The Warrior Lives: Remembering Rosenberg

Although he didn’t wear it on his sleeve, Joel’s Jewish heritage deeply influenced his views on the importance of self-defense and human liberty, which in his final years were probably better known to the public in Minnesota than his fiction. His Metzada books were his imaginative, science fictional expression of a “Never Again” mentality that was cemented by his personal experience with a nighttime shoot-out in his own house with a home invader. I’ll never forget when we went out shooting together one evening with our wives and he examined my fancy semi-automatic with its glow-in-the-dark tritium night sights before handing it back to me with a dismissive shrug. “They’re pretty, but if you ever find yourself in an actual shootout with it, I guarantee that you’re not going to be actually aiming them at anyone,” he said. Thus spake the voice of hard experience.

Despite his skepticism about the nighttime utility of gun sights, he was a good shot. He taught carry classes for those obtaining their licenses and by all reports he was a good and thorough instructor who placed a strong emphasis on safety. The other thing I remember about that double-date at the gun range was the way he encouraged my wife to try various guns in order to find one that best suited her. To do this, he informed us, one simply held the pistol with both hands in a natural, relaxed position in front of one’s chest and fired at the target without even seeking to aim it. When her first blind shot from a laser-equipped 9mm nailed the profile target right in the middle of the forehead, Joel didn’t even crack a smile, but merely nodded approvingly. “Yeah, I think that’s the gun for you,” he told her. “And you don’t need that laser.”

........Joel was deeply and genuinely dedicated to “the Flame”, by which he meant the flame of human freedom. That dedication was why he deliberately walked into a police station legally carrying a gun in the full knowledge that the police officers might be inclined to ignore state law and harass him for doing nothing more than exercising his legal rights. Regardless of whether one thinks his actions were heroic or foolish – and I am myself inclined towards the former – there is no doubt in my mind that he did so for exactly the same reason that his Guardians were always battling against evil in the form of slavery, even at the cost of their lives.

I don’t know with any degree of certainty that the strain of losing his job as a result of his illegitimate arrest and the pressure of his subsequent legal problems played any part in the massive heart attack that killed him, as he wasn’t in what one would describe as the best of health, but regardless, Joel Rosenberg died as he always wanted to live, as a fighter. When his beloved wife of 32 years, Felicia Herman, sent out an email informing friends and acquaintances of his death, she didn’t describe him as an activist, or even a writer, but as a husband, a father, and a mensch.

Via Vox Popoli