The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1914-12-31
A PARTHIAN SHOT AS
HE RUNS AWAY

We have heretofore given Straub
of ST. Petersburg Times credit for
at least the purpose to state the po-
sitions of his opponents in contro-
versy fairly, but a recent deliver
ance from that source makes us
.waver in that opinion. Speaking
of the Telegram and the Ocala Star
and the attitude of those papers in
the great constitutional argument
now on concerning the possession of
deadly weapons by the citizen,
Straub says: They appear to be
defending the carrying and use-the
necessity even-of guns upon the
grounds of personal safety" The
irresistible inference from that Ian
guage is that the two papers in
question are advocating social
state in which every citizen shall go
about habitually armed with a pis-
tol to insure his personal safety. A
more outrageous misstatement of the
facts in the case could hardly have
been made if the writer of those
words had deliberately intended to
misrepresent.
1t is not for want Of perspicac-
ity that Straub has thus sought to
shift the argument and pervert the
facts, for he has abundance of gray
matter and knows we'll how to use
it. 1t is because he has been
beaten, overwhelmed, routed and
driven from field of his own choos-
ing, and being a bad loser, he hurled
a Parthian shaft as he Skedaddled
from his trench and shouted victory
as he ran away. lie knows perfect
ly well that neither the Telegram
NOR the Star has advocated any such
lawless and uncivilized state of af-
fairs as he has claimed and that
both papers have solely insisted on
the constitutional privilege of the
citizen to possess and use weapons
In such circumstances as the natural
and indefeasible rights of human
being regulated by law demanded
and permitted.
One of our old-fashioned, homely
virtues is to recognize a capable
ally when we see him and to put him
on the job right away. In the last
issue of the Ocala Star to hand, Edi-
tor Straub is skinned and his quiv-
ering tissues laid bare with such
fine art and efficiency that we could
pity him but for his contumacy, OBJ
duracy and incurable perversity on
this pistol-toting issue We have no
room to reproduce the full article,
but We take the following from it as
a clear statement of the essential
truth of the subject, which both the
Telegram and the Star have persist
entity adhered to:
"As We have not advocated and do
not intend to advocate the habitual
carrying of arms at normal times in
peaceable communities. we don't see
why Straub should have injected
such proposition into the argu-
ment. We think that if Straub will
observe the dispatches in his own
paper, he will see that whenever an
armed criminal attacks an unarmed
person, the latter has the worst of
it. The proposition that we made in
the first place was that citizens of
the United States should retain their
right to keep arms, as their best
guarantee against foreign aggression
and domestic oppression; that the
citizen had right to keep a weapon
in his home, and that he should
teach the members of his family, for
their own safety, how to use-not
misuse it. Sraub has eXcurted on
whole lot of side lines, created by
his ncapacity to understand any
views but his own. We now leave
him to wander about on them and
will go on to other things