Tea at Trianon: A Good Guy With a Gun

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, August 6, 2022

A Good Guy With a Gun

From Townhall:

Last weekend, a law-abiding citizen with a gun quickly ended a mass shooting in progress at an Indiana mall as soon as the gunman began firing. Less than three weeks after the state's constitutional carry law took effect, the armed bystander, identified as 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, delivered the kill shot that stopped the active shooter who is accused of murdering three victims and wounding two others, including a little girl who suffered minor injuries.
Although it's against Simon Property Group's code of conduct for anyone to carry a weapon inside its shopping centers, local leadership was thankful the young man was "very proficient" with a pistol and took swift action regardless. Greenwood Police Chief Jim Ison told reporters at a news conference that "the real hero of the day is the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in that food court." The city's "grateful" Mayor Mark Myers praised the "good Samaritan" who "saved lives" during the Sunday shooting and prevented "further bloodshed."
"Many people would have died" if not for Dicken responding within two minutes of the assailant opening fire on mall-goers, Ison noted, adding that the young man had no police training or military background. (Read more.)