In the years since England banned handguns, gun crime and even violent crime without the use of a firearm has skyrocketed. Australia has reported a similar rise in crime, and both nations point specifically to such brazen crimes as home invasions when the occupants are known to be present.
In England last year, people were being murdered for their cell phones.
You see, predators, whether they have four legs or only two, are all pretty much alike. They see an opportunity and take advantage of it.
A California mountain lion may want only an easy meal, where a serial rapist or killer anywhere, for example, may want to sexually abuse, torture and murder their victims.
Is one fate any less cruel than the other? Who among us would not resist?
That brings us around to the increasing support for concealed carry laws, and so-called reciprocity or blanket recognition statutes.
These laws allow private citizens to arm themselves against violent criminal attack, and in many cases, mandate that a concealed carry license issued in one state be recognized by another.
California tightly restricts legal handgun carry, which may explain why two female joggers were killed by cougars in the mid-1990s, and why so many Californians are daily victimized by fearless outlaws.
Incredibly, foes of these laws have been as shrill in their opposition as were the animal rights fanatics when Californians tried to pass an initiative to restore cougar hunting in 1996.
Almost as if working from a playbook, opponents of personal protection have from one state to another offered hysterical rants about how allowing citizens to go armed would result in gunfights at traffic lights, in taverns, between neighbors, at churches or synagogues, in shopping malls and in public schools.
None of that has happened. In fact, quite the opposite has been the pattern.
Violent crime rates have typically declined where concealed carry laws are in effect.
Many in law enforcement have confessed that their initial opposition was not merely wrong, but wrong-headed, and have ultimately admitted the laws work.
Nobody advocates biological genocide against mountain lions, and anti-hunters know it. They simply cannot stand to have society tell them they are wrong.
Likewise, nobody advocates cold-blooded killing of street thugs, but those who fight so aggressively to keep concealed carry laws off the books may just as well admit that they are advocates for criminal recidivism.
Essentially, by fighting so hard to prevent honest citizens from having the means to defend themselves, concealed carry opponents are protecting criminals, providing them a relatively risk free working environment.
Like the anti-hunters, these anti-self-defense extremists despise, above all else, being proven wrong.
Like California mountain lions, two-legged predators need to know that their intended prey will fight back. Advocating and maintaining an environment in which people are nothing more than prey is morally reprehensible.
Joe Waldron is executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Dave Workman is senior editor of Gun Week, a publication of the Second Amendment Foundation.
