OGDEN, Utah (CNN) -- A police officer hailed for helping stop a rampaging shooter who killed five people in a Salt Lake City mall said he simply did what his fellow officers would have done.

"I felt that, whether I'm in my own city or not, if I have the ability to protect more people or prevent loss of lives, I have an obligation," Officer Ken Hammond told reporters. [...]

How nice it must be to "report" foolishness uncritically and get paid for it. But how much sweeter a gig to get paid to disarm peaceful, freeborn men, using violent force and the threat of it, then primp and prance to "reporters" eager to spread the message of your heavenly, brave, opportunistic nature?

The ruling class in Utah assigns itself "permission" to carry concealed guns as part of employment. It takes money from the ruled by force, threatens them with kidnapping and destitution if they're armed without a "permit", then warbles loud humility at press conferences without recognizing the sinister monopoly of force — their systematic tying of man's hands behind him. Saint Hammond may as well have first run around the mall kicking every able-bodied man and woman in the groin before moving on to be the hero of record. "Oh thanks ya massah. Thanks evah."

As with all government threats, if you disagree and defend yourself honorably by doing no more than meet the force brought against you, you will probably be killed. It's government's promise to you, society's perpetual child. Around this country supposedly proud men are bending over with smiles, to be spiritually raped by this stratification of natural rights.

I have never met a cop who's my equal. By these inferiors I and millions of others are harassed, held against our will, spoken to as children, and batted around artificially as cats handle mice. And we are to forget that before the bully class — assigning to itself unnatural, cruel powers of psychological farce — "saved" us, they first disarmed us.

"But it's only a permit!" wails the besotted dogma spewer (common man).

No, it's an unbalancing impediment and gate at which many flavors of unpublished, regular tyranny are administered. Traveling often in the middle of the night, I know cops far better than the average person. The diurnal citizen generally doesn't stand out by merely existing. Exhibit the same behavior in the pre-dawn hours, however, and it's the cop's world exclusively — a world in which you're guilty on sight, and will be detained to attend one offensive, irrelevant question after another until he snags you for having an attitude (called whatever infraction he can throw, since cops are avowedly selective in their "enforcement" of "the law"), or exhausts the limited interrogation skills of his Barney fiefdom and, with the appropriate mix of resigned, hesitating allowance, sends you along your modest Habitrail route, having saved the Republic while adding one more jizz stain to his drawers. If you licked enough paw during the encounter it will be an amicable parting from his point of view. But refuse to be treated as a child near a cookie jar, and you may be lucky to continue living.

"Absurd exaggeration!" stamps the habitual and loud obeyer.

Hardly. I'll give you a personal example (one of too many). A couple of months ago I was parked outside a business in a small shopping center long after all the stores were closed, using that business's wi-fi signal with my laptop. Bear in mind that this was done with the explicit, prior permission of the business owner. Months before I'd asked, "So even if it's 3 in the morning, it's okay with you if I park here and use the signal?" He confirmed this with no condition other than that I take it easy downloading.

Often I would be there as he closed up and walked to his car. I'd wave and he'd return the gesture. Soon, he was waving to me as I glanced up from my laptop. One evening I got out of the car as he was leaving, and told him that I appreciated him allowing me to use the signal. Considering that his business didn't offer anything I'd use (a situation I'd lamented in my first meeting with him), I asked him to keep me in mind if there were anything he needed help with, such as moving furniture, responding to a stranded auto, or anything like that. Since I'm retired, a call at any time wouldn't be an imposition. He asked me to call the store and leave a message with my phone number, which I did as he was driving away.

And it was to this cooperative, mutually beneficial relationship that Deputy Dickweed arrived and shined his car lights in my face. I had been caught!

As I turned on my interior light and put my hands in a neutral position, Double-D walked to my window, my huge laptop screen clearly visible in the passenger seat, and asked what I was doing.

"Using my buddy's wi-fi signal."

He stood there.

"Wireless internet," I offered.

"I know what wi-fi is."

Yes, of course you do, ossifer.

"Well see the thing is, it's after hours; these businesses are closed."

"Yes. I have his permission to park here and use the wi-fi signal anytime, day or night."

"Let me see some ID."

I stared at his right hip, with its holstered sci-fi weapon. Taser. My eyes moved to his left hip. Pistol.

"Is that a request or a demand?"

He straightened. "It's a demand."

Note the moment, because that was where he crossed into overt illegality, a brute operating under color of law. Until then, apart from the inherent hooliganism of the modern police state and his presence as another thug in uniform, this cop hadn't done anything a free-market cop in a mildly poor mood wouldn't have done. A lone car parked outside a closed business — human lit up and active — deserves attention, albeit friendly attention. In a free market, businesses would assign agents to look out for their property after hours, and these agents have as much right to inspect the property and visitors as the business owner. Given the monopoly of modern cops, I have a practical duty to recognize the cop as the ignorant general agent of those businesses, including my benefactor's business — for the monopoly is forced upon them as well as me.

However, once this deputy threatens violent force upon me unless I comply with his illegal, immoral demand, he is the only identified criminal in the parking lot, and it is my right to defend myself from his aggression. Naturally, if I decide to stand up to this asshole and meet his threats with visible defense, he will try to kill me — he and, if "necessary", the horde of similarly lawless jerks empowered by their regular, brute usurpation of another's rights. This dynamic is based on denying even the existence of individual right — in truth the only human right — and holding in its place the imposter of group rights, the false premise that groups may rightfully do things an individual mayn't.

For all Deputy Dickhead had before him was a visibly benign man sitting in a parked car in a lot, engine off. Even in 2007 there is no law requiring people sitting in parked, dormant vehicles to have permission slips (AKA drivers' licenses). And to this benign man sitting in a parked car he posits the violent threat that I must produce "ID". Why then should I not treat him as lower than the common thug, considering he's preening with a badge and all that goes with it in this society? This cretin should be stomped on the spot. Yet I, being at least as smart as the average bear, realize that reacting morally would also radically inconvenience me, likely to the point of death.

I didn't think it was a good day to die, so I caved to the bully and his horde on call in monopolistic control over the "cruiser" video, the story, the outcome, and the press.

Monopolistic control over the press. Do you object to the assertion? How else may one explain these bootlicking articles identifying the entity that disarmed the general, peaceful public as the savior of that same public? Get real. Of course the press are as intimidated by these hooligans as everyone else — perhaps more so, considering that receptive contact with the monopoly is the "news" through which kibble comes to the reporter/lapdog's bowl.

The cited article was written about a state in which, according to the NRA (.pdf), it's illegal to carry a concealed gun in your home, absent a "permit".

A free press would not so vigorously embrace tyrants in embarrassing drivel. Rather, a free press would note when dead victims of shootings were disarmed by laws which left their murderers armed. The effects of laws are not the avowed intentions of those laws, but rather the real outcome — in the case of almost every mass shooting, the lengthening of the victim list amid the failure to prevent the shooter from holding the dangerous object the law says he's not supposed to have. This puerile insanity has ever been.

A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniencies, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, and dares say to reason, `Be thou a slave'; who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it.

The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.

Insert pithy waste of breath in unnecessary echoing of these words by Cesare Beccaria, then wrap up article with predictable line such as, "No, Officer Hammond, you certainly are not a hero", then have a coffee — preferably one I don't have to drive to 7-11 for at this hour. I have been suitably chastised and disincentive-ized to stay at home where, if I'm good and obedient, I may still carry a concealed gun without...

Never mind; I asked permission from the state to own every fucking handgun in my collection. I am still, practically and in my heart, a coward. No hero nor peace of mind.