Thursday, January 10, 2019

So We Need A Wall To Protect Us


I think back over the past couple years, thinking of the heinous crimes committed here in my area.
 
A man on his way to work early in the morning spotted a duffel bag lying in the road and stopped to check it out.  Unknown to him three people had placed it there and were lying in wait.   Upon getting out of his car, the victim was hit with a hail of gunfire, the perpetrators fled with his car and the few dollars he had in his pocket.  They were apprehended a few days later.  The motive was that the leader wanted to kill someone. They were all local people.

It was nearing shift change at a rural Pennsylvania Turnpike exit when an armed man accosted two tollbooth personnel.  While he had a plan to have them tie up each other they outsmarted him.  The male employee was able to disarm the assailant and run outside, alerting the guard of the armored car that had just arrived to pick up the tolls.  The gunman, unknown to them, had a second gun.  In short order the turnpike employee and the armed guard were both dead.  When the Pennsylvania State Police arrived they killed the gunman.   The gunman’s motive was to rob the armored car.  He knew the schedule, he knew the routine, and he was a retired State Police officer who had been assigned to the Pa turnpike.  He was also was employed as range master at shooting range in nearby Harrisburg.

A family living just a couple of miles away was going through some serious domestic issues.  One night it reached the boiling point.  When it subsided three lives were wasted, the wife and one step daughter lay dead, two step daughters were traumatized, and the husband was headed for a life behind bars.  I knew him, he was a hardworking man born and raised right here in Fulton County.

With this in mind, I think of all the post I see of people wanting our government to build a wall on our southern border.  Now I would be the first to agree that we do need border security and in places a barricade of some sort certainly is necessary however no wall will protect us from the crimes real and imagined that our POTUS trots out daily.  As Walt Kelly said over two hundred years ago “we have met the enemy and he is us”.         

2 comments:

Woody Meristem said...

You hit the nail on the head about the wall. Neither the Great Wall of China or Hadrian's Wall kept out the foreign peoples they were built to guard against. Walled cities virtually always fell to a siege. The Great Wall of Trump won't keep anyone safe from local folks with criminal intent or mental problems and immigrants apparently have lower crime rates than native-born.

We've got to get a handle on immigration, but we also have to remember that most of our ancestors whether Irish, German, Italian or eastern European were unwanted immigrants when they arrived.

Ruth Hiebert said...

Well said. Each country has more than enough 'criminals' living within its borders.I'm all for border security, but keeping everyone out will not solve the problems we already have.