On Force, Control, and Freedom

A reader, Trilby Ulyanov, posted the essay below on his Face Book page along with a smaller version of the image I’ve uaed (though the Facebook image’s message also concerned gun control, I chose this variation for its size and for the bottom part of the message).

He said, “Please distribute this, I don’t really have a very big audience”. As it happens, several comments on another post addressed this same issue, so the timing seems synchronous. Guns and gun control are hot button issues in this country. The writer of the essay appears to be from Oz; I don’t know what the rules are there, but I pray its citizens haven’t been emasculated as they have been in many places. In fact what moved me to make his comment into a post was what yet another commenter, Sluggy, said before him, in the thread on “Dutch Attack”. His words were a response to something Luke 22 said, and Sluggy is frustrated with solutions that aren’t permitted to ordinary citizens:

The victims should “arm themselves” ? With what ?

Firerarm possession is a felony in the Netherlands.
Anything that can be used as a weapon is illegal.
This includes replicas, BB guns, air guns, airsoft guns and even some realistic looking toy guns are all illegal. Mace, pepper spray : illegal.
Stilletos, switchblades and butterfly knives are illegal. Arrows and arrowheads are illegal. Tazers : illegal. Blackjacks, brass knuckles : Illegal.

Indeed. I’ll bet even using your hands is considered a weapon.

When I think about this problem, one of the first things I remember is that when hostilities broke out between the American colonists and the King’s soldiers, the latter immediately attempted to secure the armory in Concord. From that failure came “the shot heard ’round the world”.

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“Gun Control” is nothing new. In fact, it’s been around for much longer than guns have existed. It’s been a universal phenomenon amongst human societies. And it’s never been about public safety. It has been, and always will be, an act of caste stratification and population control.

In ancient Feudal societies all around the world, notably China and Japan and many parts of Europe and the Middle-East, peasants and plebeians were prohibited from owning weapons. When the ruling aristocrats and feudal land-owners required a military force, their trusted retainers would issue arms to conscripted peasant-levies, and send them into battle as vanguards of the main force. After battle finished and the troops had looted the field, the retainers would retrieve these weapons and send the serfs back to work. Why were the commoners prohibited from possession of weapons?

Simple.

To prevent uprisings.

Remember that in these points in history, society was rigidly stratified, and the only individuals who could possess arms were men who had proven their loyalty to their rulers. These men were regarded as dignified individuals, men of honour and upstanding moral virtue, while commoners were regarded as little more than productive units in the inventories of their lords and masters. Just look at the culture of respect for the Knights and Samurai of old.

Control of the disarmed populace in turn went on to reflect and perpetuate such social stratification. Without the means to change their government by force, these societies were ruled by the strongest and wealthiest men with armies composed of a loyal minority to defend them.

Force is, and always has been, the highest, most fundamental form of authority. All other authorities have been, and always will be, derived from the means to exert and resist force.

In the late 1700s, the colonists of America knew this lesson from history all too well. During the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers fought against a tyrannical and oppressive government which sought to restrict the means to exert and resist force, and sought to take the majority of wealth away from the colonial population. The Second Amendment to the American Constitution was written to ensure that common citizens would always have recourse to the highest form of authority so that in the inevitable event of the ruling body no longer looking out for the interests of the common people at heart, they would be able to resort to force-of-arms to at least stand a chance of overturning a corrupted system.

With the advent of mass-media broadcasting and the rise of the New Feudal-Capitalist caste system, the ruling elites have gained a most powerful weapon: brainwashing. No longer have religious institutions been required to control the masses. Fear imparted by widespread propaganda now does it for them. Even more perceptive people can, and often are, influenced by this conditioning process during the formative years, developing attitudes of apathy.

Which brings us to the nature of Gun Control.

A wise man once said “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself” (a quote often misattributed to Joseph Goebbels). This is the insidious nature in which the elites of the world have been consolidating their power, by disseminating lies about the nature of force and the nature of weapons. This is most evident in the conditioning of unfathomable numbers of otherwise rational individuals to believe that there are never circumstances where recourse to force of arms is justifiable, and that “non-violent” action is always the best action, which has been demonstrated by history repeatedly to seldom be the case.

This propaganda also revolves around twisting of the facts and manipulation of popular preconceptions, with strong emotive undertones. All too often people remember the times when people use weapons to kill indiscriminately, but all too rarely are people informed of the millions of instances globally where weapons are used to mitigate unnecessary losses of life.

Firearms in particular represented a shift in the paradigm. No longer was it only the strong, quick-witted and talented who may wield arms, but now any individual with the inclination, time and access, has means to exert and resist force. A conceptual precursor to the firearm, the crossbow, drew similar ire during the Middle Ages, where a Papal Decree was issued to prohibit their use in warfare claiming that the ability to give a common peasant the ability to defeat the armour of a wealthy Knight and thus kill him, was an aberration to the natural order. Regardless, control over such weapons and their possession by the peasants was sufficient enough that most rulers saw possession of these weapons as justifiable.

Just as we in this day and age should understand that now, more than ever in history, possession of the means to exert and resist force is not only justifiable, but a necessity. Now more than ever we see a disparity between the wealthy and powerful and the poor and disempowered. Gun-control advocates live in ivory towers, and all too often the most powerful voices amongst them possess the weapons themselves, and/or retain individuals entrusted with such weaponry. This is damning evidence of the hypocrisy and elitism behind laws of personal weapon restriction. We live at a precipice of history, at the branch in the road where we may choose between a society where the minority of wealthy and strong are more equal than the majority, or a society where all men may stand as equals guaranteed by their capacity to exert and resist acts of force.

We are already descending down the path of the former, but it is not too late to stop this decay. The hardest part is overcoming the incessant propaganda, which is the reason why I have written this essay

Remember; you only have the power, if you have the will.

Blessings upon you all.

29 thoughts on “On Force, Control, and Freedom

  1. It is worth recognizing also that the manufacture of basic firearms is not terribly difficult and simply cannot be fully controlled in a technologically advanced society. Islamic people can make fully automatic weapons using hand tools in caves, while simpler designs can be constructed in minutes out of plumbing supplies and some hardware, the only real barrier is possession of a workable blueprint for a gun.

    Ammo is a trickier proposition, particularly where widespread bans are in place. Gunpowder (including the modern nitrocellulose based mix) is not terribly difficult to make but it does require a substantial investment to make reliably in quantity. Compressed air guns can be an attractive alternative for those who are not going to be able to obtain conventional ammo, but they tend to be quite bulky/heavy for the amount of firepower you can get, so they would probably be a stop-gap until local production could be gotten underway.

    If you have the will, then the means is only a short-term problem. Of course, if you happen to need a gun now then the ability to have one in a few hours (or even a few minutes) is still not much help (as many a caller to 911 has learned). It is better to have ready access to useful firearms generally, so work on the popular attitudes that permit gun bans to restrict gun ownership to criminals is definitely necessary. But pointing out how much easier it is to make guns and ammo than, say, meth or whatever is a useful tactic in that debate.

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  4. On the ball observations. Bravo.

    Whereas the 2nd Amandment was designed to prevent the possibility of a tyrannical government coming to power and oppressing it’s own citizens in the United States, the Dutch gun laws of 1911 were designed for the exact opposite purpose : namely to protect the ruling class, the government, from possibly being overthrown by the masses in case there should be some massive uprising.

    These laws were implented in times, when there was widespread turmoil in many continental European countries, and all kinds of socialist and communist rabble rousers challenged governments, calling upon the masses to overthrow them, sometimes by revolutionary means (also in the Netherlands).

    After the horrors of WW2 and nazi brutality during the 5 year occupation of the Netherlands by nazi Germany, people generally thought that “guns are bad”, a belief that culminated in the 60’s and 70’s during the “peace and love” era. Incidentally this is the same generation that spawned a great deal of people who make up the political elite in this country today.

    The mainstream media is practically without exception on the (far) left side of the political spectrum, violently opposes gun ownership, and has done a fine job in making people think they should not ever have access to weapons, not even for self defense. (In fact, if you harm an intruder or a burglar in your own home, you go to jail, not the burglar).

    The notion that one could step into, say, a Big Five sporting goods store,and walk out with a Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun and 3 boxes of shells is simply unfathomable in this country. People think this is absolute madness.

    Stranger yet, many Dutch are convinced that Americans go about their daily business in a constant hail of bullets, go around shooting each other at the drop of a dime, and live in a veritable crossfire all the time.

    And whenever a firearm related tragedy or mass shooting in the US occurs that makes the news here, one may expect hundreds of comments saying things like

    “Americans are all crazy ! Take away their guns !”
    “Americans think they are Rambos ! Triggerhappy hillbillies, all of them !”
    “It’s the gun lobbies fault ! They are the same as the KKK !”
    “America is a nation of warmongering idiots ! Rednecks !”
    “They think it’s still the Wild West out there ! They are uncivilized !”

    Sadly, this is really how many,many people in Holland here perceive America.

    Personally, having lived in both countries, my views are a bit more realistic, btw.

    • It’s so easy to judge other cultures. The Netherlands is infamous in the U.S. for having the highest numbers of euthanasia for old people. I love that word, “euthanasia” – good death- when it really means forcible death.

      The numbers are up there with the volume of gang shootings in Chicago – which are just as preventable (had Chicago the will to violate American laws against unlawful seizure) as the pressure on old people in the Netherlands to move along, get out of the way. They have to make room for the immigrants replacing them because ethnic Dutch are leaving.

      • The suggestion that “old people are randomly or systematically being euthanized in Holland” is wrong. This notion is a grave misunderstanding, that seems to be a somehwhat persistent myth in the United States.

        The purpose of euthanasia is to terminate the unneccessairy suffering of terminally ill patients with no chance of recovery.

        Without the patients explicit approval,there can never be euthanasia.

        • A brief search on Google, one page, brought these three resuls (using just the words Netherlands and euthanasia):

          Please Doctor Put Him Out of Our Misery

          Is There a Duty to Die?

          Number of Dutch Killed by Euthanasia Rises by 13 Per Cent

          ——————

          So it seems to be a “fraught” subject still, as abortion is here.

          There is something in human nature that pushes us toward a utilitarian idea of life and of technology – i.e., if we can do something, then we ought to do it. I see this particularly in American culture and the reckless abandon with which elective abortions are pushed, really pushed, as the cool thing to do for a liberal feminist young woman. To fail to do so is somehow wrong.

          So while euthanasia may work just fine in the Netherlands, here it would be hell because people like Obama would be at the helm.

          I have talked (email exchanges) with older people in the UK and they say they’re terrified of ending up for any reason in an NHS hospital because their friends tell them of the pressure to put oneself out of the way of busy productive people.

          Here in the US at the moment patients have to request that DNR notes be put on their medical charts – DO NOT RESUSCITATE – because the medical environment leans toward saving human life without regard to the results of what “heroic” efforts might entail. That’s the downside to our current cultural environment and it is deeply at odds with the other side – e.g., using elective abortion as a form of birth control w/o regard to the complications.

          The global population is ageing fast. As it stands now, the demographics show we’re on target by 2050 to experience a world-wide population drop of …?Biblical?…dimensions. Heretofore, that was random and the result of plagues or natural disasters. This one is via choice: the deliberate refusal to reproduce.

          I hope there are good sci fi writers out there who are wrestling with this issue, in the same way they did in those books from the fifties. Does anyone remember this one?

          A Canticle for Leibowitz

          I don’t know how well it has aged, but since there are study guides it’s obviously used in literature classes.

        • The purpose of euthanasia is to terminate the unneccessairy suffering of terminally ill patients with no chance of recovery

          I edited a book for a doctor in Canada who specialized in palliative care (that wasn’t the subject of his book). In several discussions of the issue, it was his considered opinion that doctors in the Netherlands simply don’t specialize in palliative care and have no idea that “unnecessary suffering” is a horse-and-buggy concept” – to use his phrase.

          Aggressive palliative care may seem an oxymoron, but it’s not. It means putting the patient out of his suffering without having to terminate his life to do so.

      • Excellent article!

        The Second Amendment is a “doomsday provision”. It is there in case they forget all the others. The last time it was used in this country for the purpose of restoring the rule of law was in McMinn County, TN, 1946. “The Battle of Athens”, as it came to be called, was the “last certifiable armed engagement between citizens and their government on American soil.” It was an armed rebellion led by WWII veterans and citizens in Athens and Etowah, Tennessee, United States, against the tyrannical local government in August 1946.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPHABAASQAY

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5ut6yPrObw

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  6. One formulation by Albert Herzfeld, hy”dm:
    Kuhn behaupten es haftet immer etwas.
    assert boldly enough and something will stick, my lame
    translation. from:
    Ein Nichtarisher Deutscher, Die Tagebucher des Albert Herzfeld.
    if memory serves, I saw this in Michael Burleigh’s The Third Reich

  7. The Second Amendment to the Constitution was enacted because folks had immediate memory of living under a government gone sour.

    Now, however, the twentieth century gave us two lessons:
    1. Disarming the Commons is a harbinger of indecent designs on their other liberties, if not their lives.
    2. In responsible hands, the personal handgun is the lawful person’s first line of defense against interpersonal criminal aggression.

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  11. Dymphna, there really is no “pressure on old people in the Netherlands to move along, get out of the way”. There might be, some day- but right now there really isn’t
    People who want to make sure that they can go out quietly when they feel their time has come still have to take considerable precautions to ensure that it is they who will be in the drivers’ seat, and not the perhaps religious director of the home they have ended up in, especially when they have reason to believe that they might not be considered compos mentis when the time comes.

    • What does this mean?

      People who want to make sure that they can go out quietly when they feel their time has come still have to take considerable precautions to ensure that it is they who will be in the drivers’ seat, and not the perhaps religious director of the home they have ended up in…

      can we infer that you mean some directors of nursing homes have religious beliefs that they would permit to override their patients’ wishes? What religion does that in the Netherlands?

      Is it ever the case that the atheism of a nursing home director would permit his or her beliefs to override the desires of the patient?

      That is a curious statement.

      • “What religion does that in the Netherlands?”

        Not just Holland, all over the West; but it did show up there more noticeably as those links you discovered indicate.

        Those who believe in Sustainability are behaving as if it is a religion. Sustainability is derivative of the mathematical theories of Thomas Malthus. The early Progressives were very hot on the subject, and eugenics was their product. It was always a poisonous subject, but particularly right after World War II. Neo-Malthusians like Paul Ehrlich reinvigorated the theory in the 1960s, but eugenics was now publicly unmentionable.

        In short, the core belief in Sustainability treats the idea of limiting of human life on the planet as a moral necessity. It is quite antithetical to the Judeo-Christian ethic, hence the hostility for it, and the efforts to drive any who hold with its tenants out of public office and other institutions.

        The idea is really not new either, as ancient pagan human sacrifice attests.

        Other ways it shows itself: When you witness the intolerance for those who try to demonstrate how catastrophic anthropomorphic global warming is a fraud, that too is an outgrowth of it. They want to claim, without any contradictions: “See? Unlimited human growth leads to global catastrophe.” It’s a moral imperative to them. Thus any contradiction is immoral.

        Let’s say they didn’t fudge the numbers (re: Climategate), and they really treated as a truly scientific theory. Then all investigation into its reliability would be welcomed. They wouldn’t be demonizing skeptics as they do. It is no scientific theory where evidence that disproves it is shouted down, and those who provide the evidence driven out of the profession. Once you recognize their behavior as religious based, then it becomes easier to understand, and much easier to do battle with.

        If there was free and open discussion about it, then they might permit you to protest “You can’t be sure about all your doom-saying. They will claim they must based on the Precautionary Principle (look that one up). “If we are right, then the outcome is so awful, you better shut-up!”

        It does not take a rocket scientist to recognize that what Thomas Malthus provided for misanthropes was a moral cloak for their hatred. Of course they will never admit it. And the useful idiots that they’ve convinced will never see it. But they did, in one way or another, foster and abet all these greenies and their radical fears and solutions.

        All of this understanding is important for those who love life and work, pray and fight that individual liberty not be extinguished. Because once freedom is lost, and enslavement reestablished, the overlords are then free to cull the herd. And the high priests will exclaim how it is terribly sad, but it is, after all, the necessary and moral thing to do.

        “What religion does that.” A postmodern one.

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  13. I commend both Trilby for a very well-written post and Dymphna for again being gracious and accommodating to a writer with a smaller readership than GOV. Trilby nailed it with the brainwashing that has been employed to such effect that far too many people have come to accept that the police and the military should be the only possessors of weapons. Once that mindset is formed, changing it is akin to bringing a hard-boiled egg back to a liquid state.

    • It’s becoming obvious in the US that the increasing militarization of our police/security forces is a problem. But it’s one more reason that attempts to control guns in civilian hands will meet with failure. Obama moans about the intransigence of the now famous “bitter clingers” when he talks to his base, but he’s not going to actually DO anything.

  14. The Dutch may have ridiculously outlawed all weapons but they’ve overlooked a real killer; the automobile.

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  16. Dymphna,

    “The writer of the essay appears to be from Oz; I don’t know what the rules are there, but I pray its citizens haven’t been emasculated as they have been in many places.”

    No, we haven’t, I occasionally read comments from Americans claiming that Australians have been “disarmed”, that’s extremely inaccurate. After the Port Arthur massacre the Federal government legislated to confiscate semi-automatic and pump action weapons, not all firearms–some commentators claim that the number of firearms in the country has increased since the ban.

    My wife and I owned a small farm in the SE of Australia, I was required to surrender a semi-automatic shotgun but I had no problem replacing it with a 22 bolt action rifle. I don’t have any ideological bias one way or the other in regard to firearms, they were just “tools of trade” on the farm.

    I’m deeply sceptical as to the effectiveness of private firearms as a defence from government oppression or as personal protection, it’s not the 18th century, however America’s domestic firearm laws and culture, and their consequences, are Americans’ business.

    • I’m deeply sceptical as to the effectiveness of private firearms as a defence from government oppression or as personal protection, it’s not the 18th century, however America’s domestic firearm laws and culture, and their consequences, are Americans’ business

      Two things come to mind here:

      1. The current level of grievance and lawlessness in the country in the black community, fueled deliberately by our President and media mean that being armed is important in some situations. As they certainly proved when those losers murdered that young Australian athlete just because they felt like it.

      We are headed to a cliff, being pushed there by the resentment and anger of Mr. Obama and his associates. This has been going on since he was in law school.

      2. Symbols are important

  17. Re: “I’m deeply skeptical as to the effectiveness of private firearms as a defense from government oppression or as personal protection, it’s not the 18th century, however America’s domestic firearm laws and culture, and their consequences, are Americans’ business.”

    Would you prefer that Americans – or Australians for that matter – be disarmed entirely?

    The cultural left has tried over the years to steer the debate about private ownership of arms and the inalienable right to self defense into debates over hunting or personal protection against crime. However, nowhere does the Bill of Rights or the Second Amendment mention hunting; nor does it mention defense against crime. This is because, as important as the use of arms is in those instances, that isn’t why the Founding Fathers of the U.S. put the Second Amendment into the constitution.
    Rather, the framers intended that citizens be armed as a defense against tyranny – reasoning that an armed populace would be more formidable as a check on lawless government than an unarmed one.

    Are you familiar with the work of political scientist R.J. Rummel? He is perhaps the foremost living researcher of genocide, mass killings and violence by governments against their own peoples – or what he has termed “democide.” According to Professor Rummel’s research, during the 20th century, an individual was much more at risk of losing his life at the hands of his own government than by any other man-made cause, including wars and terrorism. Conservative estimates of the deaths-by-democide place the number of fatalities at 100 million; some estimates are considerably higher.

    Rummel discovered that almost all instances of democide are preceded by gun control. The one million Armenians slaughtered by the Turks c. 1916-1921 were barred from owning arms; the same is true of the millions slaughtered in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Mao’s China – as well as many other nations and states.

    It is certainly true that the U.S. government is much more powerfully armed than its citizens – a fact of which the Founders would not have approved – but at least an armed citizenry will make would-be totalitarians stop and think twice about the steep cost enacting their plans would entail – which is precisely the point.

    There are two ways of compelling someone to act – by persuasion or by force. The implied threat of force – being armed – is a civilizing act, because it raises the cost of the use of force to unacceptable levels. That leaves persuasion – verbal, economic, or otherwise – as the dominant means of getting things done.

    Armed, free men are citizens; disarmed, they are subjects – little better than slaves or serfs.

  18. Dymphna,

    Yes, the Chris Lane tragedy naturally received a lot of publicity here. Although I’m reluctant to comment on America’s internal affairs, I can’t help wondering whether the case was actually about racial politics, not gun laws, as your country’s professional “anti-racists” seemed reluctant to comment. The “only White people are racists” myth is well established here as well.

    Georgiaboy61,

    We’re entering the difficult area of cultural and political differences, America’s gun laws are the result of the country’s political and social history, for example, there’s no constitutional right to bear arms in Australia. We didn’t have a War of Independence or a Civil War and the relationship between the British government and Australian colonists was generally relatively amicable, so most Australians have never developed the ‘government as potential enemy’ philosophy. Since Independence there’s also been a continuous democratic tradition.

    “Would you prefer that Americans – or Australians for that matter – be disarmed entirely?” Because of cultural differences, I don’t have an opinion on whether or not Americans should be disarmed, so I’ll limit my comments to expressing scepticism in regard to the potential of a well-armed citizenry. As to Australia, even though we don’t have any Constitutional protection, it would be extremely difficult politically to disarm the population.

    I’m not convinced by R J Rummel’s thesis, as all those nations mentioned, apart from Germany have absolutely no democratic traditions whatsoever and even the Weimar Republic was short-lived. Where are the modern examples of the political elites of democratic nation-states disarming the citizens and instituting a totalitarian regime.

    I’m not complacent, in my opinion the actual threat comes from the capacity of governments to spy on citizens and covertly, restrict and subvert the free exchange of information, not tanks in the street, and being armed to the teeth is no protection.

  19. Re: “I’m not convinced by R J Rummel’s thesis, as all those nations mentioned, apart from Germany have absolutely no democratic traditions whatsoever and even the Weimar Republic was short-lived. Where are the modern examples of the political elites of democratic nation-states disarming the citizens and instituting a totalitarian regime.”

    Rummel himself acknowledges that democide has been rare in modern, first-world west in comparison to the rate in other times/places, but that in no way disproves the validity of his research. Modern democratic societies have avoided the horrible fate of places like Stalinist Russia or Mao’s China in part because political power is more-uniformly dispersed and spread out among many individuals in such societies in comparison to the concentration of power in the hands of the few in totalitarian regimes.

    I would argue that one of the things that helps prevent the pathological concentration and abuse of power is an armed citizenry.

    There is also the matter of nations like Switzerland. The republic of Switzerland has not been successfully invaded and occupied by a foreign power in centuries, despite being bordered by France and Germany. During the 1930s, the Germans gave some thought to absorbing Switzerland – as they had Czechoslovakia, for example – but wisely averred when presented with evidence of Swiss resolve. A visiting German general casually remarked to his Swiss counterpart “My army is twice as large as yours; what is to prevent German troops from marching into your nation and conquering it?” The Swiss general paused and then replied, “My sharpshooters would simply have to kill two German soldiers each instead of one…”

    Switzerland wasn’t invaded during the largest war in human history, nor were any of its Jews marched away, unarmed, to some concentration camp. Why? Because that nation requires every male of military service age to do compulsory military training. All Swiss households are required to keep a military-grade automatic rifle on the premises, and the head of the house is required to demonstrate firearms proficiency annually. Gun-related crime, by the way, is extremely low in Switzerland.

    Perhaps the issue is one of trust. As an Australian, you do not have reason to fear your own government. You believe that it will not become corrupt or transform into a dictatorship. Fair enough. I, on the other hand, am not so sanguine about human nature. What did Kant say – “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made”? Just because your government – or mine – is not a dictatorship today, does not mean the same will be true tomorrow or next year.

    If history proves anything, it is that human beings have a remarkable capacity for the abuse of power and for violence. Better to own a gun and not need it, than to need it and not own it.

  20. Subject:  Our Firearm Rights

    The current wave of mass shootings calls for identifying, and dealing with, their causes.  Focusing on the weapons used distracts us from addressing these causes.

    The extreme liberals in our country are using the mass shootings as an argument for restricting both firearm possession and the types of firearms that we can possess.  The ultimate goal of extreme liberals is elimination of private possession of firearms.  As good socialists would, they are taking a “long march” toward their goal.  They are also distracting us by claiming unarguable justifications for each small step they take.

    Why are liberals doing this? Because they see firearms possession as characteristic of their conservative opponents;  And these conservatives stand in the way of a socialist takeover of the USA. 

    Note that, “Assault weapons with large-capacity magazines” are weapons employed by today’s version of the militia:  our National Guard and our military reserve units.  Since the Second Amendment to our Constitution secures our right to respond to tyranny, we must oppose any attempt to restrict the weapons to which it applies.

    S/[davenelson@aol.com]

    [This is an extract from a letter was published verbatim in the 30 January 2013 edition of The Tribune News]

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