This is not a story about racial hatred. No shots were fired. And a life was potentially saved. And nobody's Second Amendment rights were infringed, compromised, questioned, or threatened.
Clint Eastwood, or his wannabe double, never even showed up. And still, order was maintained, a little girl was saved.
So the story probably won't get much press.
Because so much of the NRA's rhetoric trades on fear, racism, and apocalyptic predictions about the future of America, and because the media, both liberal and conservative, consistently report the tragedies and ignore the triumphs that regularly distinguish American life, I thought it might be useful to pause a moment and take note of what happened in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Thursday, July 11.
A five-year old girl, Jocelyn Rojas, was allegedly kidnapped. Her mother duly reported that her daughter was missing. Pictures of the abducted girl were spread around the community. Procedures were followed. Temar Boggs and his friend, Chris, both of them teenagers, saw the pictures and started out on their bikes to look for the little girl.
They didn't call up a militia. They didn't feel that the police had taken too long to respond.
And then they saw the the little girl in a maroon or burgundy-colored sedan and started out in pursuit. On their bikes. Without guns. Without concealed carry licenses. Without making dire predictions about derelict, irresponsible, unarmed citizens.
A young black man and his friend helping to rescue a young white girl—if the picture is accurate—and none of them cared about race, black helicopters, or the coming debt riots. Or even Latin American drug gangs.
The abductor saw the two boys, who chased him for fifteen minutes, until thinking better of his rash and violent actions, freed the girl at the bottom of a hill. The little girl told Temar that "she needed her mother."
Temar granted her request. Mother and daughter were reunited. Without guns. Without an insurrection. Without a race war. Without paranoia.
Without much press coverage. Read the full story here.
My point is a simple one. This stuff happens on a daily basis in America, and it happens more frequently than debt riots.
The NRA's profile, if you will, of the human animal, and more specifically, of the American animal, is simply wrong. We know why they choose to profile us as they do. The arms industry needs money.
So we continually remind ourselves that most Americans are neither the paranoid, fearful insurrectionist, armed-to-the-teeth civilian soldier nor the deranged, serial, campus-stalking murderer—the two species of Americans that the NRA has identified.
And in the current climate, Jocelyn and Temar's story won't get much air time. Because it wasn't about race, and it wasn't about guns, and it wasn't about fear, and it wasn't about hatred, and it wasn't about paranoia.
It's a boring story of two guys on bikes looking for a little girl. And they succeeded.
Not all stories end this well, but when they do, I think we need to celebrate them.
We are not who the NRA think we are. We are the very best at what we do—living decent, unarmed lives, looking out for one another without fear or suspicion, day in and day out—and stories like this one remind us of that simple, salient and national fact.
Thanks, Temar, for welcoming all of us, once again, to the real America.
It's a pleasure to live here.