Gun Control Tyrants. They say “ignorance is bliss,” but “ignorance” is synonymous with suppression and abuse.  Ignorance is antithetical to the founding ideals of our republic. The Founders envisioned an enlightened and virtuous citizenry, without such, the American experiment of “liberty” would surely die. The tree of liberty must be watered, nurtured and pruned by  loving and educated arborists. Liberty is responsibility. Statism is the abdication of personal responsibility.

Liberty v. Statism. No where is the debate more profound or accentuated than in the “rush to do something” in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting tragedy. The Statism crowd: the liberals, progressives and leftist no nothings want to wave a magic wand and pass gun control legislation. This, supposedly will “fix” random and wanton shootings, but in reality it will do absolutely nothing, but create more violence and speed up the day when the Tyrant’s boot is firmly and immovably on our necks.

Our Founding Fathers, creatures of the Enlightenment, were well versed and careful understudies of human nature. All men are either corrupt or corruptible and governments are made up of men. An armed citizenry is vital to the security of a free state. It is an armed citizenry that government Apparatchiks fear. John Murray (aka Lord Dunmore), the colonial governor of Virginia, forbid Virginians to import arms and powder from England. This is what motivated Patrick Henry in 1775 to rather die than be a slave to  tyranny. Later Lord Dunmore seized the public magazines in Williamsburg. The British general Thomas Gage was instructed to use brutal force against his own people. The British mission at Lexington and Concord was to disarm the colonial militias by stealing “our” guns.  The alarm cried to the Minutemen was not “the British are coming,” we were the British. The cry was “the regulars are out.”  The militia had trained for years for just such an event, because a standing army of  the King’s regulars, supported by an abusive tax system and a corrupt government was in and of itself a sure threat to “liberty.” We Americans were British subjects, and it was our own government that used force against us. Are we to forget this? Does anyone think that the nature of man has changed for the better since 1775? Is government any less corrupt?  Are the men who wield  and indeed crave power in all of its self aggrandizement and disingenuous glory, any less corrupt? Does anyone really think that if the government was not afraid of the people, then government would not use all of its devises to oppress the people? Every page of history since the dawn of time tells us that this is true. Patriots need to be vigilant.

Cincinnatus

The preservation of liberty is rooted in a self-reliant, responsible citizenry practicing the art of republican self-reliance. Look at the absolute foolishness of those who advocate “for the state,” as the elixir to remedy virtually every perceived need of society:

Education: “let the government educate our children.” The result of this abdication of personal responsibility is an abysmally ignorant electorate which  knows  nothing of history or the unique stature of the American experiment.
Retirement: “let the government do it for us.” The result is a hopelessly bankrupt social security system which penalizes those who contribute and rewards the indolent and is nothing more than a politically concocted fraud.
Health Care: let the government take care of us. By now, everyone is aware of the folly of government health care, not the least of which are programs such as Medicare which have bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
Orlando: “let the government disarm us and there will be no more mad men committing terrorist acts.” Complete foolishness…..
The progressive statist cries at every turn for more state solutions because the progressive statist is lazy and often simple minded. The result is always a deterioration of liberty.  Gun control is a surrender of rational thought and lazy thinking. A few examples:

Does Joe The Street Thug screech his car to halt when he sees those idiotic signs in front of schools that say: “this is a gun free zone?” How stupid are these signs? All they are are advertisements that everyone in that school is defenseless. Criminals do not obey laws, that is why they are  “criminals.” Even psychopathic criminals aren’t stupid. They choose the cowardly act of shooting children in classrooms because no one is there to defend these innocents.

20 children were tragically killed at Sandy Hook by a man with demons in his head. The odds of being struck by lightening is 1 in 700,000. The odds of a child being shot in a classroom by a psychopath with an assault rifle in 2013 is  about 1 in 10 million. Vastly more children will die from tripping over their toys in 2013, are we to outlaw toys? Yet, demagogic politicians use tragedies like Sandy Hook to prey on the emotions of the very people they hope to rob of their rights.

Northern Neck/Home of Patriots

I went to school in the Northern Neck of Virginia. In the 6th grade, all boys were required to take an NRA gun safety course. In high school, virtually every male student had a gun in his car on school property. We had some big beefy good ole boy teachers and administrators, and it would not surprise me if they were packing heat. School districts are quite capable of protecting their students with little expense and absolutely no “help” from the federal government.
There is a maxim in law that it is impossible to prove a negative. Simple minded people only see the tangible, even though the intangible is far more significant. Yes, guns are used to commit 11,000 homicide related deaths in the U.S. every year. The vast majority of these gun homicides (67 %) are committed in the “inner city,”  comprising  about .00001 of U.S. land mass.  Yet, guns are used by private citizens to protect the lives and property of millions and millions of citizens in every corner of the land.

I am not a small man and when I go hunting, I like to clean my shotgun in the front yard. I lived in a leafy residential section smack in the City of Richmond for years. I never locked my door, even though the neighborhood watch emails constantly warned of petty burglaries in the area. Punks prey on the weak and defenseless. 

I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be responsible for the protection of my family than to rely on the government to do it for me. If the local constable is the only one with a gun, I am at his mercy. I owe him something , and he knows it. He will use his control over me and want something. He will become corrupt. Moreover, if he knows that I too am armed, he will use great discretion in abusing my rights. Armed citizens protecting their lives and property is the essence of liberty.

All of my colonial ancestors were members of the militia. They did not want or need the Royal Governor to protect them or to keep order. They were good men and they banded with other good men to preserve order and protect property. In the absence of government power, there is “convention.” Demagogues  take advantage of  tragedies ( like Sandy Hook) to assume more power for themselves at the expense of liberty. Private sector “convention” is born of natural law. It occurs automatically and doesn’t cost the taxpayers anything. There is a virile nobility to a free society  where individuals  do not abdicate their responsibilities to the state.

Patrick Henry

To many, I may sound like a right wing nut, but I yield to no one in my certainty that the right to bear arms keeps us from being docile servants to the all powerful state.  Fellow Virginian, Patrick Henry stated “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”  In the 5,000 years of recorded history, tyranny has been and still is the norm. Our Republic has been around but 234 out of these 5,000 years, which equates to .047% of the time governments have been enslaving their subjects. We comprise less than 5% of the world population. We are the wealthiest and freest people the world has ever known. We hold in our hands  something precious in the annals of human history and it didn’t happen by accident. We exist because the governing class fears the governed.

Right now as I pen these words, our President proposes to sweep away our 2nd Amendment rights by executive order. In the words of Edmund Burke, “the surest way for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” We are at a tipping point.  Strength, resolve and courage will be required for those who understand the perils ahead.