A Truly Great American
Greenleaf wants homeowners to arm themselves
10:54 AM MDT on Friday, September 22, 2006
GREANLEAF - A small Canyon County town is considering a city ordinance that would recommend every homeowner have a gun and know how to use it.
A Greenleaf city council member proposed the idea as part of a plan to handle civil emergencies.
It would create citizen response teams and neighborhood watch groups, but would also recommend citizens own a gun and ammunition.
"We aren't choosing to pick a fight. We're choosing to organize and learn how to defend our own homes," said Greenleaf Mayor Brad Holton.
Holton assumes nearly every person living in his town already owns a gun.
"That's just the nature of our community," said Holton.
So he says little would be changed by adopting this ordinance that "recommends every head of household maintain a firearm and ammunition."
"It's requesting. It's not requiring," said Holton.
Holton says this is part of a larger plan to establish an organized response to a town emergency and a way to ensure Greenleaf's way of life is protected.
"The law enforcement agencies are not able to take care of each person and each private property, so it's up to local cities and local governments to develop a plan of how you're going to do that," said Holton.
The ordinance not only recommends gun ownership. It also recommends training on how to use them.
“If I was a burglar or if I was wanting to cause harm and I had all these cities to go to, why would I pick a city that is organized and trained? I wouldn't. I'd pick a city who isn't," said Holton.
Not everyone in town is in favor of the plan. Quakers founded this city a century ago.
“Historically, we're one of the peace churches," said Friends of Greenleaf Church Pastor Alan Weinacht.
Pastor Alan Weinacht says this ordinance goes too far.
"I'm not going to support that. I think that is falling into that culture of fear, and I'm not going to support that. I'm not going to encourage it. I think that's stepping over a line. It's where we don't need to go," said Weinacht.
Weinacht isn't opposed to owning a gun. He has a few himself but says the city has no business encouraging the use of firearms under any circumstance.
"If we would invest as much time into thinking about creative non-violent responses to violence as we did violent responses, we'd probably gain some ground," said Weinacht.
He sees this proposal could too easily be seen as a call to arms or the development of a city-created militia.
"I think the burden is upon city council to prove this is not what this is about, because it sure sounds like it," said Weinacht.
"Greenleaf isn't about being a vigilante, it's probably the exact opposite. It's a peaceful, small community and quality of life is very, very important to the people that are here," said Holton.
A Japanese General, during World War II, once said that Japan would never had tried to invade because in America "there is a gun behind every blade of grass."
Arm Yourselves.
written by DrAwkwArD at 1:03 PM
1 Comments:
This is an interesting article. I am very surprised it was reported on in a somewhat non-biased fashion. I think it is great for a community/town/city to organize any kind of neighborhood watch or even just encourage people to be aware. I do, however, feel that this would never work through out the United States. There are too many people who don't understand the responsibilities of gun ownership. Again, I think it would be pretty awesome if people could use their brains when it came to having a firearm. I guess it is not impossible. Although, when some form of gun has been around since roughly the 1300's and we STILL have accidental shootings, that's not saying much for how fast we're learning. I looked up (just a quick search) and found a basic statistic that in 1999 there was an average of 9 CHILDREN (aged 0-19)a day killed by a gun in some type of homicide, suicide, or unintentional/accidental shooting.
"A person is smart, people are stupid." - guess the quote. That's the way I feel about it. So if you are willing to teach people individually the safe practices, I will support you. I just know that there will probably be 1 in 5 homes that have no one capable of managing that kind of responsibility. Then you'll have a bunch of equal rights people demanding that ex-cons and mentally unstable people should be allowed to have AK's.
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