“When you carry a gun, you mean to harm somebody, kill somebody,” Bill Cosby claimed in a Friday interview with Deborah Simmons of The Washington Times.
It's sad to see another intelligent person fall victim to fear and promote disarmament as a practical solution to curbing violence. It is understandable, seeing as his own son was the victim of gun violence in another state which prohibited the natural and Constitutional right to self defense.
“We’ve got to get the gun out of the hands of people who are supposed to be on neighborhood watch,” the comedian, actor and commentator advocated in his first public comments on the Trayvon Martin shooting.
“Without a gun, I don’t see Mr. Zimmerman approaching Trayvon by himself,” he declared.
Celebrity status and the ability to have his views shared with millions notwithstanding, there are more than a few problems with that opinion. First, being careful not to fall in with the rush to judgment Cosby seems caught up by, credible reports say it was Martin who approached Zimmerman “by himself”—and “without a gun.”
Then there are the reports that Cosby himself had obtained one of New York City’s rare, reserved for the rich, famous, powerful and connected concealed gun permits, joining other celebrities like Robert DeNiro, Howard Stern and Donald Trump. Assuming the accounts in the New York Observer and Boston Globe were accurate, has he since renounced the personal practice? And when he did carry a gun, did he “mean to harm somebody, kill somebody”?
It must be nice to be better than everyone else. I guess it just takes being famous and wealthy to have your rights restored. Too bad the general population is not worth of such basic rights in the eyes of the dictators across our lands.
Did doing so compel him to approach potential threats “by himself”?
That Cosby might have strong personal feelings about criminal violence committed with guns is understandable due to tragedy and personal loss. But the murderer of his son ignored California edicts that essentially deny a gun being carried for defensive purposes by any but law enforcement, the connected and criminals. “May issue” at the discretion of the sheriff or police chief generally means “may not” in Golden State urban areas.
Assuming “we” (meaning a monopoly of violence-enforcing government) can get guns “out of the hands of people” presupposes they can be gotten out of the hands of criminals. It also negates the Founders’ wisdom on what they deemed “necessary to the security of a free state,” and it points to more profound—and again, hypocritical—flaws in Cosby’s pronouncements: He provided the “seed money” to The Black Star News, which praises armed-to-the-(red)-teeth Somali pirates as “very brave seamen and navigators. They had no choice but to take revenge on foreign shipping and earn a living by ransom demands.”
I remember what happened to the French elite when they proceeded too far down this path, but will the American elite fail this history lesson?
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