HEY, VERN! WHAT'S THIS CHAINSAW FOR?

HEY, VERN! WHAT'S THIS CHAINSAW FOR?

I don't know. If you were a US guard at the border, would you let a guy with red stuff on his chainsaw come into the US? That's what happened, and the result was that the fellow bringing the chainsaw and knife into Maine killed a guy he'd threatened.

And yet... the guy had no arrest warrants. If it were me, and I were going to help a guy clear his land, I'd be pissed if I were held at the border, or had my chainsaw confiscated.

So, amazingly, the guard did the right thing.

The bigger problem was that there was a Canadian warrant for this guy that the US didn't know about. That would have been a reason to hold the guy, or at least confiscate his sharp tools. I also have to wonder whether having weird stuff on your chainsaw isn't suspicious enough to generate a warrant, and I wonder why the border guard didn't do that.

The problem we have is that in today's world, as has been the case for years, if someone wants to commit a brutal crime, in any magnitude, it's difficult to prevent. That means that the only true solution for security isn't more weapons and hatred, but growing people who instinctively do the peaceful thing and who haven't been trained to hate or distrust. It sounds simple, but it isn't, is it?