Rama: Of Horseshoe Hills and Heller

LIVE a stone’s throw away from Horseshoe Hills in Banawa, that place where, three days ago, about eight in the morning, robbers shot an altar boy.

And, like everybody else, including the 14-year old kid who died, I have a mobile phone. In fact, I have three and they are with me daily.

"The Manny Pacquiao Blog". Click here for stories and updates on the Filipino boxing champ.

None of these phones is touchscreen, which seems to be the craze these days, though what I have are all definitely more expensive than the P500 unit the kid had and which he was shot in the back of the head and killed for.

But all three are in superb condition, unlike the boy’s unit which was reportedly so defective the kid had to use a stick to push the buttons to send text or dial numbers for calls.

According to reports, the robbers were so dumb they thought the boy was using an expensive touchscreen unit and killed him to get it. Indeed, it doesn’t take brains to buy a “paltik” and rob others, or elude a gun ban if one has no respect for the law.

All in all, my three phones cost me a total of P28,000, making them 56 times more valuable than the mobile phone the kid hand and, as a result, make me 56 times more likely to get shot in the back of the head and killed while walking near my home at eight in the morning.

Who’s going to protect me? I have never seen either policeman or barangay tanods on patrol near my home, and definitely not in Horseshoe Drive.

It used to be okay because I used to be able to protect myself.

I bought a gun—okay, guns—and spent a small fortune in getting myself trained on how to use them, including how to deploy them in a way that their deterrent value is maximized so I can defend myself without having to fire a shot.

No, I don’t believe in trading shots with anybody over a mobile phone, regardless of value because nothing is more valuable than human life. But if anybody intended on taking my life before taking my possessions, I am certainly prepared to and I definitely can stand my ground.

Then the Comelec gun ban happened and, as a law abiding citizen, I dare not violate it, unlike the robbers in this case who quite simply do not care.

So, who protects me now?

Let’s look elsewhere for insight. Let’s look at the Washington Post’s front page article last January 1, 2010 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/12/31/AR2009123103039.html).

It talks about how crime totals dropped in 2009 in Washington DC, Prince George County and other areas and how, for the District of Columbia, which is often described as the homicide capital of the US, the numbers actually dropped to a 45-year all-time low.

There was a significant drop in violent crime and property crime. The sharpest drop was in homicides—25 percent. There was a 16 percent drop in sexual assaults and a 10 percent decrease in car thefts.

There was, according to the article “no consensus among police officials” on how and why the crime rate went down for 2009 even if some departments subtly tried taking credit by saying “focused enforcement, better use of technology and stepped-up intelligence gathering” on their part.

The article pointed out, however, that this could not have been the case because “when violence is tamped down in one area, it often gets pushed to a neighboring jurisdiction,” meaning there should have been a corresponding increase in the homicide statistics in neighboring places

That did not happen in 2009. Prince George had its lowest homicide numbers since 2000. Montgomery recorded 13 killings, a drop from 21 in 2008. And Fairfax had 11, compared with 19 in 2008.

You want to know what happened in Washington DC in 2009 which did not happen in 45 years—between 1964 to 2008? A year of Heller happened.

In June 26, 2008, the US Supreme Court, in the District of Columbia vs. Heller, struck down a state law which banned handguns among residents and allowed law-abiding citizens to get armed. A year and several months after, homicides in the homicide capital of America went down 25 percent.

How is that for insight?

(knrama@gmail.com)