HELLUVA WEEK

Sorry to be away from the blog longer than usual. It was a busy week, and frankly, a busy month.  I spent last week teaching an advanced 40-hour MAG-80 class at Firearms Academy of Seattle. The prior three weeks had encompassed MAG-40 classes, also 40 hours each, in Colorado hosted by Hershell and Denise Phillips, Alaska hosted by Todd and Tammy Smith, and at FAS hosted by Marty and Gila Hayes. Many thanks to them and the great range safety/coaching crews they put on the firing line.

There was no time to comment on what else was happening in our world, and there was much.

With no advance warning (and, apparently, no input from the affected industry) our President issued an Executive Order that could have a profound, business-killing impact on the most vulnerable corner of the firearms industry. Read that and tell me how it’s going to reduce crime or man’s inhumanity to man on a larger scale, or be anything but a mean-spirited slap in the face of the firearms industry and the law abiding people who buy that industry’s products.

In Baltimore, after trials of three of the six officers accused in the death of Freddie Gray resulted in one hung jury and acquittals on the rest, the prosecutors decided to drop the pending cases. How coincidental that this decision came right after a judge announced that defense lawyers for the accused cops would be able to cross examine prosecutors about issues in the matter, such as the prosecutors’ failure to furnish exculpatory evidence to the defense.

Ya know, if this was an online class in Ethics 101 instead of the firearms blog at Backwoods Home, we could get some interesting learning points out of this.  Had the decision-making district attorney said “OK, so maybe we shouldn’t have thrown cops under the bus without evidence to placate rioters and uninformed crowds,” I would have to give such reasoning a thumbs up for being ethical in the here and now as opposed to when the decision to bring those cases was made.

Or if District Attorney Marilyn Mosby had even said, “Hey, I personally think those cops did wrong and should be prosecuted, but after failing to gain a conviction three times out of three, I have to consider my fiduciary duty to the public as an elected official not to waste the taxpayers’ dollars on cases unsupported by facts in evidence, so I’m dropping the charges,” well, I’d have had to judge that action with that motivation as being within ethical parameters.

But if this blog was an online ethics class, I’d have to say:

“Class, your optional assignment is to write an essay on the theme of, If You Do The Right Thing For The Wrong Reason, Have You Still Really Done the Right Thing?”

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