Gay self-defense activist: Arm yourself

Tom Palmer*

We see a kind of celebration on the internet over the killing of innocent people simply because they are gay and American. This makes them a "double win" for the so-called Islamic State (ISIS).

It's high time we fight back. We must stand up to the "gun-free" slaughterhouses. If there had been legally armed people at Pulse that night, the fanatic who pledged allegiance to ISIS could have been stopped and dozens of lives saved.

I say this as a homosexual who carries a gun to protect himself.**

But let's get something very important straight first. Gun control advocates disarmed the victims at the nightclub. Florida state law clearly states that "no firearm or other weapon shall be permitted in any place primarily used for the sale or consumption of alcohol."

This turns the people there into sitting targets. Legally regulated “gun-free zones” are a direct invitation to mass murderers. There is a reason why they choose these places for their attacks – there they have the convenience of killing defenseless victims, without any resistance. Everyone is disarmed and left defenseless precisely by the gun ban movement.

They think it's a good idea to disarm people and advertise places where you can find them completely defenseless because they share the same magical superstition as murderer Omar Mateen: repeating a lie often enough makes it true. If you repeat the right words, in this case, "Guns are prohibited," no one will carry guns. And... of course, if no one has guns, there will be no murders.

Sorry, friends, but things don't work that way. Believing in something doesn't make it true, any more than Martin's belief that he'll go to Heaven among his virgins as a reward for his murders will make it true.

Moveon.org: They have already started chanting: “We must act now with sensible laws and ban firearms,” which, they predict, “will stop the mass shootings that are tearing our society apart.” Translation: Gun bans don’t work, so let’s introduce more bans.

We can learn from the control measures they have in place in France and Belgium, where they “worked so well.” ISIS-loyal assassins took the lives of 89 people at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. The victims had no way to defend themselves with weapons. Even the eight police officers who were off duty at the time were required to leave their guns at home.

The frontman of the band that played at the venue that night, Jesse Hudgens, commented on French television after the attack: "Is there anyone who seriously thinks that the gun laws in France saved even one person from dying at the Bataclan? If there is, I would like to hear their explanations, because I think the opposite."

I carried a gun and used it to fend off an anti-gay gang that threatened to kill me and my friend.

They told us, "They'll never find your bodies." We're both alive because I was armed and ready to use my weapon. I'm glad it was enough to just show the gun, but I wouldn't have hesitated to shoot them if that was the only way my friend and I could have survived. I'm trained to use firearms, and if I had been armed in that club during the attack, I could have done more than just become another victim.

ISIS is killing gay people in Syria and Iraq in the most horrific ways. Now the target is America, and gay people are high on their list of targets. And if terrorists come for us, I want to be prepared. They say when it's a matter of seconds, the police are minutes away. That's too long to wait in a situation like this. It's time to stop inviting murderers to legally designated "kill zones."

* Dr. Palmer was in Bulgaria at the invitation of the Bulgarian Libertarian Society and European Students For Liberty. You can read his interview in Capital or watch his lecture from the ESFL Sofia conference.

* *The story of how Tom Palmer used a gun to save himself from lynching

It was 1982, a summer evening near San Jose, when a gang of hooligans began shouting homophobic slurs at Palmer and a colleague.

"We were recognized as a couple of 'faggots', as they put it, who had the nerve to walk around their neighborhood," he says. "It would have been one of those infinitely ironic moments if my colleague had died in an anti-gay attack, given that he's straight."

The threats were flowery and believable: "We will kill you! They will never find your bodies!"

Palmer told his colleague to run in another direction while the bandits continued to pursue him. He ran until he stopped under a streetlight and pulled out his gun.

"I couldn't say anything witty," he recalls. "In movies, they always say something very witty. The only thing I could say was, 'If you come any closer, I'll kill you.' Simple, but they stopped."

He is convinced that if he hadn't had a gun at that moment, he would be dead. Although the gun wasn't fired, "it did the job it was designed to do. It evened my chances against a gang of young men who thought it would be really fun to beat us to death while we were walking down the street."

In 2014, Tom Palmer sued the District of Columbia over its ban on carrying guns in public places and won, with the court declaring the authorities' decision unconstitutional and in violation of the Second Amendment. By virtue of this precedent, citizens and visitors to the US capital can rely on firearms for self-defense.

You can see the original article HERE

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