“A FEW years ago, I awoke at 2:30 a.m. to more than a “rapping, rapping at my chamber door.” It was a full-force pounding of a body trying to break into my little house in Washington, D.C. It was the sound and scenario that, as a single woman living alone, I feared more than spiders in the house.
Because I was writing political speeches at the time, my BlackBerry slept on the pillow beside me. I grabbed it and looked out my bedroom window at the stoop below. There he was: tall, dark clothes, big. He backed up and then raced to the door, pounding his body against it. Then he kicked at it the way actors take boots to the heads of bad guys in the movies.”
A rather disturbing op-ed in the NY Timesfrom someone that has been a speech writer for Democratic Senators John Edwards, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John Kerry, and for Boston Mayor Thomas Menino where she says that as a result of a home break in Washington DC, she almost bought a gun for self-defense. After all, being a single woman, alone, a lady no taller than TMEW, she faced the situation of having to face off (with a large dog by her side) against a male big and strong enough to be breaking down her door. It was problably only because the local police station was right around the corner, according to her own words, that he never gained access.
And then, stopped the process of obtaining that self-defense weapon in fear for her life as she suffers from depression; she goes on to describe what it is like. I can, to a degree, understand what she goes through, not from personal experience but from the experience of having to care for for family members that suffer from depression as well. A lot of traveling back and forth to go to check in on them, making sure they have the right meds, ensuring that they are TAKING the right meds the right way, and making sure that the thought of “hey, I don’t have to take these anymore – I feel FINE now!” is dealt, for them, with as a temporary illusion (and for them, it was temporary as both they and I found out the hard way). It is a disease and it is a really disabling disease in its worst forms not only to them but to those around them as well. Having this as a single living-alone woman, well, not easy. So while I applaud her decision of not purchasing a gun for her own safety, I disagree with but completely disagree with her plea to keep from hurting herself:
“But since most people like me are more likely to harm ourselves than to turn into mass-murdering monsters, our leaders should do more to keep us safe from ourselves.
Please take away my Second Amendment right. Do more to help us protect ourselves because what’s most likely to wake me in the early hours isn’t a man’s body slamming at my door but depression, that raven, tapping, rapping, banging for relief.
I have a better chance of surviving if I never have the option of being able to pull the trigger.”
Obama and Biden and Feinstein are just slathering to take her up on this; why not as they are trying, as my post suggests in another area, to punish the legal for those that are at risk of bad behavior. What is disturbing to me is that her immediate response is to not take the responsibility on herself and PUT herself on the list of the mentally ill so as to fail a background check. She doesn’t first reach out for help in this from her family or friends for better “overwatch” on her mental state. She doesn’t reach out to her doctor either (at least not mentioning that in the part of the NYT op-ed dealing with her “solution”). Or a number of other solutions that would not impact the Right of the rest of us, given the current disposition of same kind of politicians she wrote speeches for that now would love to so restrict the ability to own and use guns to render them virtually useless.
One one hand, I “get” the “take away my…right” – it actually makes good sense: “I am too ill to have a gun”. On the other, however, “Do more to help us protect ourselves” is yielding more power to those that should not have it. This is a total abdication of the normal responsibility of the self to Government – decide for me, take care of me. This is The Life Of Julia, put out during the Presidential campaign by Obama, that told how single women could be taken care of by Government programs. We Conservatives just could not believe this; who would be so willing to outsource their lives to Government in the major touch points of life? Shades of NH House Rep Kris Roberts:
“Government has to protect us from our own stupidity.”
BTW, her piece says that “My depression appeared for the first time in the late ’90s, right before I began writing for politicians.” I’d be depressed if I had to write for the crew she had to. However, as kwolski over at RedState noted, she was too ill to own a gun, but just dandy to write public speeches for Kerry, Obama, Clinton, et al.
I leave it to the reader to decide which is / was the more dangerous.
