As you may recall, I’ve joined forces with the local neighborhood improvement association. We’ve been spending every weekend cleaning up this “up and coming” district of Baltimore, getting neighborhood kids to pitch in, and generally doing what we can to make the place more attractive. We’ve boarded up vacant houses used by drug addicts and dealers. We’ve reported piles of trash, hauled them to the dump in my pickup, and hounded the city to remove debris from streets and alleys. It IS making a noticeable difference in the appearance of our city, and clearly it’s giving people a sense of hope and a little pride in their community. I’m proud of what we’re doing.

However, for one of our main volunteers, it got a little dicey yesterday.

One of the things we’ve done (in addition to boarding up the houses their customers use) is report flagrant open air drug dealing to the police. Putting aside my personal skepticism about the War on Drugs, I can see the benefit of what we’re doing–we can’t make drugs disappear or make drug dealers want to have legitimate gainful employment, but we are making them change their habits. We can make them want to take their transactions elsewhere. In the process, it’s become pretty obvious to the corner lieutenants handling the drug stashes where the sudden, newfound heat is coming from. So much so that as my friend Dan showed up yesterday morning and started to get ready to clean up the usual spots, they were ready for them. He noticed as he pulled up to our usual spot that four or five of the “usual suspects” were walking toward him and appeared ready to do him harm. He managed to get back in his truck and get away before they could get their hands on him, and a witness called the police. The police came by, tossed the bad guys against the wall, checked for warrants, and gave them a pretty good talking-to. My guess is that A) we’re having an effect on their business as Dan reported that our private “investigations” apparently helped the cops nail a stash, hitting the bad guys in the wallet, and B) our efforts have become substantial and intrusive enough that they’ve put two and two together about who is doing the snitching.

Assuming that we come out of this with our hides intact, it’s an exciting sign that individuals who care about their communities CAN and DO make a difference.

But wouldn’t it be nice if when I get jumped by four or five armed and angry drug dealers that I be allowed the means of self protection?

I’d love to have Sarah Brady or Michelle Pierce or Sue Peschin or Casey Anderson or Peter Hamm explain to me how it is that a community activist–someone like myself or my friend Dan, somebody who’s risking their own neck improving the place where many decent people live, and by doing so coming directly into harm’s way–should be disarmed in the face of that kind of threat. I’d love to hear them try to explain how Baltimore is safer if four or five belligerent thugs armed with bats and tire irons and knives and occasionally guns don’t have to worry about me having a firearm. When they decide I’m due for some payback for cleaning up my own damn neighborhood, should I be expected to face them barehanded? That represents pragmatic, smart social policy? That makes America safer, when thugs don’t have to fear honest private citizens?

Fortunately Dan got away intact this time. What happens next time? Will the Brady folks be there (disarmed of course) to act as a human shield when a vicious felon comes for him next time? Will Ceasefire Maryland be there to lay their lives on the line when a couple of angry, sociopathic narcotics dealers recognize me coming out of the grocery store with my wife tomorrow night? Or will they be safely ensconced in their suburban mansions in Bethesda and Chevy Chase fretting about non-existant “assault weapons”?

If the fact that those folks earnestly believe I shouldn’t be allowed to arm myself in the face of that sort of threat doesn’t anger you, I don’t know what will.

Think they’ll respond? Feel free to ask them on my behalf.