There’s an old saying that I’m sure most of you have heard: It’s better to be tried by twelve than carried by six.
I was a senior in high school the first time I heard that, but I’ve heard in plenty since then. With laws like Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground, we shouldn’t have to worry so much about that particular choice. At least, that was my thinking when they were first brought up. Hell, Stand Your Ground was case law here in Georgia long before anyone formally encoded it into law. The idea that the good guy is supposed to try and run from an attack before defending his or her life? Ridiculous.
Yet, that was then.
Today, it’s open season on good guys with guns. Especially if you use a gun to defend yourself from the rampaging mob that constantly gets cover from the media and Democrats in office.
It started with the McCloskeys, of course. They presented firearms in an effort to dissuade a mob they say threatened them. Apparently, actually using those guns wasn’t even an option, but they presented them.
Overnight, they became something of a meme, but then they started to get hounded by the left. People were calling for blood, and the McCloskeys went from being something of jokes to heroes. See, the truth was that while their gun handling left much to be desired, they were being persecuted for daring to stand up to the mob. That’s what it was all about.
In the minds of the mob, it’s better the McCloskeys be sacrificed as an offering to the Gods of Woke than to stand up for themselves.
Yet the McCloskeys have gotten off relatively easy so far. Others haven’t been so lucky.
Take young Kyle Rittenhouse, for example. He showed up to Kenosha where there had been riots for several nights prior. He started by helping clean up some of the vandalism, but that night he stood sentry with an AR-15 strapped to him. After he got separated from his group, a group of “mostly peaceful” protestors attacked him. This is on video, after all.
Rittenhouse shot them, killing two and wounding another. All in clear-cut cases of self-defense.
Yet despite that and despite the massive amount of video, Rittenhouse how faces first degree murder charges.
He’s not alone, either.
Jake Gardner was trying to protect his bar when he was attacked viciously. Gardner, a veteran, shot his attacker. The district attorney looked at the case and saw it was self-defense. Then a special prosecutor got involved and managed an indictment. Of course, a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich if they’re remotely competent, but for Gardner, it appears the indictment was too much.
Gardner took his own life.
These are all cases of good guys using guns to protect themselves, and yet each was vilified by the mob and in two cases, they were prosecuted. We won’t know for some time how Rittenhouse’s case will pan out. Gardner’s won’t, of course, so we’ll never know if he’d have been exonerated, though that seems likely.
Today, being the good guy with a gun, particularly when the rampaging mob comes for you, means you’re going to have to make a choice between whether you want to be tried by twelve or carried by six. It shouldn’t be this way, but it is.
Yet if this continues, a lot of those good guys with guns will decide there’s no more benefit to being good guys, hoist the black flag, and begin cutting throats. I don’t think the mob will enjoy that time in the least. I don’t think any of us would, really, but I fear we’ll find out for sure.
