Reader Gabe writes:
I often read your articles in my car at lunch. Every so often I find myself worked up enough to foward an article and write my family a pleading note to stop throwing their freedom away. I’m generally sent a nast gram or told to stop sending rants that make everone uncomfortable. My concealed carrying is, in their view, reckless and paranoid. Anyway, here’s my most recent cry in the wilderness to my family. Maybe it will reach someone someday . . .
For your consideration: Islamic extremists prefer no one fighting back in any meaningful way as they decapitate men women and children en masse. This is the ultimate point of gun control, quelling resistance through a monopoly on violence. We (the USA) implented a gun ban in Iraq, a policy the extremists plan to keep.
The Nigerian farmers whose daughters and sons are being raped kidnapped and murdered are arming themselves against the law. Dozens of towns throughout central Mexico have illegily armed themselves and formed militias to drive out the cartels and their corrupt partners, the police and military.
I don’t know why a concept fully expressed 400 years ago in the enlightenment and implemented in the 1700s is mystifying to half the country. If you need any more evidence on the roots of gun control, our nation’s first gun ban was banning blacks from owning weapons. Even the 1968 gun control act targeted disarming the civil rights movement.
The pattern is sometimes race, sometimes religion, but always the elite maintaining control over the masses. Most nations used to ban swords in the hands of commoners from England to Japan. The argument du jour I hear for gun control these days is that it will constrain random spree killers bent on murder using a gun.
How bad is life for these kids in Nigeria, Iraq, Mexico or any other gun-free nation? England just started a youth campaign to discourage kids from carrying screw drivers, picks and tools because they’re being used as shivs. Japanese youths slice each other up with the same craft razors the 9/11 hijackers used and youth rape is common and generally unreported. These kids have little gun violence, but plenty of real life-ruining violence and a society with little choice but to put up with whatever horrors come their way.
Why would we want to emulate that?
Blaming gun control for the problems in Iraq, Mexico and Nigeria is just as nonsensical as blaming the lack of gun control in the US for our problems.
These problems are deeply rooted in culture history and politics. While lack of access to guns certainly harms their rights to defend themselves, you cannot compare countries that exist in vastly different contexts.
This argument fails for the same reason that “Look at the UK/France/Australia, how could you NOT want gun control” fails.
That said, there is a nugget of truth in the post: guns allow effective self defense which is a right of every human being. Just don’t fall for using the poor arguments so often used against us.
It didn’t come across as blaming gun control to me. He’s just pointing out that life isn’t all that better for a profusion of gun control.
I also think his point is spot on that when the S hits the F, people tool up, legally or not. So having the means to do it beforehand is desirable. Who wouldn’t want a head start on protecting themselves?
A culture of valuing an individual’s life and nations of armed free individuals must begin somewhere. These individuals in other nations are just as human; just as capable of embracing individual Liberty. The natural right of self defense and the right to keep and bear arms is universal and unalienable to all individuals of the World. To say that others cannot handle their own freedom is to say that they are less than human. Didn’t we learn our lessons here in America about considering other people as less than human beings? Wasn’t that the root of our gun control abominations?
He’s not blaming gun control. He’s saying the elites use gun control to maintain power over the masses. And he’s absolutely correct.
Blaming gun control for violence in Iraq may be irrational. Blaming gun control and the mentality thereof for the lack of resistance to violence is entirely appropriate. I am merely speaking as a citizen of a nation that obtained its freedom from oppression using gun violence (as well as a cannon violence, sword violence, bayonet violence, support from colonists, and a written declaration of freedom).
He understands that the control in “gun control” is the operative term; the “gun” is incidental.
A “nugget”? I’d say you missed the point entirely.
Spot on, Gabe!
My only gripe would be this: please stop calling them “elites”. They are not, have not been, and never will be.
While literally true, colloquially “elites” has come to mean “those in power”, as those in power grant themselves privileges they deny to everyone else.
Ever been to Aspen? Average house size = 12,000ft. Bug out vehicle of choice – Gulfstream V private jet. Are these simple plebian cabins? Please.
Elite: A special group or social class of people which have a superior intellectual, social or economic status as, the elite of society.
They don’t have the superior intellect, but they do have the social and/or economic status, so yeah…they fit the definition.
I understand the disagreement with the term, however, its commonly used to describe those of which many believe to hold power in our country and to some extent globally.
Synonymous with 1%, oligarchs, the ‘wealthy,’ etc. all terms used to describe the people often proving the sentiment that they believe themselves to be “elites” economically, politically, and globally.
While I agree that no human being is more “elite” than another, using the term helps differentiate the group of people the author is referring to when referencing inequality or natural human rights.
EDIT- two people beat me to it while writing haha
Great article. Give this guy a P320!
It’s good content but not written very well imho.
Well said. Not much to add. May I say some are professional victims and no amount of rational (or irrational) pleading will make a difference. Sheep gonna’ be sheep.
A soldier back from Iraq once told me that the head of each household was encouraged if not required to possess an AK-47 and a hand gun to employ in the defense of his family. The only restrictions were on heavy weapons like RPG’s, mortars and such. I’m not sure which city he was stationed in but he made it sound like it was nationwide.
I never verified his story. Never had a reason to doubt it.
I was told the same story that each Iraqi family was allowed one rifle and one handgun.
I can assure you I am not using the literal meaning of “elite” only the common vernacular of the term. The very nature of powerful societal circles is to raise up a kakistocracy through nepitism and cronyism to insulate their power. These are inherently the worst of people and not the best and brightest.
I find the most effective argument against european style gun bans is to point out the fact that gun crime actually rose and remains higher than pre ban levels. “Why would you submit Americans to a British style crime wave?” I ask innocently as they contort their faces in disgust. After the invariable tirade that ensues, I calmly point out that since America has more than 30k gun deaths per year, a mere 10% increase would equal one 911 attack per year worth of extra dead children. “You would kill 3000 people a year because you don’t believe in the constitution? What kind of monster are you?”
One of the first things the Taliban would impose on those villages and towns subjugated besides imposing sharia law was to outlaw the possession of guns (except for themselves).
Dan, you hit the nail on the head.
When my boys were still playing with plastic toys, decades ago, I had my oldest put his gun on the table and next to it I put my unloaded 9mm Parabellum. All of a sudden, you could have heard a pin drop. We had a very good father-sons talk that day. They were free to ask questions and, with permission, later pick up and heft the real McCoy. But first we had to run across the firing range basics. All of a sudden, pointing a gun a someone took on a whole new dimension and while they both own a number of pistols and rifles today, I don’t really remember them playing with the plastic ones the same way they used to before the talk. It was like they’d suddenly reached some magical point in their rites of passage that they could now move on to other battles to wrestle with.
They got the point very quickly the huge difference between tools and toys. Their mother on the other hand, an over-educated Hillary wannabe, even after several decades, still can’t resist following in perfect step to the tune of the masses controlling globalists. She is totally behind gun control but has no idea why. You can’t rationalize with these people because they just feel safer thinking about no guns. They feel safer because, according them, it’s the right thing to do. They’ve spent countless hours and days avoiding any thought about their own mortality that, to do so now, would only open up a Pandora’s Box of unrecognized emotional baggage. I guess that’s one reason she’s now my ex.
Just as you referred to the screwdrivers being used as shivs among the young people when they had no access to firearms, kids have this knack of finding some way to attempt to protect themselves from threats, where real or perceived. In the case of younger kids, if they aren’t allowed to play with toy guns, they’ll be playing with sticks, stones and my all time favorite, the “dirt grenade”; those fist sized clots of topsoil that break apart when they reach the ground after being tossed.
Immature as this sometimes might sound, this role playing helps to ensure that fears encountered during childhood have at least some hope of resolution before the child reaches an adult age. If the child learns to play well using these toned down set of rules, he stands a far better chance of developing a more realistic emotional skill set for dealing with them later on in life.
+1
Great photo of just another day in Chicago…
As a rule of thumb it’s be great if people stopped saying that “gun control/ bans” are/ is the reason Iraq will fall/ is falling into the hands of ISIS. It’s just ignorant at this point.
Guns are banned in Nigeria, Iraq, and Mexico?
Is that why nearly every photo taken by journalists in these areas show half of the population walking around or holding up AKs?
There seems to be rather ‘limited’ gun controls in these nations. Attempting to use them as a push against “gun control” here is asinine.
Brazil have very hard gun laws and there are more than 60,000 (sixty thousand) violent deaths EVERY YEAR.
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