(Fred Weinberg) – Elsewhere in this publication, you will see a story about the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the Sheriff of Clark County and their rather “special” relationship with Langley Productions, the folks who bring you “Cops” on the Fox Television Network and other police related shows like “Jail”.
While the Lord High Sheriff of Clark County, Doug Gillespie, has been taking campaign contributions for co-operating with the shows Langley produces, another interesting phenomena has become part of the police lexicon in Las Vegas.
It is called “Wilding” and it is used to describe random, violent street attacks by thrill-seeking youth who seem to lack any compassion for their victims. There’s been a bunch of it in the past few years including the recent death of a teacher at the hands of a small mob in Las Vegas.
Clint Eastwood would describe these societal miscreants as “Punks”.
The Las Vegas Review Journal’s cop shop reporter, Francis McCabe, told the story in last Saturday’s RJ. He quoted a defense attorney for a 20-year old driver in the attack on the teacher who pled guilty to a second degree murder as suggesting that her client didn’t understand how he could be guilty of murder when he didn’t have a gun in his hand.
Fortunately, this punk will have 13 to 45 year to think about it at one of Nevada’s finer institutions. All the while costing the taxpayers of Nevada about $40,000 a year.
But the whole attitude of the police and the legal community seems to be that we need to educate these poor, misguided youth so they understand that viciously attacking people and sometimes killing them is a serious crime.
I have a better idea.
Let’s encourage people in Las Vegas to arm themselves. Inevitably, one of these groups of punks will attack someone who is armed and get themselves killed.
Let me tell you what will happen.
Some years ago, when I was in Tulsa, a 10-year-old and his younger sister were home alone when someone started banging on the door. The 10 year old had been taught by his grandfather how to use a handgun which was in the father’s bedroom.
He took his younger sister into the bedroom, locked the door and got the gun. When the robber broke into the house and came to the bedroom door, the young man fired through the door and killed the robber.
The moral to the story is twofold. First, there is one less bad guy on the streets.
Second, criminals must read the Tulsa World because armed robberies were way down for six months after the widely reported incident. There was the normal uproar about the kid having been taught to defend himself and his sister with a handgun from the liberals, but he and his sister are around today because he was.
That was at least 20 years ago.
I’ll bet the principal remains the same.
If Clark County would stop their gun grabbing registration procedures and stop assuming that everybody who carries a gun is up to no good, then citizens might be encouraged to protect themselves. An armed society is a polite society.
It won’t take but one or two incidents where citizens shoot back at these groups of “wilding” youth and I can promise you that it will stop. Nothing puts a damper on a bunch of punks terrorizing a city like the very real possibility they could get killed.
If one or two of these young societal misfits get themselves killed in the commission of an illegal act, you won’t need any outreach programs to explain that this sort of behavior is against all societal norms.
Mind you, I’m not calling for a return to the Wild West.
But I would note that this sort of activity doesn’t happen often if at all in rural Nevada where you don’t have to register your weapons and it is not unusual to see an armed citizen.
It’s about time we stopped treating citizens who exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms as bad guys. The bad guys are the people who you need to defend yourself from. And they’re not worried about registering their guns.
Defending yourself is something only you can do. Not even watching Cops can convince most people that the Clark County Sheriff is capable of doing it for you.
(Mr. Weinberg is publisher of the Penny Press)
