A group of predators is outside your door. You're low on ammo. You call the cops. They provide all the assistance you need. Too damn bad this isn't the way cops help you in this country. Over here there are some places that would have sent the cops to protect the predators from you.
"Nain, Nfld. — Police in northern Labrador received a frantic call for help this week when three people in a remote cabin found themselves surrounded by polar bears and running out of bullets."
I hate it when that happens. Course the "running out of bullets" part would be ample proof that noone in the cabin had the surname of du Toit.
"A man and two women, speaking via satellite phone Thursday, said they had been forced to shoot a 680-kilogram polar bear the night before after warning shots failed to scare away the animal."
680 Kilograms is about 1,500 pounds. That's like a good sized moose with claws & no aversion with eating human flesh.
"The lady said there were a number of bears circling the cabin and they were just about out of ammunition,' said Sgt. Baillie.
That's when the trio called the Labrador Inuit Association in Nain. But the signal went dead before they could complete the call."
Helluva time to run out of ammo isn't it?
"The RCMP dispatched a Twin Otter aircraft to drop some ammunition near the cabin, about 50 kilometres north of Nain at the base of the Kiglapait Mountains.
When the aircraft arrived overhead, the RCMP officers could see a man using a snowmobile to drag the dead bear away from the cabin.
Another bear was spotted in the water about 100 metres from the cabin.
One of the officers opened a cargo door and dropped four boxes of bullets to the cabin below.
Baillie said the pilot considered landing nearby but the people on the ground waved as if to say they needed no further help."
Now that's the way it should work: cops drop off extra ammo & let the citizen handle things. Course this relies on the proper attitude among civilians moreso than cops.
When I first moved to Colorado one of the things that surprised me most was the attitude of some people. I recall hearing about an incident in Boulder where a bear had broken into a house. The occupants all ran outside & called the shriff. It took the sheriff a few hours to scare the bear away. I remember thinking that in th mountains of North Carolina the onyl reason to call the sheriff if something similar happened would be to ask his opinion on where the new rug would look best: on the floor in front of the fireplace of hanging on the wall.
Then again my first day in Colorado (full day at least) this rather lovely young lady took me to Rocky Mountain National Park. I stopped to read one of the bulletin boards at a trail we were about to walk down & saw the warnings about bears & mountain lions & snakes. Underneath those warnings in much bolder & larger print was a warning that all weapons were prohibited in the park. The young lady was a student at U of C at Boulder & didn't think there was anything odd about that.
Clinton (or perhaps Bush Sr.) issued an executive order that prohibited the carrying of weapons in all National Parks. As en executive order it holds the same weight as anything that appears in the U.S. Code.
Canada is by no means a gun rights utopia, but at least it appears in the non-urban areas (& I mean non- urban) the citizens & cops are capable of rational behavior & appropriate action.
Posted by Publicola at June 4, 2004 04:44 AM