Saturday, December 15, 2012

Why We Have Guns...

Why do we have guns?  I’m not talking about hunting.  Not talking about fending off the robber or rapist.  That has always been a distraction as to why we have guns in the US.  Sure... those are all good reasons to possess a firearm.  But in the United States the reason we have a guns is not for personal protection or a sport.  No, the reason we have guns is to shoot the government.  Or actually more artfully put... to keep the government from shooting us.

History is clear, governments will eventually turn on the populace.  They will enslave their citizens and remove all freedoms.  This tendency isn’t some antiquated norm that society has grown out of.  It’s right there everyday.  Under the noblest of banners.  Protection, security, equality.  These are the terms used to extort your liberty from you.  Because how can you be against protecting the children?  How can you be against securing the nation?  How can you deny another man his “equality”?

Our founders knew of this eventuality.  They understood that the best way to retard the inevitable was to make it clear that governments did not have the right to disarm the people.  Militia’s rather than be maintained now... are abdicated (foolishly) to the Federal government alone.  State militia’s exist but only under limited scope and at the ultimate direction of the Federal government.

You see militia’s were to fend off more than just advancing nations, marauders and pirates.  They were to fend off tyranny.  Our own government tyranny.  The firearm is the ultimate check and balance weighted against an ever growing, ever reaching, ever encompassing federal government.  Governments turn on their people.  But first they must disarm them.


In the beginning they will pick the “low hanging” fruit.  “Assault Weapons” which is a media code word used to stir emotion rather than reason.  Next it will be all guns with high capacity magazines.  Then voluntary buybacks.  Finally door to door confiscation once those few who still have guns are demonized as treasonous conspirators by a willing media accomplice.

Why have high capacity magazines and assault weapons?  Who needs those?  In order to fulfill the admonition of the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution we must be able to raise arms effectively against Tyranny.  No one thinks we need to have tanks and missiles.  Tyranny isn’t put down by heavy weapons.  But it is assumed that some kind of arms parity must exist.  The general arms of the day and times.  These days the arms are semi auto pistols, shotguns and rifles.  A good way to look at it is if you can find it in the armory of your local Sheriff’s office or Police Department it deserves to be in the hands of the citizens as well.  

Again, no one is suggestion civilians have grenades, rocket launchers or depleted uranium ammunition.  But we must have a level of parity to remain that constant threat to tyranny.  This parity ensures to Tyranny that it will at its best inflict mutually destruction on all of us and at worse be vanquished and another government installed.  

Politicians and judges are not keen on this undeniable truth.  They do not often reference this reality.  They prefer to couch the arguments of gun ownership in terms of personal protection from robbers and attackers.  Sports and heritage.  Rare is the politician that salutes the 2nd amendment for what it is... the ultimate check on his and his colleagues power to limit liberty.

When understood from this important angle it’s easy to extrapolate that one of the many reasons the US has remained as free as it is, for as long as it has, is because of the threat of violence to the government from its people.  It’s not hyperbole or bombast to suggest that without the 2nd Amendment and an armed populace that our past might look more like China, Russia or Germany or maybe even Saudi Arabia.

If you look at the atrocities endured in these countries and inflicted on others by these countries it is easy to see that living ones life at the pleasure of Tyranny and government costs way more of those lives than does the cost of civilian on civilian gun crime.


Knowing this doesn’t lessen the tragedy of the Connecticut shootings, or just a few months earlier the Colorado theater shootings.  Knowing this isn’t supposed to provide comfort to grieving parents and friends.  Knowing this provides the proper perspective in which to view these events.  It provides understanding that, like many choices, is not a perfect solution.  I’d like to say the US is different.  We won’t experience freedomless tyranny and the guns are not necessary.  But there is no evidence for that.  Rather the evidence is to the contrary.  That we are at tyranny’s door.  History gives a clear picture of where we are headed.  It’s not conspiracy theory.  It’s not an overstatement.  Our guns in civilian hands has always and hopefully will always provide a needed service to all of us as the last and best defense against the loss of our liberty and freedom.