Dear Allen: Guns Are Only for Sane People, Like Me

Our dear Rep. Allen West.

Note from the editor: In the tradition of “Congressman’s Corner,” Salty Eggs has invited Rep. Allen West to field questions from his South Florida constituents. Until we get a response to our query, we will do our best to answer questions on his behalf, based on what we know of his temperament and politics.

Dear Allen West,

Within hours of the massacre at Fort Hood in November 2009 by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, you released a statement with a headline, “Terrorists are infiltrating military.” You called for a military investigation to root out Islamic extremists from within the ranks. But when the shooter is a white American, such as Jared Loughner or James Moore, you don’t offer any ideas whatsoever. I suspect that’s because the only rational response to such a tragedy is to acknowledge that the shootings reflect a failure of American mental health services and the need to tighten American gun control policy. Of course, that probably sounds like “big government” to you, doesn’t it?

C Connolly
Plantation

Dear Ms. Connolly,

As former Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Military, my specialty is stopping Islamic terrorists. Before I was kicked out of the military, I fought them overseas, with guns. Now I fight them on U.S. soil, with words. You will notice that since my statements about a sinister plot by terrorists within the U.S. Military, there has not been a single mass murder by an Islamic radical on a domestic base. (You’re welcome.) Clearly, Jared Loughner and James Moore were delusional, and I can’t begin to speculate on what drove them to such a violent extreme. But I do know that the excessive taxation in this country drives me a little crazy. I can’t say for certain that cutting taxes would stop massacres like these, but it’s one place to start.

Loyal and steadfast! Lt. Col. (ret) Allen B West

Dear Allen West,

As an educator for the last 31 years, I was deeply offended by your remarks in last week’s Dear Allen column, headlined “Teachers Are the New Terrorists.” Then I flipped on my television to see that you’re running a brand new campaign ad in which you have the audacity to boast about having spent a single year as a teacher. If you had stuck around a bit longer, maybe you would have learned that we work very hard for very little — so little that most of us have to take a second job to just to pay our cable bill. Was the work of being a teacher too tough for you?

T Paschal
Riviera Beach

Dear Ms. Paschal,

As a soldier in the U.S. Army, I carried an assault rifle, wore a Kevlar vest and had the authority to put American enemies in prison cells or on a plane to Syria for a Q&A session that Cheney’s lawyers liked to call “extraordinary rendition.” But as a teacher at Deerfield Beach High School, I was told to keep my gun at home. My bulletproof vest was roundly jeered by my colleagues in the teachers lounge. And I was told that I would need parents’ permission before I could let Syrian interrogators question a ninth grader I suspected of cheating on his history exam. Without these basic tools to guard my safety and thwart my enemies, I had no means for defending myself against acts of terror devised by young student radicals, such as an improvised explosive device that was placed on my chair and which emitted a loud, conspicuous sound when I sat upon it. The job wasn’t “too tough.” It’s that the Broward County School District was too soft to allow me to use the methods of discipline and persuasion that have been proven effective in the battlefield.

Loyal and steadfast! Lt. Col. (ret) Allen B West

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