Originally Posted in 2013
I honestly can’t recall the subject of the very first article I wrote way back when I first started writing these long-winded missives. I do recall that two subjects were of concern to me at the time; illegal immigration and gun control. Well, it seems like I have come full circle as gun control is once again the subject of greatest concern for me.
With everyone from the Federal Government all the way to the state governments, attempting to enact their own laws to prevent gun violence, the Second Amendment is under attack like no other time in our nation’s history. Yet this time it appears that there is greater public support for stricter laws regarding who can own guns, and what type they may own.
Before I continue, I would like you to consider two scenarios and think about how you would react to each of them. In the first scenario imagine you are at a mall or busy shopping center and you see a uniformed policeman or country sheriff walk in and begin shopping. In the second scenario you see an ordinary person in civilian clothes walk in, but this person is carrying a sidearm in a holster and they begin to shop in the store.
Now, how would you react to the two scenarios I presented you with? I’m betting you wouldn’t think anything about the first, but would begin to feel a bit uncomfortable with the second, if not downright frightened. Why? In both cases all you have is an armed person walking around shopping. What is it about an armed person that frightens you so?
If you were to drive through your neighborhood you would probably be shocked to learn just how many homes had guns in them, some of them probably having small arsenals. Would knowing that fact cause you to want to move out of that neighborhood? If not, then why does seeing someone actually carry a firearm scare you so much? I’ll tell you why, because you have been brainwashed into believing that guns are dangerous and that when people who carry them, besides law enforcement of course, they are intent upon committing a crime. Ninety percent of the time when I leave my house I always carry two knives on me. Does that mean that I am intent upon stabbing someone, or am I just prudent to carry some means, however insignificant, of protecting myself? Yet if I were to carry a sidearm you would most likely call 911 and have me arrested. Yet, legally all I would be guilty of doing is exercising my Constitutionally protected right.
The unfortunate truth is that the average person in this country does not understand that nature of their rights, and this includes some who claim to be staunch conservatives. Just the other day I heard someone, who rails constantly against Barack Obama and his ‘liberal’ policies, say that there is no need for the average person to have a semi-automatic rifle in their home. This person went on to say “Why should they need a rifle that fires 30 rounds to go hunt deer?“
When I hear that my blood pressure must have jumped 30 points! Really, you think the keeping and bearing of arms is about shooting deer? Sorry, but if you do, then you are a fool who has drunk the poisoned Kool Aid given to you by the media and our government! When I hear people talk like that I am reminded of a quote by Norm Chomsky, “…the general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.” If asked, most people could not explain the nature and purpose of their rights and, since they don’t, they also do not know that they are under attack. They fail to realize that once they are gone, there’s no getting them back except by fighting back against those who have taken them. Think about something Patrick Henry once sarcastically proclaimed, “O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone…Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation…inflicted by those who had no power at all? “
And therein lies the purpose for the Second Amendment. It IS NOT to hunt deer, it IS NOT so that we may go target shooting, and it IS NOT so that we may protect and defend our homes against criminals. All those are secondary benefits of the Second Amendment, but the primary purpose our Founders included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights was so that we the people could stand on equal terms with any army that our government might raise to enforce unjust or unconstitutional laws upon the people.
Already we are woefully outgunned by the present day standing armies that our government is able to use to enforce the laws they pass upon us. They have fully automatic weapons capable of firing up to 6000 rounds a minute. And they are trying to deprive us of the right to own and carry a semi-automatic weapon with a magazine holding 30 rounds?
They tell us that there is no place in the home for a semi-automatic weapon with a 30 round magazine for self defense, and therefore they are going to protect us from ourselves by banning the manufacture, sale, and in some instances, the possession of these type weapons.
Yet, according to this very same government, “A rifle chambered in 5.56 NATO with a 30 round magazine is suitable for personal defensive use.” This is according to the Department of Homeland Security’s HSCEMS-1212-00011, Solicitation 4. And lest I be negligent in mentioning, these rifles used by our government for self defense are not semi-automatic, they are capable of firing on full automatic. But it’s okay for them to have them, but according to them we are not even capable of having semi-automatic weapons for our own defense. Does the word hypocrisy even come to mind…for ANYONE?
From my own personal experience I would have to say that at least 70% of the people in this country do not understand the concept of a right versus a privilege. In 1826 John Adams said, “You have rights antecedent to all earthy governments: rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the universe.” Thomas Jefferson also said, “Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.”
Finally, in 1789 Albert Gallatin stated, “The whole of Bill of Rights is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals…It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has the right to deprive them of.”
As it regards to the current discussion, the Second Amendment states, “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” There is no definition as to what type, caliber, size magazine they may hold, it simply says arms.
Let me ask you something, the First Amendment protects your freedom of speech. At the time of the Founders there were no telephones, there were no personal computers, there were no iPhones. So speech entailed either face to face communications, or written materials distributed for the public to read. How would you like it if the government were to ban social networking pages like Facebook, ban e-mail, ban the use of all cellphones and even home phones? If they can limit the type arms we may carry, they can limit the type and means by which you can communicate.
Our rights are NOT subject to political discussion and public debate, they are ours and it is ONLY when we abuse our rights that we can be punished. In 1816 Thomas Jefferson said, “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
Therefore, if someone uses a firearm to commit a crime, that person may be punished for violating the rights of their victim, but you CANNOT pass a law which deprives millions of others from the free exercise of their right. When government passes a law which deprives the people of their unalienable right the government has become tyrannical, and anyone who by the power of their office enforces such a law, is also a tyrant.
Most people don’t know who James Monroe was, yet he was the last president elected to office who was one of the Founding Fathers of this nation. Monroe once said, “The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals.”
Most people also don’t know who Roger Sherman was. He was the ONLY Founding Father to have signed all four of our nation’s founding documents, and the person Thomas Jefferson once said about, “That is Mr. Sherman, of Connecticut, a man who never said a foolish thing in his life.” If that is true, that Roger Sherman never said a foolish thing in his life, than you ought to consider something he once said in a 1790 debate over a militia bill, “[C]onceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular states, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their rights, when invaded.”
That is the purpose of the Second Amendment, to allow the people the means to resist invasions of all their other rights and to give them the means of defending against attacks upon their property…by whomever may commit them, including their government.
Or, as Samuel Adams so succinctly stated, “Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.”
As Jefferson said, these rights are unchangeable, they exist now with the same force as they did when our Founders drafted the documents which outline and protect them. Nobody, not the state, nor the federal government, may infringe upon them, no matter how strong the public sentiment becomes. That is the nature of a right, it extends to all throughout the ages.
Yet our government does not see things that way. Some of you may have heard the term mandate used by those in office, especially the president when it comes to performing certain tasks with the overwhelming support of the public. Yet the simple truth is that our rights are beyond the reach of government, no matter how supportive the general public may be of infringing upon them.
People may view this as a liberal versus conservative issue, that it is the liberal Democrats who wish to impose these restrictions upon our rights. If that be so, why did George W. Bush once say, “It makes no sense for assault weapons to be around our society.”? This issue transcends the liberal/conservative paradigm and is solely about government in general versus the right of the people to effectively stand up against tyranny.
Vice President Joe Biden is leading President Obama’s gun task force. In front of the press, captured on film, the Vice President was caught making the following statement, “Nothing we’re going to do is going to fundamentally alter or eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting or guarantee that we will bring gun deaths down to a thousand a year from, from what it is now.”
If that is the case, then why are they attempting to ban these so-called ‘assault rifles’? Could something else Mr. Biden said be the real truth? According to something found on the Associated Press, Mr. Biden also once said, “Banning guns is an idea whose time has come.” That, if you ask me, is the real reason for any proposed new gun control legislation. It has nothing to do with reducing crime on the streets or putting an end to these senseless school shootings at all, it is about banning guns entirely.
In case you weren’t aware, the Attorney General for the United States is the chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government. The Second Amendment states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. THAT IS THE LAW which the Attorney General is required to enforce.
Yet former Attorney General Janet Reno, on an episode of Good Morning America, made the following statement, “Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal.” That certainly does not sound like she had any regard for upholding the law, does it?
Again, remember the purpose for the Bill of Rights, as stated by former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.”
I guess it does not matter that it is our unalienable right to keep and bear arms, they simply don’t care. As former mayor of Los Angeles Tom Bradley so plainly stated at a Save the Brady Bill rally, “Yes, I’m denying you your rights.”
Mayor Bradley is not alone in those sentiments. Michael Dukakis former Governor of Massachusetts said, “You know I don’t believe in people owning guns, only the police and military. And I’m going to do everything I can to disarm this state.”
And that’s not all, Mary Ann Carlson, former Vermont State Senator went so far as to say, “We must be able to arrest people before they commit crimes. By registering guns and knowing who has them we can do that… If they have guns they are pretty likely to commit a crime.” Anyone ever see the movie The Minority Report with Tom Cruise with the Pre-Crime Division? It sounds like Senator Carlson did and wants to start arresting people before they commit a crime just because they MIGHT do so? I have an idea, what do you say we hang a few lawmakers because they MIGHT commit treason? After all, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander…RIGHT?
Let me remind you of something, on June 5, 1788, Patrick Henry said, “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”
Our Founders included the Second Amendment as a fail-safe, a Plan B if you will, should the ballot box not prove sufficient to prevent tyranny and oppression in this country. You may be too preoccupied with your lives but we, the gun owners of America, appear to be more finely attuned to the growth of tyranny and oppression than the rest of you, and we see it happening right before our very eyes. With new laws coming out all the time which grants the government more power over our lives, and infringes upon our other rights, we see this assault upon the Second Amendment as a final push towards enslaving us all.
John Locke was an English philosopher and one of the major influences of men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Locke once wrote, “Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers.”
Locke furthermore said, “Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.” That thought is what led Jefferson to include the following in the Declaration of Independence, that “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…” The ends to which Jefferson was referring was the protection and preservation of our RIGHTS!
If you are among those who have fallen for all this bullshit about our government only wanting to make America a safer place from gun violence, think about what Founder George Mason once said “When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually…“
Our government will not openly tell us that they plan to enslave us. No, they will tell us all these measures are being taken to protect us. They will implement them in stages so we have time to become accustomed to each more drastic measure. But make no mistake, the final goal is the complete disarmament of the American people.
I know you guys get tired of me using quotes from a bunch of old guys who have been dead for centuries. So how about this, a quote from the recently deceased former president Ronald Reagan. Reagan once said that “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
Former Judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Learned Hand once said, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.” Those of us who value our rights, and who are fighting to preserve them, are the only thing that stands between our government having total control over the people of this country, and you. If we go, so go whatever remains of the fragments of your liberty.
But there is something else I have come to learn and it is kind of like the old saying that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Bill Watterson, the author of Calvin and Hobbes, once said, “You can present the material, but you can’t make me care.” I feel that applies to the vast number of people in this country. No matter how much I rant and rave, how many quotes I provide, how much evidence I show to support my point of view, not enough people care. Oh, they find my articles interesting, but that is not why I write, to entertain. I am trying to get people pissed off, and from the looks of things I have failed miserably.
Just keep this one final thought in mind though. Should things get ugly in this country, should we find ourselves in an armed conflict with those who would oppress us, I will not waste one round of ammunition defending anyone who willingly gave up their right to defend themselves. If you, in your misguided belief that a gun free America would become some Utopian society free of crime, gave up your gun, or aided in the government’s attempts to confiscate mine, I will not assist you in anyway. In fact, it is my belief that America would be much better off were you to perish. Remember what Ben Franklin once said, “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
Or, as Samuel Adams once grandly proclaimed, “If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
You can fend for yourselves when the time comes which proves us conspiracy theorists right. As for us, you’ll hear us cry, as did the Spartans to the Persians at the battle of Thermopylae, “Molon Labe” (Come and take them). And if we are unsuccessful in preserving our rights, and our way of life, then I certainly hope you will be happy with the government you get. But I suspect you won’t be. I suspect you will have wished that you too had paid more attention to what was going on in this country and taken a stand when you had the chance. I hope you will enjoy your servitude.
