
 The following article is under submission.  Reproduction
 on computer bulletin boards is permitted for informational
 purposes only.  Copyright (c) 1993 by J. Neil Schulman.
 All other rights reserved.


                         A TIME TO KILL

                       by J. Neil Schulman


     Maybe you haven't noticed it, but the Star-Spangled Banner
has been replaced by the dove of peace.  Attorney General Janet
Reno and Senator Paul Simon condemn the portrayal of violence on
television.  Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders wants to ban toy
guns.  \The Los Angeles Times\ wants to ban real guns.  The latest
Clint Eastwood movie, \A Perfect World\, is not Dirty Harry ending
the career of some maniac, but a buddy movie about a fatherless
boy and the sympathetic psychopath who takes him under his wing.
The federal Center for Disease Control, backed by the American
Medical Association, has declared violence to be a national
health crisis.

     There is without doubt a national crisis when automatic-
teller-machine hold-ups, carjackings, and serial rapes are
commonplace; when our celebrities are a woman who cuts off her
husband's penis and the husband who sells T-shirts commemorating
it; when youth gangs don't even have the courage to rumble --
they just do drive-by shootings.

     But it's not a national health crisis.  It's a national
moral crisis.

     The King James Bible tells us that the Sixth Commandment is,
"Thou shalt not kill."  Any biblical scholar will tell you that's
a mistranslation from the original Hebrew.  It should instead
read, "Thou shalt not murder."

     In Ecclesiastes Chapter 3, Verse 3, the Bible also tells us
that there's a time to kill.

     We have lost our ability to distinguish between justified
and unjustified violence.  We no longer feel certain about the
difference between good guys and bad guys.  We no longer know
when it's time to kill, or whom.

     A time to kill would have been when Patrick Purdy walked
into a schoolyard in Stockton, California and started shooting at
children.  But we place our children in the care of defenseless
teachers, so there was no one able to kill Patrick Purdy in time.

     A time to kill would have been when George Hennard walked
into a Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas and began shooting
diners.  But Texans may no longer legally carry six-shooters on
their hips, so there was no one able to kill Hennard in time.

     A time to kill would have been when Gian Luigi Ferri
walked into a San Francisco law office and began shooting at
attorneys, secretaries, and clients.  But not one lawyer kept a
Smith & Wesson in her desk, so there was no one able to kill
Ferri in time.

     A time to kill would have been when Colin A. Ferguson
began shooting passengers on the Long Island Railroad.  There
were men on the train with the courage to tackle and capture
Ferguson even though they were unarmed -- but not before Ferguson
had shot dozens of people.  If only one person had been armed,
innocent people might be alive and Ferguson dead.

     A recent article in \The Public Interest\ by Jeffrey Snyder --
lauded by George Will in \Newsweek\ -- suggests that we have become
"a nation of cowards" in our willingness to submit peaceably to
crime and rely on police to protect us.  But is it courage that
we lack, or moral certainty?

     We have become a nation of deer facing oncoming headlights,
paralyzed with moral ambiguity.  Like Clint Eastwood's stymied
Texas Ranger in \A Perfect World\, we declare, "I don't know a damn
thing anymore."

     The currently fashionable condemnation of violence is based
on morally untenable premises, either pacifistic or statist.
We civilians are told to be peaceable either because violence
does not solve problems, or because only people in uniforms are
entitled to use violence.

     Certainly violence does not solve all problems.  But there
is one sort of problem that violence is indispensable to solve:
stopping violent evildoers.

     Certainly we don't want to live in a nation of lynch mobs.
There is a clear distinction between self-defense and proactive
law enforcement.  But with the examples of the ATF siege in Waco,
the unindicted murder of Randy Weaver's wife and son by federal
agents, and the looming threat of well-armed police enforcing
civilian gun bans, isn't Janet Reno's condemnation of violence
more than a little hypocritical?

     Violence is not of itself always wrong.  Sometimes committing
an act of violence is a right and a moral necessity.  When
violence is righteous, it is glorious.  If we do not understand
this and ready ourselves with arms and training for the rightful
violence that is necessary to defend the innocent, then the
random violence eating away at our nation's substance is just
what we have coming to us.

                               ##

J. Neil Schulman is a Los Angeles novelist, screenwriter, and
journalist.  He has just completed a new book, \STOPPING POWER:
The Humanistic Case For Civilian Arms\.


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