I’ve heard some pretty stupid things in my time. After all, I lived through the Obama administrations chants for change (which never said what change that they were pushing for), and look at all of the division, strife, and problems that gave us.

Then, there are the stupid statements that you’ll occasionally hear about people believing that they can fly (as in without a plane). Maybe that’s insane, maybe it’s stupid. It’s a bad idea either way.

Or the stupid ideas that some people have about how it’s better to appease criminals rather than being able to overpower criminals. Because appeasement always worked with schoolyard bullies, didn’t it? (The answer to that question, in case you don’t know is: No, appeasement doesn’t get a bully to leave you alone. It prolongs the bullying.)

So, when I read this statement from a member of the police department in Toronto, Canada, I had to stop and re-read it to make sure that I actually read what I thought that I had read.

I had. And, yes, it was that stupid. Dave Urbanski writes,

[City News Toronto] said Cst. Marco Ricciardi advised residents at an Etobicoke safety meeting last month to leave their key fobs in faraday pouches in convenient places for thieves to take in order to lessen the risk of physical violence over the fobs.

“To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at the front door because they are breaking into your home to steal your car; they don’t want anything else,” Ricciardi said, according to City News Toronto. “A lot of them that they’re arresting have guns on them, and they are not toy guns. They are real guns. They’re loaded.”

So, two questions here: How are criminals getting guns in a city and country that push for radical gun control, and how does the Toronto police expect to make crime decrease unless they advise people to defend their lives instead of being cattle for criminals to poach at will?

It’s absurd.

The quickest way to stop criminals from breaking into these people’s homes, stealing their cars, and (let’s be honest) almost certainly assaulting many residents there is to encourage the residents to arm themselves with guns and train to use those firearms. And make no secret of that.

Because the way that you stop a bully, whether in a schoolyard or a criminal group, is to make it clear to them that they will hurt and hurt badly if they try initiate violence on innocent people.

Those who use violence to get their ways only understand violence, so, the good people in the world have to be prepared to do bad things like use a firearm against another human being if that is what it takes to save innocent lives. We may wish that wasn’t the case, but that’s just the way that the world works.