A pleasant senior citizen couple living out the remainder of their golden years in a quiet, bucolic place.

A madman.

Bad combination. See the link below, sent to me this morning by a nationally respected police chief.

http://www.king5.com/news/Elderly-Humptulips-man-was-shot-with-crossbow-wife-attacked-with-axe-133395258.html

I am reminded of the two teen thrill killers who conned their way into the home of a beloved couple in Hanover, New Hampshire some years ago. Google “Zantop Murders.” The little fiends butchered that good man and woman like Jack the Ripper.

Not long before the atrocity, the same pair had surrounded a home in nearby Vermont, cut the power lines, and attempted the same thing. This time, though, they were met by a dad who protected his kids with a Glock drawn from his ever-present holster, and fled like the cowards they were.

There is, I submit, a lesson in this.

It’s why I carry a handgun at all times when on my own rural property. When a sudden, unprovoked attack comes, there won’t be time to run to the gun safe.

Condolences to the family and friends of the deceased. May others learn from their sacrifice, that it may not be repeated.

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I joke with people that if carrying an iPhone makes you a Yuppie, I am exempt because my iPhone lives in an armored MagPul carrier, and therefore, I am at worst a “Combat Yuppie.”
Ya know, it isn’t a joke anymore.
For decades, I’ve taught Good Guys how to do building searches. Since they came out with pocket phones that take pictures, I’ve included in the curriculum the tactic of putting your phone on photo mode, reaching it out around your cover when you’re doing the search, and simply taking a picture.  The camera will instantly show you an image of what’s visible from its perspective, without you having to stick your head out into the field of possible opposing gunfire to see it with your own eyes, and maybe get your head blown off for doing so.
And, for some time, we’ve had iPhone apps for calculating bullet drop at distances: iSniper.
It turns out that our innovative young soldiers and Marines have found more ingenious applications for their smart phones: maps, direct communications on the battlefield, and more. The military establishment had caught up with what our sharp young techno-warriors have often already figured out for themselves, as seen here: http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20111005.aspx
If memory serves, it was Descartes who said, “I think, therefore I am.”  Perhaps the new motto for those in mortal conflict may be, “iFight, therefore iPhone.”
Most of you reading this are more techno-literate than I am.  Please share here any tips you have for using this technology to fight and reconnoiter, when the stakes on the table are the lives of the Good Guys and Gals.

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On 9/11/11, my old friend Tom Gresham dedicated his radio show “Gun Talk” to the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attack on our country. He brought in many of us to comment. I made my contribution from a cell phone at the Harrisburg Hunters & Anglers Club, where I was teaching, and mentioned the fact that this region had just been hit with what the newspapers were calling a “hundred year flood,” and “The Great Flood of 2011.”

It was a microcosm of the spirit that pervaded America in general and the city of New York in particular after the atrocity of a decade before.  People working together and helping each other. As in the incident of ten years ago, transportation had been shut down. Some of the students couldn’t make it to the class; some roads into Harrisburg were closed by the flood.  Flying in from the east coast, I’d been stranded in Philadelphia during the massive rainstorms that caused the flood, and had to rent one of the last cars available at the airport to drive to Harrisburg through solid downpour.

The class still went on, as life went on after 9/11/01.  Thousands of people had to be evacuated as the Susquehanna River rose.  Countless homes were ruined.  There were injuries and deaths. The inconvenience most of us suffered was, by comparison, insignificant.

Yet, coming at the time of the somber anniversary of The Atrocity, it showed that the resilience of American spirit was alive and well.  People helping people…helping neighbors, helping strangers.

We have among us senior citizens who remember The Great Depression.  Who remember World War II, from which a generation returned from the horrors of man’s inhumanity to man to create “golden years” of peace, prosperity, and productivity.

Their spirit still lives, and it’s something of which all of us in this great nation can be proud.

 The threat of terrorism still hangs over our nation, as seen in this headline in the days before the anniversary of 9/11…

…and when the flood devastated the area along the Susquehanna, neighbors helped neighbors and even strangers, in the best American tradition…

 …below is the Harrisburg Hunters and Anglers range where  I was teaching, the high water on the trap range visible beforehand and the flooded practical pistol range in the background behind the trees. Volunteers are already repairing it.

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After the last entry on the atrocity in Norway, the saying “An armed society is a polite society” got kicked around a bit by the commentators here.

The phrase comes from Robert Heinlein, popularized by Col. Jeff Cooper, and means that people don’t generally do atrocious things to folks who have the power to kill them. I was reminded of this rather recently upon a visit to Memphis to teach for my old friend Tom Givens, both a friend and a student of the late Col. Cooper. Tom was the founder, and remains the host, of the annual Polite Society event, named after you-know-what. This is a combination training seminar and practical shooting match, shared by armed citizens, cops, and soldiers alike. Info is available at www.rangemaster.com.  I’ve gone to the last three Polite Society gatherings in a row, and found them both educational and enjoyable.

Memphis is one of the most violent-crime-prone cities in the nation. Tom is the most famous firearms instructor in the city, and something close to sixty of his graduates have been in gunfights thus far. The only ones who haven’t won their shootouts were the slim few who weren’t armed when trouble came looking for them. The overwhelming majority of those who attacked them are no longer violently impolite, though many of them are rather, uh, stiff.

Upon arrival in Memphis, the Evil Princess and I decided to stock up on adult beverages (on the theory that a mellow society is a fun society). The liquor store we picked at random had a sign in the window advertising to potential armed robbers that all employees were armed.

Discussion with staff determined the fact that no armed robber had yet tried to hit the place.  When ALL the staff can shoot back, even the dimmest of primordial criminal brains can figure out they can’t kill every resisting “victim” before they themselves get blown away.

Yeah, I know: “Correlation is not causation.”  At the same time, logic is logic and biology is biology, and we can’t help but notice that the creatures with fangs and claws don’t hunt each other for their daily meat.  There is, I respectfully submit, a lesson in that…

In polite societies, fair warning is given…see arrow.

This writer is comfortable doing business with brother Rick, who carries a Beretta Cougar .40 for the protection of his customers, his coworkers, and of course, himself. 

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History repeats itself. Monster commits mass murder in the most cowardly ways. Bomb in building, because there might have been armed police and security nearby if he had tried to kill the innocent one on one. THEN goes to an island where he knows there are no armed police OR armed citizens, and shoots helpless young people like the proverbial fish in a barrel…and surrenders as soon as armed protectors arrive, even though they’re too late to stop the horror.

Proving once again that “gun free zones” are places where only those who laugh at the law will be armed…”zones” that might better be called hunting preserves for psychopathic killers.

This never would have happened in Israel. After the Maalot Massacre of schoolchildren decades ago, Israel adopted a program wherein volunteer school personnel and adult family members of students were trained by the civil guard, and placed – discreetly armed with concealed 9mm pistols – in the schools and among the chaperones of off-campus youth activities.  Every subsequent attempt by terrorists to mass-murder children was cut short by these armed citizens.  Mass murders at schools ceased to be the terrorist strategy of choice in Israel. The same protective strategy has been employed in Peru and in the Philippines.

History shows us that evil people with weapons can only be stopped from murdering the innocent by good people with weapons.  We saw it in macrocosm in World War II. We see it in microcosm every time an armed citizen beats and armed criminal at his own game.

And, had there been even ONE armed protector on that helpless little island, we might have seen it in Norway last Friday, and the lives of countless innocent victims might have been saved.

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