I always wondered about the possibility of being wrong.
I have, after all, a lot of ideas and have been, on occasion, wrong.
Nobody is infallible. I am not infallible.
I am as fallible as the person next to me.
One thing I was not wrong about was my firm adherence to the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
I have always maintained that it was not made for deer hunters or even sport shooters or plinkers.
I have always been of the opinion that the Founding Fathers envisioned the dystopian future we call our Present, with Government trampling over the rights of individuals with a keen interest in destroying all freedom and annihilating all hope.
And because they were not only wise but presciently so, they decided to give the little man a fighting chance. And to that effect, they enacted into the Basic Law of the land a natural principle: that every man be armed.
This principle stopped and made the Japanese think twice about invading the continental United States. Their own admiral Yamamoto claiming “there’d be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”
Take that, you naysayers who say “what good does a semi-auto 5-round magazine rifle do to you when the government peeps carry automatic machine guns?!”
To that I say, better to have something than to have nothing.
That is the beauty of America: a country of 360 million people and 720 million small arms. All locked and loaded.
Funny thing happened with the rest of the world though.
While America lives according to Charlton Heston’s memorable words, the world governments went the other way.
Every time a maniac shot a bunch of innocent folk, a government mandate came out to ban, restrict or take away firearms from civilians. Every time a deranged dude or dudette went psycho, a million guns went to the scrapper or to militaries fighting the good fight.
After all, that which kills innocents in the West, might as well kill ‘the right people’ in the East.
So, while America remained true to her constitutional freedoms and ideals, the World said to heck with freedom. We want and like security better.
So, for the last 30-40 years the world saw both systems go at it, side by side.
America, the land of the free, where deranged people shoot innocents with clockwork regularity but where good guys with a gun stop bad guys with a gun every day. Here, the government cannot suspend the Constitutional rights of citizens without their say so.
And The World, where civilians are still being killed by criminals, taxed into the poorhouse and deprived of their freedoms by their governments, without even having a say in the matter.
In the end, it seems, not only did those governments that banned civilian ownership of guns fail to guarantee their citizens’ safety. They also made it worse. In the United Kingdom, criminals who rape, steal and kill people, go free. While people who opine or pray, are sent to prison, for thought crimes.
The British prisons are being emptied of career criminals so they may be filled with political prisoners of conscience. Quite Orwellian!
That’s how you know the Americans were right to hold on to their guns. Because they guarantee safety the only way it can be done: by each of us, as individuals responsible for our own lives and property.
No entity that promises to make you safe can do a better job in your stead. And if you think they can, you are stupid and you deserve the fate your government has in store for you.
In the end, it all comes down to the 3rd box. Political freedom is founded on three boxes: the soap box you get on when you address the public, the ballot box where you cast your vote, and the ammo box you reach out for when the first two stop working.
The Americans know this principle.
Other peoples do not.
Take România for instance. A year ago, they had presidential elections. Candidates came forward, ran on their platforms, and people went to vote. When the ‘wrong’ man came on top, the system cancelled the elections.
When, a few month later, the same man wanted to run again, the courts disbarred him from doing so. And because Romania has no such thing as an ammo box, with only 1% of civilians owning a firearm, the ‘right’ guy won the elections.
If you think it’s unfair and Romania is not a democracy, you are right on both counts.
But hey at least they’re safe… for now. Not sure how safe they will be in the future though, with the Americans packing up their military and leaving Romania to its own devices.
But hey, freedom, democracy, and all that jazz doesn’t matter. As long as you are safe in the cradle of the government’s ‘benevolent’ palm.
I guess some people prefer the illusion of government’s safety to the reality of having to own a gun and having to exercise judicious control, and responsible overwatch over it.
Thing is if a government is strong enough to take care of you, it can also treat you like a slave and kill you.
That is the ugly truth that eludes most people because they attribute only the best intentions to those in power, idiotically thinking that the powers that be could never harm them.
But as the track record will show, the opposite is more often the case than not.
Don’t matter. People don’t want to be responsible for their own lives even if it killed them.
And that’s why they will lose their lives when the powers that be will make that determination.
When you are an intellectually defective coward who would rather die than take ownership for his life, you stop being a citizen and become a ward of the state. And the state, make no mistake, will do with you whatever it may.
God gave you Free Will. And you shat on it.
Benjamin Franklin once said “A fool and his money are soon parted.” I agree. But it goes further than that. A fool and his life are soon parted.
And one cannot say fairer than that.
Götterdämmerung 