Roberts Gun Shop

My friend Skip Coryell wrote this the day after the Virginia Tech massacre. It's still relevent today.





America's New Mentality – "Cower and Die"




I'm a stay-at-home dad and the primary caregiver for our 1-year-old son. Even now, as I type this article, there is a 40 caliber semi-automatic pistol on my right hip. I carry a pistol 24/7, 365 days a year. Sometimes it's a nuisance, but I will never kneel at the feet of a madman and whimper while he shoots me and the ones I love. Instead, I will take careful aim, and double-tap the center of exposed mass until the murderer falls to the pavement, no longer a threat to the innocent in society. When faced with a weapon-wielding madman, I don't hide beneath a desk, cowering in the hopes that he'll shoot someone else and then move on. I don't roll the dice and hope for the best. Instead, I take responsibility for my own defense, and I attack. That's what real parents do. They protect those unable to protect themselves, and they do so aggressively and without apology.



Having said all that, I, too, would have been helpless to stop the killing at Virginia Tech, or Columbine, or Pearl, and even at the University of Iowa. What do these places all have in common that render a normally competent, personal protection instructor impotent? They are all pistol-free zones. I like to call them criminal safe zones, where bad guys can feel safe and free to exact all manner of evil upon us, the unarmed public, upon our unarmed defenseless and innocent children. Our government, in its infinite folly, has disarmed us, then broadcast for all criminals to see, exactly when and where they can kill the most unarmed people. It's like a bowling pin shoot: the government lines us up, and the bad guys shoot us down. And when questioned about this insanity, the legislators and other politicians say; "we're doing this for your own good". I haven't heard that since I was a child. But I've got news for you politicians – I'm not a child any longer, and I know what's best for me. When the government starts making laws that preclude me from protecting my one-year-old son, then it's time I campaigned to replace them. Consider yourself forewarned. The people hired you, and the people will fire you.



Yesterday, a crazed, lone, gunman, executed 32 people at the Virginia Tech campus. Today, politicians (our leaders) are calling for more gun control. Call me daft, but I don't get it. Where's the logic? Isn't one definition of insanity "doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results?" We've tried gun control. It didn't work. It failed us, and it failed our children. It failed us at the University of Iowa in 1991. It failed us at Columbine High School. It failed us in Pearl, Mississippi, and now, it has failed us again in Blacksburg, Virginia.



Why is everyone on television acting so surprised? This is logic 101. If you disarm everyone except crazed murderers, then only crazed murderers will have guns. Let's face it, most people don't have the expertise or the guts to disarm a gun-wielding madman.



Forgive me for sounding harsh, but gun control is killing us. It's killing innocent children all across our country, and it's been killing them for decades. Why? Because we don't have the guts to stand up to our politically correct legislators and tell them no! Enough is enough! Stop killing our children! All across America, even in states where tens of thousands of people have been trained and licensed to carry a gun for protection, people are hiding under desks, jumping from 2nd floor windows, and cowering beneath the muzzle of a deranged killer. As a general rule, the people who cower in the face of determined evil, are the people who die in a pool of their own blood. It's time America – it's time to fight back!



But do the people of America still have the guts to stand up against elected officials? I honestly don't know. Are we Americans? Are we men and women determined to protect our families, or have we all become sheep, content to follow the shepherd over the precipice to the jagged rocks below? Columbine and Virginia Tech are not good omens. The victims there were unarmed sheep, who hid beneath desks and chairs, simply cowering before they died. They said "Baa" as they were being slaughtered.



Something basic to our society has to change. It's time to stand up and fight while we still have the means to do so. And if our politicians tell us we can't protect our children in a daycare center, or a post office, or a church, then we show them the door. We vote them out. We recall them. We take out the trash. That's the attitude that America was founded on. Somewhere along the timeline, America has lost it's way, we've lost our instinct for survival; it's no longer "fight or flight"; it's just plain "cower and die".



Where did Americans ever get the idea that they could successfully outsource personal protection? I know a guy who won't trust another man to mow his lawn, because only "he" can do it right and to his own satisfaction. But that same particular, finicky person walks around all day long trusting total strangers, who aren't even present, to protect the one thing he cannot replace – his own life.



A word of caution: don't think that the terrorists aren't watching, because they are, and they're taking notes. Once they realize that most Americans are nothing but sheep waiting to be slaughtered, then it's Katy bar the door, because every terrorist and his grandma will be over here killing as many American infidels as they can. America has ceased to be the "land of the free and the home of the brave", and instead has become a target-rich environment, the "ignorant and blissful land of cower and die".



The police cannot protect us; it was never so. The police have their place and their job, but it was never their responsibility to be the bodyguards of every man, woman and child in America. That job is a personal responsibility that most of us have forsaken. It is my job to protect my family; that's why they're called "my" family and not "your" family. I feel silly saying things so basic to life and truth, but, sadly enough, these things need to be said. Trying to outsource personal and family defense will always be a losing proposition.



Take responsibility for protecting yourself and the ones you love. Go ahead and outsource your lawn, but no one can protect your family better than you. It's your job! Do it! Don't give in to the "cower and die" mentality. Instead, crawl out from under that desk and fight for your life. It's a decision you can live with.



Skip Coryell is a Michigan native, now living in Iowa. He teaches the NRA Personal Protection in the Home Course for those wishing to obtain Concealed Pistol Licenses. Skip is the author of the Ted Nugent endorsed book "Blood in the Streets: Concealed Carry and the OK Corral" Skip's book may be purchased at www.skipcoryell.com