After Paris Attacks: ‘Concealed Carry Permit Holders Have a Duty to Be Armed’

AP Photo/Al Behrman
AP Photo/Al Behrman

LEBANON, Tennessee— The 12.8 million Americans with concealed carry permits have a new civic responsibility to counter any U.S. replay of the barbaric murders of more than 120 unarmed innocent civilians in Paris, France, according to Nashville talk radio host Ralph Bristol.

“Concealed carry permit holders have a duty to be armed,” Bristol says.

“It’s not going to do us any good if we’re not carrying that gun,” Bristol said on Saturday to a crowd of 500 gathered outside the parking lot of D.T. McCall and Sons furniture and appliance store in Lebanon, Tennessee on the fifth stop of the WWTN radio talk show host’s ‘The Second Amendment is Homeland Security’ tour.

“If you are like me, and you have that permit to carry that gun . . . we’ve got a duty to do something to make the right things happen,” Bristol began

“We didn’t ask for this fight [with Islamic terrorists],” Bristol added, “but we will be ready for this fight when everyone understands that, and why the Second Amendment is homeland security.”

“War has come to America, ladies and gentlemen, and we act as if it hasn’t,” he explained.

“Any place in America,” Bristol said, “is a potential terrorist killing field, battle field, slaughterhouse, like that concert hall was in Paris last night.”

“We have lawmakers at the city and state level that are specifically telling us, ‘Oh no, you can’t have guns at concerts, you can’t have guns at football games and soccer matches. Wasn’t a soccer match the site of one of those terrorist attacks last night?” Bristol asked.

“What we can’t have is killing fields, what we can’t have is slaughterhouses all around these United States of America,” he told the audience. (emphasis added)

He noted that “public policy hasn’t changed to keep up with the war we’ve been fighting since 9-11 2001,” but that inattentiveness must end if we are to survive as a free civilization.

Bristol then explained who the 12.8 million concealed carry permit holders in America are and what they seek to accomplish.

“For those who may be watching outside of this crowd and may not know who or what we are, let me tell you, first of all, what we are not. We are not vigilantes. We’re not out looking for trouble. We’re not out enticing people to make trouble so we can shoot them,” he emphasized.

“We don’t ever, ever, ever want to have to use our gun,” Bristol explained.

“But we live in a country—and so does everybody else in the world right now—where every place, every store, every concert hall, every football field, every school, every mall is a potential slaughterhouse for ISIS terrorists because we are ordered not to carry our own protection in those places,” he argued.

“We are not the police,” Bristol said.

“There are more of us than there are police. We are in many more places than the police,” he noted.

Bristol then drove home the important job the country’s 12.8 million concealed carry permit holders now have in front of them.

“Our job is not to arrest any ISIS inspired terrorist, our job is to kill him IF he starts shooting,” he told the crowd.

“We are not the military,” Bristol continued.

“The military is and always has been our first line of defense, and still is….But we are the third line of defense, after the military, after the police and the intelligence [community]. We are where the slaughter is going to take place if we’re not there and if we’re not armed,” he concluded.

Bristol’s public message about the civic duty of concealed carry permit holders to be armed was one of first times these notion of the additional responsibilities of concealed carry permit holders has been set forward in a public venue.

Public attitudes towards concealed carry permit holders have been moving to a more positive view for some time.

In October, for instance, a new Gallup Poll found that “56 percent say more concealed weapons would make country safer.”

“A majority of Americans, 56 percent, believe that if more Americans carried concealed weapons after passing a criminal background check and training course, the country would be safer,” Gallup concluded.

Significantly, 41 percent of those who responded to the poll, conducted between October 7 and October 11, believe that more concealed weapons would make the country less safe.

Gallup reported that Democrats were least likely to believe concealed carry permits made us safer, while Republicans were most likely to believe that:

Among key subgroups, Democrats and those with postgraduate education are least likely to believe that more concealed weapons would make the U.S. safer. Republicans and gun owners are most likely to say it would make the nation safer. Younger Americans are more likely to choose the “safer” option than those aged 30 and above.

Surprisingly, by a 2 to 1 margin (66 percent to 33 percent), respondents age 18 to 29 believed that concealed carry weapons make us safer.

In light of the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, France, and the increasing incidence of Islamist terrorist attacks in the United States, the next Gallup Poll may well reflect an increase in popular support for concealed carry weapons.

Public attitudes towards the war on terror are moving in the opposite direction of the Obama administration’s policies—not only in the area of gun control and concealed carry permits, but also in the approach to the acceptance of “refugees” from the Middle East.

Speaking before Bristol at Saturday’s ‘Second Amendment is Homeland Security’ tour stop in Lebanon, State Senator Mae Beavers (R-Lebanon) drove that point home.

“With what happened yesterday [in Paris], we have got to make sure that everybody in Tennessee who can legally own a fire gun arms themselves, that we are safe,”  Beavers  said at the rally.

“Even this morning,” Beavers continued, “I read where they are bringing Syrians into the port in Louisiana. It’s not good now, it’s not going to get better, unless some people in Washington stand up and stop this mess.”

Her message was highlighted by the news that at least one of the Islamic terrorists responsible for the Paris attacks was a Syrian Muslim who registered as a refugee in Greece just six weeks ago.

Despite warnings from the Director of the FBI that the United States is unable to properly vet the 10,000 Muslim Syrian refugees the Obama administration wants to bring to the United States over the next year, and concerns raised by GOP Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump that these migrants may represent a “Trojan horse” filled with terrorists, the Obama administration has recently decided that it wants to increase the number of Syrian refugees admitted to America beyond the previously 10,000.

Nina Shea, Director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, tells Breitbart News that virtually none of these 10,000 Syrian refugees are Christians. They are almost all Muslims she says, in part because they have been approved by the United Nations bureaucracy, which she says is notoriously anti-Christian.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration persists in its policies to bring more Muslim Syrian refugees into the United States. As CBC reported on Saturday:

“The Obama administration is moving to increase and accelerate the number of Syrian refugees who might be admitted into the United States by opening new screening outposts in Iraq and Lebanon, administration officials told Reuters on Friday.”

It’s not just the Obama administration that is turning a blind eye to the threat posed by the rush of Muslim migrants coming to the United States from Syria and other countries in the Middle East.

Sen. Bob Corker, for example, recently said that he’s not concerned about the vetting of the 10,000 Syrian refugees the Obama administration wants to bring to the United States over the

If Senator Corker and other members of Congress are listening to the sentiment expressed by the audience at Saturday’s Second Amendment is Homeland Security tour in Lebanon, Tennessee, they may conclude it’s time to change their positions on a number of issues related to Islamist terrorism and the safety of the homeland.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.