Sebastian, writing at Shall Not Be Questioned, offers a useful survey of the forces currently being marshaled against the Second Amendment and the rights of US gun-owners. I won't reproduce it here, but I urge you to click over there and read it for yourself. I think it's important.
Sebastian concludes:
The common theme here is demographic trends are catching up to us. Bloomberg’s money is by far the biggest factor. There isn’t enough passion for gun control out there for it to self-organize, but if money is no object, and you have a lot of smart Obama people who suddenly found themselves out of a job and needing a cause, you can accomplish quite a lot with a top-down approach.
It's hard to disagree.
Personally, my primary argument in favor of gun ownership remains fairly simple.
Says it all, doesn't it?
Peter
Says it all.
ReplyDeleteMy argument is the same one given at the time of ratification by one of the founding fathers, Tench Coxe, a friend of James Madision:
ReplyDelete"Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."
"Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution," under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789, p. 2 col. 1. As quoted in the Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789.
The primary purpose of the Second Amendment is to deter tyranny in the government.
The problem is that gun rights and culture today in the US are in no small part about 9/11, and that is rapidly receding into the distance.
ReplyDeleteAs 9/11 happened, S&W was headed to bankruptcy, over 60% of Americans favored significant increases in gun laws, and the American Gun Culture largely consisted of a bunch of hairy legged guys watching Red Dawn, sweating Waco and Ruby Ridge, reading Boston T. Party, and cleaning their FN-FALs and M1As.
Oh, and there were, what?, 4 or 6 states with Shall Issue concealed carry.
After 9/11, Americans armed themselves. By the millions. And states passed Shall Issue Conceal Carry by the bushel. And the AR-15 went from "poodle shooter" to "common home defense appliance".
That was 17 years ago. Assume you had to be something close to adult when it happened to catch the fever, and that means pretty much anyone under 35 or 40 today wasn't touched all that much by the Great American Re-Arming.
And that is the demographic problem.
A problem with that poster is that lots of people have no experience with and no knowledge of fire extinguishers. They may recognize the item, but most won't even pick up one with flames in their face. "Not their job".
ReplyDeleteI fully understand Sebastian's position and philosophy, but....there is no doubt that when "push comes to shove" while it will wind up with a number of Americans no longer with us, there are a whole lot of us who have no intention of calling, nor any need for, a fire department when we see flames.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what will be the trigger, but I am absolutely sure there will be one.
God help this country when that happens. Whatever's left won't be anything like what we know today.
This twitter thread by David Hines seems appropriate (it's about how gun-rights supporters can organize effectively to counter the gun-control fanati-... cultist-... *ahem* ...activists. Gun control *activists*. It's really quite interesting. Here: https://mobile.twitter.com/hradzka/status/979835643374198785?p=p
ReplyDeleteI'm the only one in my family that has a fire extinguisher, not one other family member that I'm aware of thinks having one is worth the bother.
ReplyDeleteTheir thoughts on self defense are similar, "It isn't likely to happen to me so I'll just ignore it and hope my luck holds."