"It does not take much to come into a building with a rifle and shoot innocent people. Unfortunately it is very difficult to guard against."
That was Nail al-Jubeir, spokesman for the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, commenting on the hostage situation in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. What happened there? Four terrorists took 60 people hostage, and killed about 20 of them. Their reason? According to their al Qaeda mouthpiece, they wanted to "punish the kingdom for its oil dealings with the United States and to drive crusaders from the land of Islam."
Does it seem strange to you that 60 healthy people, several of whom are Americans, would allow four guys to take them hostage? It should. It should bother you to think about the fact that, had even one or two of those people been armed, the hostage situation might never have happened (you will note that Saudi commandos--with guns--were the ones who helicoptered in to "save the day" for some of the victims). It should bother you that the reason the victims weren't armed is that they were obeying the law. It should bother you that the reason this happened was that the Saudi government, like most Arab states, prohibits the keeping and bearing of arms.
Mr. al-Jubeir states that "it does not take much to come into a building with a rifle and shoot innocent people," but his statement is only true if the innocent people are unable to shoot back. We'd all like to think that we live in a world where firearms are a remnant of a brutal past, but the fact is that we live in a brutal world where bad guys take hostages, and the only stop sign they heed is a gun pointed back at them.
Mr. al-Jubeir further confirms that an unarmed populace is easy prey for armed criminals, because random acts of violence are "very difficult to guard against." Most governments convince their subjects to disarm, either by force or by propaganda (guns are evil, guns are bad, guns hurt children dontcha know), offering the placebo of government protection from the bad guys. Government protection works pretty well if you're the President, with your own cadre of highly-trained, well-armed Secret Service agents watching out for your every move. But for the rest of us, the government finds that violent criminals are "very difficult to guard against."
This latest hostage situation in Saudi Arabia should remind us of several important facts. Bad guys are out there, and they want to hurt people. Governments cannot effectively protect individual citizens (unless you count a 33% death rate as acceptable). Disarmed citizens are at risk, anywhere in the world that they happen to be. Governments that force citizens to disarm are guilty of aiding and abetting violent criminals. These governments need to be repaired or replaced, for the sake of the basic human right of self-defense.
Posted by jon at May 30, 2004 10:37 PM