Guns are tools for emergencies (among other things), much like fire extinguishers or portable generators. The particular emergencies they’re used for are any time when you need to defend yourself or your family against someone intent on causing them harm.

Like, for instance, when a whole city is up in arms and rioting through the streets and the police have “pulled out for their own safety.”

Hollywood screenwriter Robert J. Avrech gives a vivid account of that exact scenario in this classic piece: “Jew Without a Gun,” describing how he and his family made their way home from a screening through the 1992 LA riots. It’s a fantastic piece that brings the need for gun ownership home in a devastating fashion. By all means, read the whole thing.

He sets the stage right off:

‘Gazing from our bedroom window we watch orange flames lick at the darkness, pillars of black smoke climb into the sky. We can actually smell the acrid odor of burning rubber.

“Look how close they are,” says Karen.

“Just past La Cienega. Maybe eight blocks away.”

Karen gives me a long penetrating gaze:

“What do we do if they come here?”

My mind is racing away. The truth is we are defenseless. Unless I get crazy inventive like Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs.

“After this is all over,” I vow, “I’m going to buy a pistol.”

There’s the key point that no amount of rhetoric can disguise; without a gun, you are almost completely defenseless in the event of a civic breakdown. The police won’t be able to help you; they’re overwhelmed. The rioters won’t spare you; mobs aren’t rational animals. No substitute (clubs, knives, pepper-spray, tasers) will provide sufficient power, distance, or intimidation to deter an attacking mob.

But, you may ask, would a gun provide such defense?

For answer, Mr. Avrech points to the example of Korean shopkeepers, who were especially targeted by Blacks during the riots (but remember, minorities can’t be racist).

But the Koreans owned guns and heroically defended their property and lives through force of arms, frequently using AR-15s against heavily-armed looters. So anyone who tells you that private citizens don’t need assault weapons are just plain ignorant. Besides, as Mark Levin says, it is the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Needs. 

It was a lesson that should have reverberated nationally, but some commentators labeled the Koreans vigilantes. Just another case of the mainstream media getting it wrong.

An armed mob is an incredibly dangerous thing. Less-lethal self-defense isn’t going to cut it; you need something that will scare and, in the last resort stop the mob. Guns are the only things that even have a chance of doing that (to preempt the usual nonsense, let me remind you that guns are tools that allow you to better respond to an emergency; they are not guarantees that you will succeed unscathed. Your choice is between being able to put up a fight and being completely at the mercy of the rioters).

Civilization is a thin covering that only exists as long as most people willingly go along with it. Underneath is the ugly face of fallen man: wild animal mixed with demon. Sooner or later, civilization always breaks down, at least temporarily, and when that happens those who are on the side of civilization are left to look to their own defense until the storm passes.

Since race riots are starting to come back into fashion, now is exactly the wrong time to conclude that you’ll never be called on to have to defend your home or your family. Things are heating up in this country, and it’s likely as not that many of us – especially those who live in or near urban areas – will experience civic breakdown before things get better. Riots are like any other disaster; you don’t really know when or where the next one will hit, so it pays to be prepared.

Your duty is to defend your family. Buy a gun, learn to use it, and keep it with you. Because every emergency is unthinkable until it happens.

I’ll give Mr. Avrech the last word, since he’s a much better writer than I am.

If the Los Angeles riots taught us anything, it’s that you’re a fool if you count on the authorities to protect you in times of civil chaos — in fact, at any time. In the end, only I can protect my family.

I’m never, ever going to allow myself to be outgunned by the bad guys. All the gun laws that are on the books—and there are thousands of them—just make it that much easier for the barbarians to amass weapons and for law-abiding people like you and me to be at their mercy.

If you outlaw weapons, as so many squishy liberals yearn to do — well then, only the state and the outlaws will be armed. Which leaves ordinary citizens at the mercy of an all-powerful government and a variety of merciless criminal subcultures.