Hugh Hewitt, the most intelligent and well-informed of all the conservative talk radio hosts, discusses the attack with his guest, Dr. Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College.
HH: Dr. Arnn, when we went to break, I was talking about Victor Davis Hanson and an armed citizenry. He used a term a lot, as did Robert Kaplan, another fine writer, about Indian country being that when the early American settlers from Europe moves westward into the continent, they went armed into dangerous country, and they lived on the frontier, and this culture developed, a culture of reliance upon self-defense which is embedded in the 2nd Amendment.
LA: That’s right.
HH: That is, I just can’t be, that can’t be contradicted.
LA: No, first of all, the 2nd Amendment makes reference to the militia, and that’s the able-bodied citizens who are expected to be prepared to fight for their country, and fight for their defense of their community and themselves. Thomas Jefferson makes the comment that you can’t go from town to town in England or France without being robbed by a highwayman, but you never see them in America, he said, because somebody will shoot them. And that’s, you know, that’s, America started that way, right? A bunch of people came over here to a wilderness they didn’t understand, and they found out in a hurry they were going to defend themselves or get killed. And that, it does look to me like, you know, I would mention three levels, right? First of all, people have a right to own a gun in America, and that is the clearest Constitutional right. And short of changing the Constitution, it is a Constitutionally-recognized right. And it’s hard to change the Constitution.
HH: That’s correct.
LA: That’s the first thing. Everybody can have a gun. If you’re afraid in your home, get one. And of course, I grew up in Northeast Arkansas, and what was I taught, except that that was a huge responsibility. And so how many hours have I been lectured about not pointing a gun at anybody, and about being safe with the use of a gun? I’ll tell you a quick story about my dad. We were bird hunting with one of his employers, a man, I won’t say his name, but he actually paddled my father when my father was in high school. Then he became my father’s boss, and he paddled me. Now that’s family brotherhood.
HH: Yeah, it is.
LA: And I inherited the patriarchy, right? And we went hunting with this man, and three were some quail, and they came up off to the side, and the man swung his gun over us. And I can feel at this moment my father’s hand on my shoulder forcing me down. And when it was over, and we got up, my father said to me quietly, son, we’re going home. And he didn’t say a word to his boss. We left the field and drove home, because you don’t hunt with somebody who is not safe with guns. Now you think that’s not a lesson I will always remember?
HH: Yeah, I have a similar story, not myself being qualified in riflery. My brother-in-law, retired Marine Corps colonel and owner of many weapons, instructed my boys in weaponry. And the patience required to do that is enormous. It takes a lot, and I have never seen anyone as careful as my colonel brother-in-law taking his weapons out of the gun safe and walking the boys through their first trip to the range. And the painful, painful passage of time to learn how to use a weapon the right way, it was, it just imprinted on my mind that these are serious things. But people can be serious about them. And isn’t it time we started doing that?
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