Recently, a dear friend and fellow gun-owner traveled East to
attend a bachelor party. It is often said that if you remember
anything about a bachelor party, it probably wasn't that good.
However, it was one of the few (okay, very few) sober moments
of the weekend that my friend found to be the most memorable.
In that moment, he learned something profound about the entire
gun-bigotry movement.
You see, this particular bachelor party took place in the belly
of the proverbial beast, New York City. There, my friend wound
up at the bar with another young man who turned out to be one
of the city's Assistant District Attorneys. Upon discovering this,
my friend asked the ADA about something that had been weighing
heavily on his mind: The legal implications of using a firearm
in defense of a stranger outside one's residence.
Well, judging by this one young man, New York City has failed
to learn the lesson that Kitty Genovese ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
) gave her life to teach us.
Instead, this particular species of government functionary could
apparently only process so many big words at a time, and responded
simply with “If you have an unlicensed gun, I'm going to
prosecute you.”
What followed was a tense, highly unpleasant exploration of the
mind of our oppressors. The ADA wouldn't debate the merits of
his raging anti-gun positions beyond a terse “I don't want
to talk about it”, but took great delight in reiterating
his ability to prosecute my friend at whim, based entirely on
his hatred of privately-owned guns and his personal feelings on
any given situation. He even went so far as to suggest that he
would prosecute even if my friend (who doesn't live in New York)
was not in violation of any local gun laws!
Needless to say, my intrepid pal was more than a little shaken
by the encounter. But having looked into the dull, glassy eyes
of government run amok, he learned something: Deep down, gun-bigots
in government aren't worried about what guns will do to us. They're
worried about what guns will do to their own egos.
Why do these deluded individuals constantly tell us that it's
their job to protect us when any fool knows that the police are
essentially never able to stop a violent crime in progress? Why
do they find it so upsetting that some free Americans can protect
themselves without their “help”?
Think about it this way. If you worked at the post office, and
someone said “We don't need mail anymore. We've got email
now. It's faster, cheaper, and easier.” How would you feel?
How would you respond to someone who told you that they can do
your job better than you can, and that they don't need you anymore?
Now imagine that instead of delivering mail, you deliver security.
Or, at least, you think you do. And now someone is telling you
that they don't need your elaborate machinery of justice, because
they have the right and the ability to deal justly with their
attackers themselves. Your entire career, which you pursued at
great expense, has been declared second-rate compared to three
pounds of forged steel and springs.
Makes you a little afraid, doesn't it?
You see, to these people, the real victim of a self-defense shooting
isn't the criminal, and it isn't the righteous shooter. It's their
sense of self-importance. They went to law school. They went to
the police academy. They work in a dingy office all day for well
below what they'd make in the private sector. How dare you take
the power out of their hands just because you have $600, a clean
record, and the G-d-given right to defend yourself?
Because to them, it's impossible that G-d gave you that right.
Because in their little world of wielding state power as they
see fit, they ARE G-d.
And this sickness doesn't stop between the Hudson and Jersey
Rivers. It has hounded free people for years.
When the United Kingdom stripped her citizens of the basic right
of self defense in 1953, MPs arguing for the measure insisted
that it was their duty, not yours, to protect you, and that carrying
a weapon constituted an insult to government by suggesting that
they couldn't keep order. The fact that they actually couldn't
protect you is immaterial. They just hated being reminded of it.
A subject of the crown might actually save their own life with
a weapon, but they would do irreparable damage to their government's
feelings. One look at Britain today tells us which concern they
found to be more important, and shows us the terrible price people
pay to keep their government happy.
Meanwhile on our own shores, Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark,
one of the most loathsome individuals ever to occupy a government
office, stated that gun ownership represented “anarchy,
not order under law—a jungle where each relies on himself
for survival.”
If Clark does not wish for us to rely on ourselves for survival,
then on whom should we rely? On him, of course. As the titular
head of our criminal justice system, Mr. Clark apparently found
it just too painful to imagine that there were people in this
country who weren't living every day solely by his own benevolence.
And I'm sure we'd all be perfectly safe under the watchful eye
of a man who enthusiastically donated his time and energy to Saddam
Hussein's legal defense.
Some gun-bigots may tell you they're disarming you for your own
good, but you have to be pretty deluded to believe that one can
be helped by helplessness. Others may insist that you have to
give up your guns for the benefit of “society”, a
group that supposedly includes you but in fact consists merely
of the people who elected said politician to loot you of your
wealth and freedom.
But the truth is that all of them want you disarmed because your
gun declares to the world that you don't really need their help,
more loudly than any muzzle blast. The fact is, they need YOU.
They need you to need them, to want them, to let them know every
day what a mess you'd be without their busy bodying. And if they
can't convince you that you need them, they'll just strip your
rights away until you really do.
And then they'll fail you anyway, like they always have.
