A sombering article about what happens when a government stops recognizing the individual rights of its citizens. Written by Jeff Snyder by way of LewRockwell.com Thanks to Eric for the link.

Plastic People

by Jeff Snyder
by Jeff Snyder

‘plas•tic’: . . . 5: capable of being deformed continuously and permanently in any direction without rupture” ~ mirriam.webster.com

Pierre Lemieux, a French Canadian, economist, professor, author, libertarian thorn in the flesh of the Canadian Leviathan, and a friend, has become a felon. Pierre refused to answer one of the questions on his application to renew his firearms license, and the licensing center refused to renew his license. He now faces the prospect of 10 years in prison for keeping firearms without a license.

I will tell you some of his story. At this stage you may be thinking that it’s going to be about gun control but, rest assured, it’s not. Too many see trees, only trees, everywhere they look, and never a forest. Every abuse, every injustice is singular, isolate, one more thing to be addressed, corrected or reformed – unfortunate, deplorable really, but circumscribed, in an arena separate from the rest of life, someone else’s problem, and someone else’s cause.

No, Pierre’s story is about what it means to be ruled, what it means to need permission from the state. And if you stop looking at trees and see the forest, then Pierre’s refusal to follow orders may pose a question for you: How far will you accommodate the state before you resist? Is there some limit to your ability to mold yourself to the state’s designs? At what point will the state cross a line within you, when what you are ordered to do is more than you will accept or bear, when you will say, “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise”?

Or does no such line exist? Are you that final object of all the state’s labors, that Quintessential Being that the state expects, demands and needs you to be: a plastic person?

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In 1995 Canada passed an “Act Respecting Firearms and Other Weapons,” generally referred to simply as the “Firearms Act” or by its original bill number, C-68. At the time, Canada already had handgun registration. The Firearms Act created a long gun registry and a new firearm licensing authority, and required citizens to possess licenses to own firearms. The licenses are good for five years. Pierre registered his firearms, and submitted his first application for a firearms license in 1996, which was granted, his first application for renewal in 2001, which was granted, and his second request for renewal in 2007, which was denied.

Pierre believes that Canadians have the right to own firearms without government approval. In fact, he has written extensively on the subject to educate his fellow Canadians and to peaceably restore respect for this right. Nevertheless, like most people, Pierre complied with the registration and licensing scheme in order to keep what he loves and to live a “quiet life.” Unfortunately, despite his best efforts to comply, Pierre ran into his own personal limit with an impertinence in the license application that he simply could not abide, viz., question 6(d) of the license application, which asks:

“During the past two (2) years, have you experienced a divorce, a separation, a breakdown of a significant relationship, job loss or bankruptcy?”

The instructions to the application state that all personal history questions must be answered, and that “[I]f you answer YES to any of the questions . . . you MUST provide details on a second page. . . . If details are not provided, your application cannot be processed. A YES answer does not mean your application will be refused but it may lead to further examination.”

In each of 1996, 2001 and 2007, Pierre, waging what he describes as “a dignity battle” against the law, refused to answer this question, instead responding that “My love affairs are none of your business / Ça ne vous regarde pas.” In 2007, Pierre took the additional step of sending, by registered mail, a copy of his application, a cover letter and three pages of his book, Confessions d’un coureur des bois hors-la-loi, which chronicles his resistance against Canadian gun control laws, to the Prime Minister of Canada.

Two months after his license expired, having heard nothing from the licensing center, Pierre made a freedom of information request to find out the status of his application. Eventually, he received word that his license renewal was denied by reason of his failure to answer question 6(d). Pierre now owns firearms – registered firearms – in violation of the law, a crime punishable by 10 years in prison. On the webpage where he chronicles his resistance to the Canadian license law, Pierre wonders: ” Will I be the first Canadian to be jailed for refusing to tell the state about his love life? Not the last one, I fear.”

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If an activity is licensed by the state, then it is a privilege conferred and controlled by the state, and not a right. The conditions on which the privilege is conferred are matters of legislative or administrative grace; the person may not lawfully engage in the activity and is not affirmatively protected from state incursion simply by reason of being a person, as would be the case with an “individual right.” The Firearms Act empowered an agency with a mandate to create and administer a licensing program and vested very broad powers in the agency to establish the particulars of the program. The Act clearly establishes that ownership of firearms in Canada is a privilege conferred only upon those deemed worthy by satisfaction of conditions determined by the licensing authority.

Stop and consider for a moment this by method of “legislation.” The founding “law” simply directs a combined legislative/judicial/executive agency to create and enforce a program without bothering to prescribe the contents of the program or even any significant limits on the exercise of that “authority.” Instead, it vests the agency with very broad discretion to define and administer the program. This form of legislation is, historically, a favorite with advocates of gun control, but it is by no means atypical of modern law-making, and is often used to control all sorts of activities. For example, the act establishing the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States is in large part of this nature, being essentially a mandate to the agency to go forth and create clean air and water.

Consider what this type of “legislation” says about how truly, deeply, worried your “representatives” are about your lives. They cannot be troubled to precisely define the contents of the “laws” to which you will be subject, to define or circumscribe the conditions that may ultimately be imposed upon you or resultant burdens upon you and, therefore, do not limit how impertinent, overreaching or arbitrary they may become. Instead, the laws to which you will be subject largely or in significant part are devised by men and women who are not subject even to the minimum accountability of having to be re-elected to maintain office, who are protected from removal from office by civil service laws and who will never, ever be accountable to the innumerable citizens they harm for the harebrained regulations they impose. The legislators don’t have to make any of the difficult decisions, won’t be blamed for agency regulations that outrage the electorate, and it’s just fine with them if you have to incur significant costs in time, money and energy to bring actions in the courts to overturn the agency’s edicts, or to lobby the legislators to bring their administrative dogs to heel. There’s certainly no problem with more lobbying, it means more political contributions! The legislators dodge responsibility and accountability to the electorate, and position themselves as saviors who can remedy the abuses of the administrative agencies. An ideal system, really!

For reasons known only to it, the Canadian licensing bureau decided that it needs to know details about each applicant’s love life, job losses, and bankruptcies in order to determine whether to issue a firearms license. Doubtless many of us are dulled, if not numb, to the presumptions of wisdom and competence, and intrusiveness, of government agencies, but consider the god-like heights that the Canadian firearms licensing bureau claims as its own. The air is indeed rare there! It is going to make decisions whether to grant or deny a firearms license based on its evaluation of your love woes, job loss or bankruptcy!

“Provide details,” it commands. Assuming you can get past the monumental presumptuousness that demands that you submit, as a matter of official record, intimate details about your life to be mulled over by some police official, really, how does one respond to that? What level of detail, exactly, are they demanding? Would “My wife and I were divorced six months ago” be sufficient? Or is one required to add some salient, hopefully spicy details? “My God! For a while there, it was almost like “War of the Roses!” I refused to leave the house! She smashed some of my things and in retaliation I uprooted her beloved rose bushes! The tears! The screaming fits of rage! It was a complete nightmare! Now it’s over and, fortunately for all concerned, we live in completely different provinces!” Or does one add page after page of Henry James-like psychological detail of every gesture, facial expression and step of the breakup, the job loss, the bankruptcy?

Assuming one provides sufficient details, the agents who process the applications will then decide what significance these personal facts have for firearms ownership. This is pretty impressive! Consider that state-licensed psychiatrists, actual medical doctors who have specialized in the scientific study of mental health, cannot reliably predict, do not even claim to be able to predict, who is and is not going to commit an act of violence. Yet fear not and be ye amazed! The intrepid agents of the licensing bureau can and will determine who among those recently wounded in love, employment or credit relationships may safely own a firearm, doubtless relying upon gut instincts finely-honed through years of processing applications!

Maybe the licensing bureau isn’t going to use psychological profiling. Maybe, instead, the details it needs are the names and phone numbers of your ex-lover, your ex-boss and the creditors who lost a bundle when you filed for bankruptcy. And maybe the bureau will then contact them and make inquiries. “Hello. This is Officer Smith from the Firearms Licensing Bureau. Your [choose one] [ex-lover], [former employee] [former debtor] is asking us to renew his firearms license so that he can continue to own firearms for the next five years. Are you okay with that? Does that give you any cause for concern?” And then the bureau can decide whether to issue a license based on what these people say about you. Not quite a judicial determination of the existence of a crime, you understand, with an actual crime charged, penalties for perjury, the opportunity to confront and cross-examine your accusers and rules about what is and isn’t admissible evidence, but hey! Good enough for administrative agencies, which make their own rules and act as legislature, judge and enforcer.

Who knows how the licensing bureau will evaluate this information? They want it, and they will act upon it, and that is all the applicant needs to know. The activity for which the supplicant need a license is a privilege conferred by the state and, therefore, at bottom rests on nothing more than meeting their conditions, i.e., on pleasing the authorities, who most assuredly will do as they please.

This is what it is to be ruled, for your activities to be privileges conferred by the state, for the conditions of your life to be determined based on some legislator’s or administrator’s “good ideas” for governance. This is what it is to have your life controlled by another who has the power to fine you and throw you in jail for failing to comply with his conditions.

This is why American gun owners vehemently oppose registration of guns and licensure of firearms ownership. It doesn’t matter what the law says or whether it’s a “good idea” or what its supposed socially-worthwhile, beneficially-motivated “intent” is. It’s how the law’s power is wielded that determines the conditions of your life. This is why, when the NRA and gun owners supported “shall issue” concealed carry licensing laws, currently in place in 37 states, the laws were carefully crafted to specify precisely the procedures to be followed, to enumerate the only conditions that could be imposed, all of which were objectively determinable and none of which depended upon the exercise of agency discretion, and to impose time and cost limits for processing, so that, upon satisfaction of strictly objectively verifiable criteria, the licensing authority was required to issue the permit. This is why American gun owners demanded that state legislatures pass these new laws and repeal the old licensing laws that were enacted in the early 20^th Century, laws like the Sullivan Act, which still governs the residents of New York City. While appearing on the surface to be even-handed, those older statutes simply conferred broad, nebulous discretion on a licensing authority, with the result that they have been and, where still in effect, are, administered in a way to insure that only the “right” sort of people obtain permits. In New York City, this means that men like Donald Trump and Howard Stern get carry permits, but not the multitudes whose lives just aren’t important enough to warrant the privilege of self-protection. (For a more extensive discussion of the arbitrary nature of discretionary licensing statutes, see this policy analysis of “shall issue” concealed carry laws.)

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While Pierre is now a felon because of his nation’s gun control laws, never forget that this is how he got in trouble with the state: He acted on the basis that there are some details about his life, important to him, that are his affair and his alone.

No one who believes he has the right to control you, who believes, further, that he has the right to engineer a society according to his ideas and plans, will ever accept this. It is an affront to his arrogance, to his arrogation of power to control you as he deems fit. To have “lawful authority” – really, political power – is precisely to have a free hand to use coercion to suit your purpose, without necessity of justification. If you are simply carrying out a prescribed course, if there is no discretionary element to your “authority” that permits you to shape it and use it to your purpose, it is not power but mere processing and ministration: you are a mere servant, a functionary, a minion. In brief, you are you: a servant and whatever government requires you to be, and manifestly not a king, a sovereign, a president, a semi-divine one, a colossus bestriding the earth.

Anyone who believes they have the right to control you ultimately must act ruthlessly, because a person does not control another unless, in the absence of willing consent or consent obtained through misrepresentation or fraud, he will compel the other to act as he commands. Ask yourself why a refusal to answer a single question about your love life is accompanied by a threat of, and merits, 10 years in prison. The failure to answer this question inflicts no actual harm on any citizen. The punishment cannot, therefore, be for harm the refusal has caused any specific victim or “society” at large. No, the injured party here is the state itself. The refusal to answer the state’s question is an affront to the state’s “authority,” and its claims to operate, and manage society, as it sees fit. The real “crime” is that the subject has failed to follow the state’s orders. He has failed to submit to and participate in the state’s project to control or engineer society in accordance with the state’s plans. Possibly, for example, the licensing bureau’s motivation for asking about love woes, job losses and bankruptcies is that it hopes to be able to prevent some future crimes (with guns, at least) based on certain facts that the licensing bureau believes have some degree of predictive value for determining who will and won’t commit crimes. That is, it may be implementing a general policy directive to shape an aggregate outcome (a reduction in crime) based on the fact that a certain small percentage of ex-lovers, ex-employees and bankrupts will commit armed violence against their former lovers, former employers or creditors. In refusing to answer the question, then, the applicant thwarts the state’s plans and rebukes the state’s claim to an authority to control or engineer society in accordance with its purpose. The “crime” is not a personal crime, like murder, robbery or pollution of the air or water, but a political crime. The essence of the crime is lèse majesté. The “criminal” has refused to obey the state’s fiat, and in so doing has committed an intolerable affront to the state’s claim to an absolute “authority.” He has shown his willingness to keep and act upon his own counsel and not follow orders. The state cannot let that stand and continue to be a state. It is the ultimate crime, and that it is why it is dealt with ruthlessly, meriting the same punishment that Solzhenitsyn informed us that Stalin’s political prisoners in the Gulag received for rebukes to authority: a tenner. Evidently, like minds, each claiming a right to control and engineer both man and society, perceive like threats, and respond with a like “solution.”

In his letter to the Prime Minister, Pierre notes that he is ashamed that he has not joined the Canadian heroes who are resisting the Firearms Act by refusing to register their guns or apply for licenses. These peaceful, otherwise law-abiding men and women occasionally hold open protests in front of government buildings daring the authorities to arrest them and throw them all in jail for ten years. According to information obtained by Pierre under a freedom of information request, as of February 2009, the Royal Mounted Canadian Police estimate that there were 185,925 owners of long guns alone who are not in compliance with the firearms registration and license laws.

We know now that Pierre need not have been ashamed, for it is clear that he is no less heroic. The state pushes and pushes; too much is never enough. It demands nothing less than absolute, complete control over an avidly obedient populace. To the state, there is no difference between 99% compliance and zero compliance. If there is one thing, one thing alone that it commands that you are unwilling to do for it, you have rebuked its authority and you are a threat, and the state will take you down. Pierre tried to comply for the sake of an undisturbed, peaceful life, but there was one thing the state demanded that he was not willing to do. There is something within him, some inherent dignity, he is not willing to relinquish or alter to suit the bastards. And so he refused to act as he was commanded to act, he refused to be a plastic person, forever conforming himself to the shapes devised for him by men and women with delusions of grandeur and whose tools for creating utopia are tasers, guns, fines and prison. And for that he may get ten years in jail.

So this is how it is. If you can labor “within the system” forever to obtain the reform that will correct this abuse, and that one, and each and every other abuse that arises, now and forever; if you can labor forever to exchange your current masters for better ones, a better Congressperson, a better Senator, a better President; if, in short, your idea of “citizenship” or “activism” is playing whack-a-mole with those lording it over you; if you can wait forever for the permission that you need to live life peaceably as you envision it; if you can march forward uplifted on Hope and Change; if you can find reasons and make excuses forever why Change cannot be achieved fully, just yet; if, in short, nothing can cause you to call into question the fundamental belief that it is good and proper for some people to have a “right” to control your life and the rest of society, using, as their tools, lying, fraud, manipulation, threats, grants of legal monopolies, protection and immunities, payoffs (“subsidies”), confiscation, fines, tasers, guns and jail; and if, when their commands are finally issued directly to you and you are confronted with tasers, guns, fines and jail, everything about you is conformable, malleable; if at no point will you ever openly refuse to comply with their plans when you are ordered to do so; then relax, the state is not coming for you. You are a plastic person, deforming yourself to fit into the shape that the state designs for you. You are no threat and you can be controlled because there is no one there to offer any resistance.

But if there is some peaceful activity you care about deeply, if you invest your life in it and the state should seek to control this in a way that that truly hurts you, then you will collide with the state, and what you love will be used against you. That is how the state operates. That is how it implements its self-described mission of “protecting” and “caring” for you. And if, because of this thing you love, you have some limit, some thing or aspect of yourself you will not give up or alter, then you are a threat, then you are an affront and rebuke to your government’s assumption of complete control. You have demonstrated that you will not dance to the state’s tune, that you are an individual and not a cog in the state’s machine, and Pierre’s story may someday also be your story.

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Pierre has filed a motion of appeal before the Québec provincial court, asking that the license refusal be quashed and apologies issued. He also argues that the Firearms Act and related criminal code provisions are unconstitutional, and that he does not need any license to exercise his traditional liberty to possess firearms. The court date has been set for May 26 and 27, 2009, in room 207 of the Mont-Laurier Courthouse, Québec, starting at 9:30 a.m. each morning. Richard A. Fritze, an Alberta lawyer and well-known defender of Canadian firearms owners and their rights, is representing Pierre pro bono. In addition, several expert witnesses will testify on behalf of Pierre’s position, including Joyce Malcolm, author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origin of an Anglo-American Right, Colin Greenwood, a now retired senior English police officer who authored a landmark work on the history of England’s gun control laws and their failure to reduce violent crime, and Professor Gary Mauser, who co-authored an article in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy with Don Kates titled, “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?

These experts have generously agreed to assist Pierre for only the cost of their travel and accommodations, but Pierre needs funds to pay for what will most likely be a long and difficult battle. Please consider supporting him. If you wish to assist Pierre’s fight by donating, please contact Paul Rogan, publisher of Canadian Access to Firearms, who is acting as a pro bono fund-raiser. Alternatively, The Canadian Constitution Foundation has established a “Pierre Lemieux Legal Fund.” to provide funds to support Pierre’s case and you may instead donate earmarked funds to the CCF. Mr. Rogan can provide details on how to make your contribution through CCF.

May 6, 2009

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards – Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire. Read this interview with him.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Jeff Snyder Archives

Obama says he’s not coming after our guns? Give me a break! An article by Brian Darling by way of HumanEvents.com.

Legal Advisor Nominee Advocates Global Gun Control
by Brian Darling
05/04/2009

Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the nomination of Harold Koh, a former Dean of the Yale Law School, to be Legal Advisor to the State Department. One of the many concerns with Koh is his belief that international organizations should be empowered to regulate the Second Amendment right to own a firearm.

On April 2, 2002, Koh gave a speech to the Fordham University School of Law titled “A World Drowning in Guns” where he mapped out his vision of global gun control. Koh advocated an international “marking and tracing regime.” He complained that “the United States is now the major supplier of small arms in the world, yet the United States and its allies do not trace their newly manufactured weapons in any consistent way.” Koh advocated a U.N.-governed regime to force the U.S. “to submit information about their small arms production.”

Koh supports the idea that the U.N. should be granted the power “to standardize national laws and procedures with member states of regional organizations.” Koh feels that U.S. should “establish a national firearms control system and a register of manufacturers, traders, importers and exporters” of guns to comply with international obligations. This regulatory regime would allow U.N. members such as Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran to have a say in what type of gun regulations are imposed on American citizens.

Taken to their logical conclusion, Koh’s ideas could lead to a national database of all firearm owners, as well as the use of international law to force the U.S. to pass laws to find out who owns guns. All who care about freedom should read his speech (pdf). Senators need to think long and hard about whether Koh’s extreme views on international gun control are appropriate for America. [Read More...]

This is why Americans should be armed. Do you think it is an accident that these guys set up shop in California, where they know that an average person they come across has no chance of being armed and able to mount an adequate defense?

The founders of our country saw the need of a well regulated, and well armed militia who was able to defend themselves and their country against impending threats. If defending yourself against illegal aliens, who are growing illegal drugs, and threatening Americans citizens on public lands, isn’t what they had in mind, then I have know idea.

When I commented on the original site that this was “One more reason to always be armed,” a guy named Joe responded:

“Yeah, your single handgun/rifle is going to be real useful against pot farmers with “five high powered rifles, equipped with rifle scopes and numerous rounds of ammunition” — not to mention greater numbers and a familiarity with the area.

“Good way to get yourself shot, more like.”

Since they moderated my reply (I guess I was too extreme for them) I give the basics of it here. Yes, my “single handgun/rifle is going to be real useful against pot farmers with “five high powered rifles, equipped with rifle scopes and numerous rounds of ammunition.” In fact, that sounds a lot like what I carry in my truck, and my camper.

The fact is that criminals are lazy and unlikely to have adequate training with their weapons. I, on the other hand, took my last Elk on the run at 600 yards and can empty two 13 round magazines into the center of a target at 25 yards in under 12 seconds with my .45 ACP. I’m not braggin, because that doesn’t make me special. Many people I know can do the very same thing.

The point is, if the pot growers would have never confronted the campers had they thought they posed even the remotest threat, which is why they choose to set up shop in places like California, where they know the public has a 99.99% chance of not being armed.

As I’ve said before, being armed is about making the choice yours. If only your attacker has a weapon, he makes all the choices. If your armed, you make your own. That doesn’t even mean that you have to defend yourself. In many situations, caution would dictate that you still comply, and never attack, but even then, as long as you have a .45 tucked neatly into your waistband, the choice is yours.

the adventure life

get outside and play

Marijuana Growers Chase Campers From Natl. Forest

by steve casimiro ? April 20, 2009 ? Post a comment

This week really wasn’t planned to be an all-pot kind of week, it’s just working out that way. (Today’s the stoner new year, right? But if you’re stoned, isn’t every year basically 1976?) Regardless, in Los Padres National Forest, California, two pot farmers scared off some campers in a high-speed dirt road rally that ended with arrests and confiscation of $26 mill in herb. The Santa Barbara County sheriff’s report reads better than I could rewrite, so here it is in its entirety:

New Cuyama – On Friday, 04-17-09, at approximately 11:30 a.m., two adults, who had been camping in the Aliso Park area west of New Cuyama, came across an active marijuana garden. While in the area, the campers were approached by two Hispanic male adult subjects who were tending to the marijuana garden.

The subjects attempted to converse with the campers, however due to a language barrier, they were unsuccessful. The subjects requested that the campers remain in the area, until the arrival of the “boss” who spoke English. The campers became fearful and packed up their gear and left the area. While the campers were driving down the dirt road, they were approached by a pick up truck traveling the opposite direction. As they passed the truck, they noticed the occupants seemed very interested in them. The truck stopped and the driver exited and waived for the campers to come back. They ignored his request and kept driving, believing he was the “boss” that the two subjects had referred to earlier. The driver returned to his truck and began chasing the campers down the mountain. During the chase, the truck came dangerously close to the campers’ vehicle several times.

[Read More...]

Three cheers for this hero!

If more people carried, less low life cretins would pray on innocent people. The fact that there are members of our government that would give their right arms to take away my right to bear arms makes my skin crawl. In the end, the only reason someone would ever want to disarm you is so they can make you a victim.

1 dead, one injured in Miami Burger King shooting – Breaking News – MiamiHerald.com:

March 24, 1981. It was in the early morning hours, not long after midnight, and the young boy was wandering around the store looking for a warm spot. He seldomly got to see his dad, who ran the family business, and had decided to spend the night keeping his dad company while he worked the graveyard shift. He was impatient, as ten year olds are, and spent much of the night exploring the old convenience store, looking for both hiding spots and warm spots. He had found a few such places, the best of which was the unfinished attic. There was no floor, just dusty rafters filled with fluffy pink insulation, and the walls were just the plywood skin of the pitched roof, complete with roofing nails stabbing through, threatening to scalp you if you accidentally got too close. There was no door, no ladder, just a hole in the insulation at the top of a stack of grey metal shelves in the back storage room. Better yet, it was nice and toasty up there where the dry warm air from the gas furnace accumulated, making it the perfect place to give the boy a little respite from the boredom of watching his dad work, and the bitter cold that blew through the building every time the door opened. For a ten year old, it was Heaven.

A choice. No more. No less.

That’s why he had gone back to the front of the store, in search of his dad, to tell him about the little piece of Heaven he had found. He wasn’t in a hurry, though. He walked slowly, with his hands in his pockets, quietly staring at his shuffling feet, as he meandered first through the back storage rooms and then into the open store.

He was halfway to the front when he took his eyes off his feet and looked up to where his dad stood facing him behind the counter. Another man stood on the near side of the counter with his back turned to the boy. His dad was putting cash into a brown paper sack, and at first the boy didn’t understand what was happening. Then his dad gave the man the sack full of money, and the man wave a small nickle plated revolver and yelled at the boy’s dad to get on the floor and stay there.

Moments later, it seemed like hours, the boy’s dad yelled up into the attic, telling him to stay where he was. As soon as the boy had realized what was happening, he had turned around and ran, as quietly and quickly as he could, into the back storage room, climbed up the grey shelves, and into his newly discovered attic retreat.

His dad made sure it was safe and that the robber was gone, then called the police, before coming back and telling the boy that is was safe to come down out of the attic. Then, together, they called the boy’s mom. It was her birthday.

It was more than a quarter century ago that I was that ten year old little boy, scared to death, and hiding in that dusty, hot, nail lined attic. I don’t think that the trauma I faced that night had any lasting negative effect on me, but I’m sure that it has had a lot to do with many of the decisions I’ve made and how I’ve shaped myself as an adult. I don’t believe that we are shaped by our past, but I do believe that our past is the clay with which we mold our future. I just got a lot of clay to work with that night.

That experience has a lot to do with the number of surveillance cameras that I have in my stores, but it also has a lot to do with my decision to pretty much always have a sidearm with me. I have been asked several times over the years — by friends, family, employees, and other acquaintances who have, by chance, noticed the handgun that is usually concealed inside my waistband — why I carry it. Why do I think I need it? Do I think I’ll ever have to use it? Recently, one of my children asked me these questions, and it made me realize that I should really think about it, and give an honest and thorough answer.

I know what you are thinking, but you are wrong. I don’t carry a sideearm because I’m afraid. I don’t carry a sidearm because of some subconscious fear of being robbed or victimized. I don’t carry a sidearm out of fear at all. I know that would be the most obvious reason, and if it was the real reason, I would be more than justified. The fear of being victimized, especially after facing that kind of trauma, can be a powerful motivator. If being armed allayed that fear, then that would be more than enough reason for me to carry a gun. The reason I choose to be armed though, is a little more complicated than that.

On the night that Dad was robbed, the man who robbed him made a choice to become a criminal. He made the choice to put on a mask, come into the store, and point his gun at an innocent man. It was his choice to commit armed robbery and take money that didn’t belong to him. What he never realized though, was that surviving that night wasn’t his choice at all.

What the man didn’t realize was that at one point during the robbery my dad was holding his own pistol, under the counter, and in the process of pulling the trigger, when he saw me walk into the store from the back storage rooms. It was my dad who made the choice to let go of the trigger, put his gun down, and give the man the money he demanded. It was my dad who made the choice to give up his hard earned money, and to let the armed robber slip away into the night, rather than shoot and kill him in front of his ten year old son. It was my dad who made the choice to allow that man to live.

Someday, God forbid, I could be faced with a situation in which I have to make a similar choice. It is the nature of my business that puts me at a constant risk of armed robbery, and let’s face it, every family is at risk to become the target of any number of random violent crimes. If something like that ever happens, I want the choice of the outcome to be mine. If someone ever comes into one of my stores and points a gun at me, I want it to be my choice whether to take the money out of the cash register and give it to him, or send him away in a body bag.  If someone ever attempts to carjack me, I want it to be my choice whether I step out of my vehicle and let the carjacker take it, or send him away in a body bag. If someone ever invades my home, I want it to be my choice whether I stay barricaded in a safe room while they take what they want, or send them away in a body bag. I want it to be my choice.

Without my sidearm, concealed discreetly in my belt, I don’t have a choice. Without my sidearm, if someone ever comes into one of my stores and points a gun at me, all I can do is hope he doesn’t care if he leaves a witness. Without my sidearm, if someone ever tries to take my car, all I can do is hope that the carjacker doesn’t put a bullet in me if I don’t get out of it fast enough. Without my sidearm, if someone ever invades my home, all I can do is hope that they don’t injure or kill my family. Without my sidearm, I don’t have a choice.

As long as I am armed, the outcome is my choice. As long as I am armed, I can give him the money out of my cash register and let him walk away, because I choose to. As long as I am armed, I can calmly step out of my vehicle and let him drive away in it, because I choose to. As long as I am armed, I can make sure my family is safe, then let him leave my home with his loot, because I choose to. As long as I am armed, I can choose.

I have surveillance cameras all over my stores because their silent presence has deterred similar events in the many years since that night. While almost every other store in town has been robbed since, ours have not. I believe that it’s because when the likely thieves come in to look around, they see all the cameras and choose to find victims elsewhere. I also use the cameras to help me take care of my stores, and protect myself from dishonest customers and employees. They are a tool that gives me a choice in how I manage my business. And like those surveillance cameras that quietly watch over my stores and give me discreet control of them, my sidearm is merely a tool that I use to make sure that I have control over my own life. It is a tool that gives me a choice. No more, no less.

What I really learned that night, so many years ago, was to not be afraid, to not live in fear. What I learned from Dad that night is that you can always be in control of your own life, no matter what, if you choose to be.