Sheep, Sheepdogs, and Wolves... Which Are You?

A reader emailed this link to me and it brought back some great memories. This book, "On Killing," by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, was required reading for a class I took in college entitled "Leadership in Combat." It has been a while since I read it, but this passage is especially poignant, especially in light of the current debate on Second Amendment rights in the United States.

It is absolutely true that sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves all exist in the world, and no amount of legislation will ever change that. It is also true that sheep hate the sheepdogs whenever they're not actively protecting them for two reasons: through misunderstanding, i.e. they can't understand how the sheepdog is able to do what he does without losing his own humanity; and because the very existence of the sheepdog reminds them that there are wolves in the world and as the saying goes, "ignorance is bliss."

While no amount of legislation will ever prevent the existence of wolves, it is possible that the legislation currently being proposed will literally rip the fangs out of the sheepdogs, leaving them unable to fight the wolves of the world. While some would argue that the police and military should be the only sheepdogs protecting the flock, I would argue that given our extremely high incarceration rate, which leads to short or commuted sentences and our poor attempts at prisoner rehabilitation, it's the private citizen, responsibly carrying and using his firearm, who truly stops crimes, either by fighting back or sometimes killing a criminal who would have continued to terrorize more and more people, or through deterring those criminals through fear that they may encounter armed resistance. There is a reason that the 31 states that have "shall issue" laws allowing concealed carry have, on average, a 24% lower violent crime rate, a 19% lower murder rate, and a 39% lower robbery rate than states that have "may issue" laws or forbid concealed carry weapons. It is not because those states have more police officers. It is because more of the citizenry is armed.

To get the full story on what I'm blabbing about with sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves, head over to this site, which has republished an excerpt from "On Killing" with permission.