City Manager is Mistaken

From: "Angel Shamaya" <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001 01:17:36 -0700
To: [email protected]
Subject: City Manager Spina is Mistaken

TO:
Tampa Tribune Editor

FROM:
Angel Shamaya
Founder/Executive Director
KeepAndBearArms.com
(National organization with members in your back yard)
1109 S. Plaza Way, #136
Flagstaff, Arizona 86001
PHONE: (928) 522-8833
FAX: (928) 522-8855

RE: Workplace Gun Ban Proposal Slammed http://tampatrib.com/Pasco/MGA8VPQGDTC.html

November 1, 2001

Kudos to reporter John Wing for addressing City Manager Mike Spina's stance prohibiting self-defense in the workplace. ("Workplace Gun Ban Proposal Slammed", October 29) Good, fair coverage. What concerns me is the fact that the City Manager doesn't know his subject matter very well. "Those opposed to the policy are mistaking the right to bear arms with a city government's right to protect itself and its workers," he tells us -- but government does not have rights, never has, and never will unless we alter or abolish our founding documents. People have rights. Government has powers. And there is a vast difference between the two.

A government's first priority is to use its limited, narrowly defined power to protect the rights of the people it aims to serve. Meanwhile, City Manager Spina opines that denying the right to self-defense "doesn't infringe on anybody's rights.''

Question for the uninformed City Manager: Do human beings have a right to self-defense? That is a yes/no question. If the answer is "yes" (it is), then the most effective means of self-defense cannot be denied unless you wish to violate the very basic natural instinct of self-preservation. (If you want to know what the most effective means of self-defense is, look on a police officer's hip.)

There are two basic types of workplace violence. One involves the kind where an intended victim is permitted to defend him- or herself. The other involves the "sitting duck" scenario City Manager Spina seeks to create. The people who feel strongly inclined to deny the right of self-defense in the workplace would do well to study real life cases of workplace violence -- both types mentioned above -- to find that the sitting duck scenario breeds far more death and injury than the "self-defense permitted" scenario ever has or ever will.

Perhaps most confusing are the people who truly believe that someone bent on doing great bodily harm to another person will obey a sign on a door that says, "no weapons allowed." You have 3,700 examples of weapons found in "Gun Free Schools" these last couple of years. How much more evidence do you need before you realize that criminals do not obey laws -- but they very much fear and respect armed citizens.

Respectfully,

Angel Shamaya

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