The story, “Obama and the Pirates”, posted earlier poses an interesting dilemma — how can we protect our shipping in the Indian Ocean (and elsewhere) from piracy without mobilizing the FBI, Navy and other arms of our government, which is now being done at enormous expense?
Once again, take a look at how our forefathers would have handled it. They had a lot of experience with evil people in far away places taking advantage of our seamen’s relative helplessness when plying far away waters. It was too expensive to mobilize the Navy to protect one or two ships. If the sailors took matters into their own hands, they risked looking like pirates in that part of the world. But the forefathers had the answer and wrote it into the Constitution — a Letter of Marque and Reprisal … a legally sanctioned license, by Congress, to shoot the bastards with the implied threat that if it wasn’t liked in that part of the world: Navy soon to follow. It seemed to work … did you encounter any Barbary Pirates the last time you cruised the Mediterranean?
And speaking of hi-jacking, I wonder if any airplanes would be hi-jacked if anybody could board an airplane armed. Pretty scary thought, huh? Any person that you meet on the street can be armed and many are, but there is no chaos. Maybe most streets are pretty peaceable because of this, unless you live in New York City or a few other places where it is illegal to be armed for your own personal protection.