OPINION:
It’s funny how personal tragedy can bring out the pro-Second Amendment sides of people.
That’s what’s going on in Hollywood right now with the “PDC Posse,” a group of gun-toting men who’ve taken it upon themselves to defend properties affected — read: nearly destroyed — by the Woolsey Fire by warning, via a posted sign, “Looters will be shot on site! PDC Posse.” And maybe these guys were all pro-Second Amendment prior to the tragedies of fire ravaging their homes.
But where’s the leftist condemnation?
Where’s the shocked and outraged professions from the actor’s guild? The finger-shaking shushing from the likes of Sen. Dianne Feinstein?
Pop singer Pink’s husband, the former motorcross star Carey Hart, posted a photo on Instagram of the dozen or so masked and armed men assembled behind the sign — and by armed, it’s meant well-armed. They’re not waving tiny pistols, in other words.
“[These are] a group of locals I used to live by,” but I’m not in the photo, Hart wrote, USA Today reported.
Now maybe Hart’s been a pro-Second Amendment guy all his life. But it’s certainly out-of-character for the political talk that dominates liberal land Hollywood.
But it’s still odd coming from the Tinsel Town bubble, where gun control is widely accepted and expected political platforming (even as the movies that are made blast all kinds of weapons, all violence, all the time).
As Hart made it clear: He wants other home-owning fire victims to take up similar defensive arms. Ostensibly, even the gun controlling types.
“It’s unfortunate that some people take advantage of others in a crisis,” Hart wrote on Instagram. “While the Malibu fires have been burning, some locals have been fighting off and defending their property against the fires. There have been sightings of looters breaking in to homes. Well, if you are a looter, think twice if you are heading back into malibu #DefendYourLand #2ndamendment.”
That’s all well and good.
These victims of the fire — and there are hundreds of them; at least 435 buildings north of Los Angeles have been burned and 250,000 or so Southern Californians have been evacuated — these victims have every right to defend what’s left of their properties from the scum-suckers of society who want to loot and steal and profit off tragedy.
And scum-sucking off this fiery tragedy has indeed been a problem, according to local law enforcement.
“We have experienced some looting activity during the past two days,” said the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office on Monday, in a written statement explaining that teams of law enforcement have been dispatched to neighborhoods to arrest looters, the Daily Mail reported. “People found in areas where they do not belong will be contacted by law enforcement and may be arrested.”
These are celebrity-populated areas, too.
Malibu and Calabasas, where the Kardashian family, Miley Cyrus and Gerard Butler live, have been destroyed by fire and evacuated.
Pink and husband Hart, for their part, were forced to abandon their $110 million mansion in Malibu.
No wonder some of these homeowners are especially anxious to defend their homes from looters; they’re pricey properties.
But here’s the thing: Hollywood has a bad habit of weighing in on political matters about which it knows little — to include the Second Amendment — and almost always from the perspective of far-leftist elitism. It’s not uncommon for Hollywood, for instance, to demand the nation at-large adopt what the liberals like to call “common sense gun control,” which is more to truth a call for gun confiscations.
It’s not uncommon for Hollywood to scorn those who argue, hey, the Second Amendment saves — to dismiss those who remind, hey, the Second Amendment is a pretty handy tool to have, say, if you’re a young woman living alone in a crime-plagued city, or a family living 20 minutes away from the nearest police department, or an elderly individual who can’t relocate from an apartment complex that’s been slowly taken over by drug dealing thugs.
Or, say, a homeowner victimized by a tragic fire and left vulnerable to the preyings of scum-sucking looters.
Now maybe more in Hollywood will get it?
The thing is, most Americans will read Hart’s Instagram post and think, dang right.
It’d just be nice if the leftists in Hollywood would think the same about families outside the Tinsel bubble who want their own Second Amendment right to defend their own properties as well.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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