well, i survived

I would like to thank Alan, Breda, JayG, and Weer’d for having me on the Squirrel Report last night – if you missed the actual show, you can download it here.  Aside from briefly perpetrating a few myths about the Kitty Genovese murder (which was bad, but not as bad as the sensationalist New York Times would have had you believe at the time), and generally not speaking up nearly as much as I probably should have (amusingly (given the topic), I have difficulty “speaking up” verbally in general – though not in written format, as this weblog clearly shows), I think I did pretty well. 

As for take-aways from the show, I think they are twofold.  First, if you see “something bad” going down, it is entirely a matter of your own personal choice as to whether or not to get involved – as Alan said, if you see two guys going at it in the middle of the street, you have no idea what context, if any, sparked the fight or who might be the aggressor (if not both).  Just be sure the decision is one you can live with afterwards, both in terms of “still breathing” (specifically regarding a commercial where a staged gunfight took place – what if that was real and still no one moved?) and in terms of your conscience (see above). 

Second, mobs are bad.  Period.  Full stop.  Back when I was living on East Campus of Georgia Tech (which was all 4.5 years) right across the road from Bobby Dodd Stadium, I simply did not go out of my dorm for at least an hour before the end of football games, and probably three hours afterwards – whether we won or lost, there were bound to be crowds of people enthusiastically doing something, and I am not a “crowd” person to begin with.  And those were folks just celebrating or commiserating; when the “crowd” is wielding metal pipes and attempting to cause significant material harm to a place of business, if you are not concerned for your safety and security, you are not paying attention. 

Food for thought…  We law-abiding gun owners and carriers do not lawfully carry sidearms in order to get involved in other people’s business, but if we stop to render assistance to a stranded motorist on the roadway, that firearm can mean all the difference between “surviving the experience” and “being dead by the side of the road”.  By the same token, being hamstrung by “high capacity magazine” laws can easily leave you with insufficient ammunition in the face of a mob of 25 armed thugs; why do people who support those laws aid and abet criminals? 

Anywise, you will not see me starting my own podcast any time soon, but it was certainly a fun diversion.