One week after the Florida high school killings CNN hosted a “stacked” Town Hall meeting. This is Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, at the meeting, berating Dana Loesch a spokeswoman for the NRA. “You just told this group of people that you are standing up for them. You’re not standing up for them, until you say I want less weapons.” Interruption follows for cheering and loud applause.

Proverbs 26:11 comes to mind: “As a dog returns to his vomit. So a fool [the typical bleeding-heart Democrat in this case] repeats his folly.” Luckily and fortunately, Americans have President Trump, who I will come to.

What the Sheriff didn’t say, because it hadn’t yet leaked out, was that one of his deputies, Scot Peterson, who served as the ‘armed resource officer’, had remained sheltered from harm outside of the school while the shooting was going on. Another three of his deputies who arrived on the scene stayed crouched behind their police vehicle. Peterson was suspended and has since resigned.

Sheriff Israel was also at pains to deflect attention from the FBI’s failure to follow up specific warnings passed on them and his own department’s failure to do anything about Nikolas Cruz despite receiving many complaints. Only one person was to blame he intoned. Really? Then what is the point of him and his fainthearted deputies?

One message from this episode, as if we didn’t know, is that the police cannot be relied upon to protect us or our families.

I was once attacked by a no-good, estranged boyfriend of one of my daughters outside of my house. I tried ineptly, as best as I could, to fight him off and was lucky that an ex-truck driver neighbor intervened to help me out. In the meantime, my wife at the time had called the police. They arrived too late for the main event. He had long since run off threatening to set a gang on me.

For a while I carried a tightly rolled-up newspaper in my briefcase to ward off potential attackers. I don’t exactly recall, but I might have seen this used effectively by James Bond. How effective it would have been in my hands I will leave you to guess.

Most of us are protected because of where we live and the people we mix with. There is another, less safe world on our doorsteps but, to a large extent, the two worlds do not intersect. Watch out if and when they do. Then you will have no protection worth spit.

America is a gun-owning society, as is Switzerland. According to the latest UNODC figures, the homicide rate in America is over seven times that in Switzerland. And, as point of interest, five times that in non-gun-owning Australia. America is a more dangerous place to live – particularly in some places, in some cities. Would you like to have a gun to protect yourself and your family? Or, are you content to rely on the police arriving in the nick of time?

Let me test the proposition a little further. The homicide rate in South Africa is close to fifty times the rate in Switzerland. Would you still feel safe unarmed in your bed at night or walking down a dark street? Well, would you, punk?

One of the things we are learning about Trump is his common sense. This stands out these days because it is so rare among the great and good. Another is his determination to actually do things as distinct from empty rhetoric – Obama’s healing the planet and lowering sea levels is a soaring example of the latter.

He has three proposals on the table. One is to strengthen the background checks required for gun purchases, another is to consider how best to exclude those with mental illnesses from owning guns, a third is to make schools harder targets. Among other security measures, he suggests arming a small proportion of teachers and other school staff, selected and trained, with concealed weapons.

The left hates the idea of arming school staff. More guns you see, not less. But it has worked on airlines. In any event, Trump wants schools to cease being gun-free zones and, thus, soft targets. That seems sensible to me. And, importantly, it might actually work.

Originally, he also suggested increasing the permissible age to buy a rifle from eighteen years to twenty-one. He seems to have backed off. Again, that apparent reflection on his part, seems sensible to me unless you implement a tighter age limit with a lot of carve outs. For example, do you deny a single nineteen or twenty-year-old woman living alone in a rough neighborhood the means to defend herself? Apropos, it might just have something to do with armed women that the reported rape rate in non-violent Australia is a little higher than in America.

Do you prevent an eighteen-year old serviceman on leave from Afghanistan, where he wields an automatic weapon, from buying a gun? How about a young man or woman on a rural property? And, by the way, is it about buying a gun or possessing a gun? The two are not the same. Once you get into the weeds of many proposal they start falling apart.

Unlike Trump, typical Democrats don’t care if their proposals are workable or effective provided their moral superiority is on show. It is disingenuous and it is dangerous for all those in potentially vulnerable circumstances.

Self-defense is a basic right. Only pussies think otherwise. Americans steadfastly guard their right to the means to defend themselves. And us: Meow!