Defending your property with a gun if needed
is as American as apple pie.
Donald Trump will not denounce it.
When rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin last week burned down and looted businesses, the police did not stop them. We have seen this in cities across the country. No storeowner in Democratic-run areas that are subject to a leftist protest, which can “intensify” into riots, can have the slightest hope that the police will keep it from happening.
That being the case, they really have no choice but to defend their property themselves or let it go up in flames. President Trump will not denounce the constitutional right for them to do so, nor should he.
Trump could not have been more clear in his press conference on Monday that he wants police to handle all of law enforcement. Every sane person does. But it is just as clear that many Democratic mayors and governors are refusing to allow police to do so.
In some cases, this is because local law enforcement is overwhelmed, but in too many such cases Democratic mayors playing politics refuse the help of federal law enforcement. Thankfully, in Kenosha, the National Guard went in and quelled the violence, but in Portland help has not only been rejected, but derided, and the violence persists.
Demands for Trump to condemn such actions follow the alleged killing of two protesters by a 17-year-old in Kenosha last week. He had traveled from a nearby town to assist other armed men in defending local businesses.
Now let’s be clear: that teenager should not have had to be there. In normal times, he should have been at a movie with his friends, not in a violent riot zone. But that doesn’t change the basic fact that Americans have the right to use guns to protect their property and property in their communities, especially if the police are not allowed or otherwise unable to do so.
This is a tale as old as America, whether it was homesteaders in the old West, or Korean storeowners during the Los Angeles riots. Americans are not going to see their life’s work destroyed because feckless Democratic mayors refuse to enforce the law. Pretending that armed citizens reacting to widespread destruction by trying to stop felonious behavior and riots are responsible for the riots is as absurd as blaming Trump for them. They are the fault of the leftist rioters themselves, and nobody else.
The corporate media think they have Trump in some kind of trap — as if he has to denounce this or else his criticisms of Biden staffers and Kamala Harris helping bail out rioters are hypocritical. But they aren’t. Telling Americans they have the right to defend their property is still a popular message — maybe not in the Hamptons or among celebrities and Democratic politicians with private security, but it sure is with many, many Americans.
Trump is absolutely correct that defending citizens’ property is a job best done by well-trained professional police. In fact, it is one of the central reasons police, and the government itself, exist at all: to protect private property.
This is why communists who don’t believe in private property want to defund or abolish the police. This is what happens when you defund or abolish the police. People who don’t want to be communists, who want to earn a wage and own property they can call their own, fight for it. That isn’t going to change.
People need to understand that if they try to burn or loot other people’s property, they are in danger of those people using violence to stop them. No matter how many glowing interviews NPR does with authors who find absurd justifications for stealing, people have a right to defend themselves, and they are going to do so.
President Trump is not going to tell them not to. Democrats might. They might say, “Just give the criminals what they want” — in fact, Democrats in Minneapolis literally did that — but no sensible people would even suggest it.
Trump knows he has a winning issue in law and order. It’s been a winning issue longer than the TV show named after it ran, which is a long time. Joe Biden knows it too. It’s why every day he has inched closer to condemning the actions of Black Lives Matter and Antifa without actually doing it.
Something has changed in this election. The media wants to stop that change by making Trump say people aren’t allowed to defend themselves. It’s an absurd notion on its face and shows just how desperate the president’s detractors are becoming.