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By Miguel A. Faria, M.D.

Depending on the level of culture and social progress, violence can take different forms in different societies. In the mid‑twentieth century, Stalin’s brutal communist government killed more Soviet citizens through privation, forced labor, and famine than soldiers fighting the Germans in World War II.

In 1994, the Hutu‑led Rwandan government massacred between 800,000 and over one million people, mostly Tutsis, in a genocide carried out largely with machete‑wielding (not guns) government forces. The massacres took place despite the presence of UN “peace‑keeping” forces, armed with automatic weapons who failed to intervene. The Tutsis were unarmed and helpless.

Civilian disarmament has always preceded genocide in authoritarian states. The political formula for accomplishing this goal is and remains: Media indoctrination against firearms, followed by gun licensing and registration, then banning, confiscation, and finally total civilian disarmament. This is what could happen if the Democrats — with many presidential and senatorial candidates openly embracing socialism and gun control— win the elections in 2020. But what can we learn from history?

Dateline: Warsaw, Poland, 1943

In the Spring of 1943, the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto, having become aware the Nazis were deporting the remaining Jews to the gas chambers of Treblinka, took up arms, whatever they could find, and rebelled against the German occupiers. These determined insurgents had only homemade Molotov cocktails and a handful of small arms, revolvers, pistols, and a few military or hunting rifles. It took vastly superior Nazi forces to subdue the rebels, and the Germans suffered up to 300 casualties in pacifying the city.

There were several other armed struggles and Ghetto uprisings, and the Poles and Warsaw remained a serious problem for the Germans during the remainder of the war. The Polish Jews continued to procure whatever arms they could find to defend themselves in their struggle, repeatedly disrupting the timetable of the Nazi high command and the German war effort.

The last major Polish uprising in August 1944 was to be launched in concert with the liberating Soviet Red Army. But the advancing Red juggernaut suddenly and inexplicably halted. Advised by General Georgi Zhukov, Stalin rejected the appeals of the Western allies to assist the insurgents. For two months the courageous Poles fought the Nazis in heroic, urban warfare without any assistance.

Stalin had simply halted the advance of the giant Red Army to allow the Germans to destroy the non-communist freedom fighters: 200,000 Poles perished and 800,000 were deported to the death camps. Warsaw was erased by orders of Adolf Hitler, and the Soviets at the outskirts of the city did nothing.

Dateline: Budapest, Hungary, 1944

During the summer of 1944 in the ongoing carnage of World War II, German troops were retreating on multiple fronts. Hungarian allied troops were defending the motherland from the onslaught of the Soviet Red Army, yet in the midst of the chaos, nearly 500,000 Hungarian Jews were rounded up and deported to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz–Birkenau, where 90% of them were summarily exterminated in the gas chambers.

A reign of terror ensued for those who remained in Hungary; thousands of them were tortured, robbed, or murdered; Jewish women were raped; property was looted or confiscated. These atrocities were carried out with a minimum of Nazi troops. How could these atrocities have been carried out with only a minimum of Nazi troops?

The Hungarian state had outlawed the possession of firearms for its citizens. Simply put, this happened without resistance because the Hungarian people had been disarmed.

Dateline: Havana, Cuba, 1959

After the triumph of the revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro reneged on his promise to establish democracy in Cuba. Instead he seized authoritarian control. A 100,000-member “militia” was organized to seek out the political opposition and actively disarm it. Castro then disarmed all the Cubans, who were not considered reliable supporters of the revolution that soon turned communist.

The communists and the secret police (the G2) had a well-drawn blueprint to follow — the local firearm registration lists that the former dictator, Fulgencio Batista, had established. All the communist militia had to do was to seize the registration (licensing) lists and then go door to door searching for and confiscating firearms. The militia tried to disarm my father, a physician, and the episode is recounted in my book Cuba in Revolution — Escape from a Lost Paradise (2002).

Since Fidel Castro took over the island in 1959, the best figures we can glean are that between 30,000 and 40,000 Cubans were either executed by firing squads or died at the hands of their communist jailers. Between 1960-1965, hundreds of anti-communist rebels, many of them former RD members, went back to the hills of the Escambray Mountains in my native Las Villas province to fight the new communist dictatorship of the Castro brothers.

The mostly peasant insurgents, who were defending their lands, lacked sufficient weapons to overcome the well-armed, communist Cuban military forces. Thus, most of these peasant insurgents were annihilated by 1966.

Moreover, between 1960 and 1993, 36,000 Cubans perished at sea trying to escape the Castro brothers’ communist inferno. If we include all of those who died escaping the regime, those who were shot or died in custody, the figure well exceeds 100,000. In fact, the late scholar Armando Lago arrived at a death toll of over 105,000 victims directly attributed to the regime of Fidel Castro.

In conclusion

Civilian disarmament is not only harmful to one’s freedom and potentially deadly to one’s existence, but also counterproductive in achieving safety. During the twentieth century, more than 100 million people were exterminated by their own repressive governments — police states bent on destroying liberty and building communism, socialism, collectivism, and other utopias that turn out to be hells on earth.

Some of the deceptive promises made to the people by the authoritarian governments of these “people’s democracies” were eerily similar to the promises the Democrats are making to American voters: Free (higher) education, making the rich pay, free health care ( “Medicare for all”), gun control, etc.

Governments that trust their citizens with guns are governments that sustain and affirm individual freedom. Governments that do not trust their citizens with firearms tend to be despotic and tyrannical. We Americans should heed history and keep our guns.

 

Miguel A. Faria, M.D., is Associate Editor in Chief in socioeconomics, politics, medicine, and world affairs of Surgical Neurology International (SNI). This article is excerpted and edited from his newly release book, America, Guns, and Freedom: A Journey Into Politics and the Public Health & Gun Control Movements (2019)

 

 

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92 COMMENTS

  1. You forgot Hungary in 1956 AND 1968, We can called it Budapest since that is/was the capital. Caracas, 2012? The attempt in Boston, 1774?

  2. Read this yesterday already via The Gun Feed.

    Still true content, though. Never register anything if you have any way to avoid it.

    • Between tracking IP addresses of people reading and posting to sites like this, pulling people’s credit card purchases for ammunition/firearms/contributions to 2A groups, all the NICS searches, and all the various state license to carry and to own records, the federal government already has a very thorough de facto gun registry.

        • This. Picture it. You know deep in the bowels of the government somewhere, be NSA or FBI, or wherever, there’s a team of people who’s sold job is to crunch the numbers on guns and ammo. When they put all that data together you gotta figure they sit back and just say “Holy F**king Shit.”

        • And the scope increases in direct proportion to the unveiled threats the candidates make while campaigning. Talk about putting out a fire with gasoline ⛽

        • Just because you’re really, really, really, ridiculously progressive doesn’t mean you can’t not die in a freak gasoline fight accident!

      • the fact that TTAG often doesn’t allow posting when using a VPN (proton, in my case) is a major fail

      • Unless you use your employer’s IP or a VPN. Not too difficult to smear the tracks in the sand if you want to.

      • “Between tracking IP addresses of people reading and posting to sites like this, pulling people’s credit card purchases for ammunition/firearms/contributions to 2A groups, all the NICS searches, and all the various state license to carry and to own records, the federal government already has a very thorough de facto gun registry.”

        Very true and the illegal monitoring by the government of our e-mails and phone calls, black boxes in all new cars, as well as millions of surveillance cameras make an uprising only a far right pipe dream in the 21st Century.

        There is also a new camera police can use that can scan your home as they drive by which can reveal to them everything in your home. The courts ruled this as not an illegal search or invasion of privacy.

        The Author offers no solutions to the easy availability of guns to the criminals and mentally ill people as well which if left unchecked much longer is only stoking the fires of calls for more gun ban laws.

        • Thomas Paine: The camera you’re thinking of is an infrared/thermal imaging device. I searched for law enforcement use for scanning private/commercial buildings. SCOTUS determined that to use thermal imaging would require a search warrant due to violation of the 4th Amendment, see Kyllo v. United States.

        • You cannot stop someone who wants a gun from getting one. Criminals and the mentally ill will always have access because no law will ever be an impediment to them. They will simply disobey it.

      • Wait a minute, you people are still buying weapons in a mediation with a credit card?

        At the least, may I suggest using a postal money order for your purchases? You can put any name and address on a postal MO, and there’s no connection with any of your bank or credit records.

        Of course, cash is king.

        • Wut just happened? Did I wake up today in the Upside Down? Miner just said something relevant and true.

          It’s time to start day drinking…

      • I, also, believe that a registry exists. BUT!! Formation or use of a registry by agents of the federal government is a felony, they have to keep it secret, which makes it pretty much useless without some serious changes to the law, which should warn you that it is time to sell all your guns, or take them for a boat ride. Remember, you should never sell anybody a gun without 1000 rounds of ammo, it’s not polite. That’s why you ordered all that ammo, just weeks before you’re explaining that you sold all those guns, no you can’t have a look through my home, and have a good day, officer.

    • I Haz a Question,

      I previously embraced your suggestion. Then I realized that fedzilla already knows (or could easily know) who has firearms and even which calibers they have via the methods that Jonathan – Houston listed above.

      I guarantee you that fedzilla logs the source Internet Protocol address of people who purchase via Internet orders from firearm, ammunition, and components distributors. I can also guarantee you that fedzilla gets a copy of the credit card companies’ logs of transactions with firearm, ammunition, and components distributors. Finally, I can guarantee you that fedzilla gets a log of the source Internet Protocol address of people who visit websites such as The Truth About Guns as well as a log of search engine queries for firearms, ammunition, and firearm components.

      And purchasing firearms in cash from gun shows isn’t very secret either: feds drive around with license plate readers to log who attends gun shows.

      I decided one of the best and most practical courses of action is to ensure that fedzilla knows it will be facing about 20 million seriously pi$$ed-off people who possess about 200 million firearms and several billion rounds of ammunition as a bulwark against dictatorial aspirations and dreams of disarmament.

      • Keep in mind they dont have enough manpower to come against us at the same time. There are going to be thousands of police oath breakers not returning home

        • They won’t come knock on your door. They will come in the night in full battle gear. Only saving grace would be those that can understand what would happen to their families. ‘Nough said.

      • 20 million seriously pi$$ed-off people who possess about 200 million firearms? Sounds like a great idea! Now how will the Fedzilla even know the people are seriously pi$$ed off and not scared shitless of it? How many of those gun owners contacts their Congress critters? How many is pissed off enough to just show up at the DC rally? Actually we know this one – about 1500.

        • The Dems dont need to follow that approach, they have been changing the mindset of the youth that guns are bad. The Dems plan on newer generations to be sheeple as the older generations of POTG die with age. The sheeple will turn in Grandpa/ma’s gun. Our youth is the 2A future.

      • There are a 100 million gun owners in the US. The other day I read that Gov. Abbott, a conservative, was bragging about having “fusion centers” where cops for potential spree killers by using algorithms to scan people comments in social media. There’s already a debate going in in public health circles about defining gun owners as mentally unstable people. The possession of firearms and no other reason is sufficient to put you on someone’s watch-list. The purpose of fusion centers is to bring all this disparate information together so that authorities who determine who is potentially dangerous—that’s us by the way—and who isn’t. That conservative politicians think it’s a good idea to have cops start thinking in terms of “pre-crime” investigations is a good indication of just how close to a totalitarian state we are coming.

        • Potential threat scoring system:

          Male = 1 point
          White = 1 point
          Conservative = 1 point
          Owns a gun = 1 point
          Visits Pro-2A websites = 1 point…

          I’m sure you all get the point(s).

        • Fusion centers are part of the DHS / Patriot Act spasm, post the 9/11 attacks.

          Like “discretionary” federal highway funds, fed “grants” to local law enforcement “grants” are encumbered, typically with “feed us everything.” “Contact reports” were also expanded. No arrest, no crime, no accusation, no investigation; just get us the data point.

          Hey, if AmaFaceTwitGoog can track yr every move, you know what we have? A mine shaft gap.

  3. ”
    I believe it was called “Operation Tempest”. Started by the British to help the beleaguered poles in Warsaw. Many missions were flown mostly from Italy supplying the resistance Fighters with guns ammunition and food.

    Air dropping supplies to resistance Fighters all over Europe the British had great experience at. However while the luftwaffe had been neutralized by American and British air forces the Russians shot at any Allied aircraft that entered their airspace to drop supplies to the Poles.

    Russia has never been a great Ally. At best the west and the Russians tolerate each other only on certain times.

    • There’s an old saying: “You can trust the Russians, to BE Russian”. It’s one reason the women killed themselves when the Germans left and they heard the Russians were coming.

      • The German women were raped in record numbers, the reason the Germans fought to the death on the Eastern front. In a way, it may have being an evil salvation for Germany’s recovery, a country that was depleted of men after the War. When Stalin was told about the rapes, according to Solzhenitsyn, he said that the Soviet heroes needed a respite afte such a war — typical of amoral dictator!

        • That was truly a war of extermination, to use both Hitler and Stalin’s words. The eastern front in WW2 is easily the bloodiest event in all of human history. It was always going to end like that, either the Germans killing off every last Russian or the Russians doing exactly what they did. It quite amazing there’s even any semblance of Russia or Germany left after such a war. And, I’m willing to bet we haven’t seen the last of it between those two.

        • to Merle O
          Adolf Hitler was a communist just like Joseph Stalin was a communist. They both committed genocide. It’s just that Hitler photographed everything he did and Joseph Stalin did not.

          And they both killed Jews Christians and everyone else.

        • Hitler was far from the communist, he in a party murdered communists wholesale before world war two.

          And the wealthy German industrialist capitalists were really the only people to come out of the war with their fortunes intact, many of them profited mightily producing everything from the big guns to Zyklon B and then transitioned into companies like Bayer Agri-science & BASF to profit in post-war Europe and the world.

  4. There is a superb Polish war film from 1957 about the Warsaw Uprising called Kanal. Andrzej Wajda directed it. Wajda was a resistance fighter during WW2 himself.

  5. Disarm and be murdered,watch wives and daughters be raped and made sex slaves. Keep your guns and exucute all those who attempt such things. God guns and guts made America and will sustain it

  6. The last paragraph is a really big problem.

    Apparently, the Second Amendment does not stand on its own bottom, and I can’t just affirm RKBA without swallowing the entire buffet of Wall-Street-Prosperity-Gospel dogma from the RNC.

    I believe in the right of the private citizen to keep and bear military-grade firearms.

    But I also think that nobody should be turned out of a hospital for lack of money, or go bankrupt because of a cancer diagnosis. I also think that Alec Baldwin and Barbara Streisand should pay a higher marginal tax rate that an Uber driver.

    In this bitterly-polarized two-party country, with no ranked-choice voting or runoff elections to ensure the majority’s actual preferences are registered at the ballot box, that isn’t possible. You either vote your guns or you vote for a human-centered economy. You can’t do both. That’s an ugly choice we are forced to make. Don’t try to dupe me with some rainbow-unicorn story about how the Mercer Family agenda is of a piece with freedom for the common man.

    • This is a nation where the individual rights out weigh the wishes of the majority. My human and civil right to defend myself and own a firearm is greater than the right of 51% of the voters need to ‘feel’ safe.

      I agree with much of your comments. We are a wealthy nation that can do better to provide for its citizens. But so long as the democrats are determined to trample my individual rights I cannot vote for them.

      So I vote for #orangemanbad. It’s a choice forced on me by the democratic party being hi jacked by the loonie left.

    • I reject that notion Danny. Because today’s modern democrat party doesn’t stand for you’ve described. 20 years ago, sure. But today’s DNC is full on for socialized healthcare. Which you might be for, which on a purely moral stance I get why. However it’s not physically feasible in the United States. No amount of taxing the rich will accomplish it. Remember, Europe can fund it because Europe no longer funds massive global militaries. We do that for them, for free. The reality is we’re the ones paying for Europe’s socialism. If the US massively reduced its global presence to the point of total isolationism, then maybe* we could pull it off. But then Russia would start invading Europe, China would begin invading all its neighbors, and the Middle East would go nuclear. I get the left wing emotion behind what they want but the math simply doesn’t add up.

      • I don’t think it’s morally right to force anyone under the threat of state supplied violence to provide services to anybody. Health care services included.

        I also don’t believe that successful people should be punished for their success by exorbitant income taxes. Progressives try to trump each other in how much they will steal from the wealthy. And then from not so wealthy.
        Pocahontas’ proposed wealth tax is straight out of communist textbook and the fact that it is not only proposed by a presidential hopeful, but also taken seriously in this country, makes me sick to my stomach and worried for future of my children.

        I have seen what socialism looks like and what it does to people. I know why Democrats push for gun control to render us defenseless. It’s not the love for the poor and opressed that drives them. It’s the raging hate for the successful and rich. See what they have been doing ever since Trump got elected.

        • I totally agree with you. I was just trying to convey to Danny that I understand the left wing side of the argument.

        • But they DO love the successful rich. The politicians all sucked-up to Zuckerberg when he went to Capital Hill. They love the lefty Hollywood rich. They all still love the Kennedys, Buffets, Oprah, Rock/rap stars…….

      • Merle that was the shortest explanation of how Europe has “functional” socialism that hit the major relevant points I have ever seen, well done.

    • “You either vote your guns or you vote for a human-centered economy . . .”

      There’s no room for moderates in this fight, Danny. And your idea that progressive-fascists are promoting a “human-centered economy” reveals the kind of head-in-the-sand ignorance that I find in most people who claim to be “moderates”. There’s no middle-ground in this fight, Danny. If you can’t run with the big dogs you’d best stay up on the porch with the little dogs.

    • “…to ensure the majority’s actual preferences…”

      We have the electoral system to prevent that on purpose.

    • Count me also as rejecting Danny’s assertion. As for a reply I leave it to the Founders:

      “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” – Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania Assembly, Reply to the Governor, November 1755, as cited in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 6, p. 242.

      “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” ― Samuel Adams, Speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

    • You can’t tax the rich more. It’s like saying I’m going to take more water out of the front end of the bath tub. Any and all taxes on the rich will either be avoided or passed on to the not rich. The rich can afford lawyers and accountants to protect their wealth and even bribe public officials.

      Capital is merely savings. Those savings are the investments that drive development and production of goods and services. Mass produced goods are produced for the masses. Reduce capital and you either raise the cost of goods and services to everyone or you don’t get the goods and services at all.

      As for healthcare, no ER can legally refuse treatment to anyone. The effects of the (un)affordable care act on private insurance and medical providers have been devastating. We now get less than 1/4 the coverage we used to have for more than 4 times the cost.

      There was a time when hospitals and medical providers would provide services free to those who could not afford them. That was before government got involved in healthcare and hospitals were run by religions and charities.

      The solution to all the problems you outline are to eliminate government involvement in everything and restore the free market.

      • Not bad!! Also, in the same vein, we should all understand that corporations do not pay ANY taxes. If a corporation does not achieve a certain return on investment, it either changes something in the earnings equation or it goes out of business. Generally, if you tax a corporation, it raises the price of its services to cover the taxes, so that its customers end up footing the bill. The customers may bitch, in which case the politicians earn favor by raising the taxes again, so the corporation raises prices again, isn’t life fun? Since all corporations pay the same tax, all the prices go up together and the customer cannot escape the taxes he demanded.

    • Danny, I agree with much of what you have said.

      While there are extremists in the Democrat ranks, the vast majority of Democrats do not oppose private firearms ownership or want open borders. That’s just Fox News propaganda serving the wealthy to manipulate the American voter.

      If you look at what the Democrats have really passed when they had the power, it’s been less restrictive than what Republican President Trump has done.

      Republican Reagan took our carry rights on federal lands, the Democrat Congress and President Obama restored them.

      The Democrats had two years where they controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency, yet Obama did not ban bump stocks or pistol braces or binary trigger’s. Personally, I’m in favor of restrictions on the importation of foreign made weapons, I think we should support our neighbors by buying American!

      Republican president Trump banned bump stocks through a ‘regulation’, and has done nothing to extend our gun rights.

      Do what we’ve done for years, elect Democrats but hold their feet to the fire regarding our gun rights.

      • Miner, you must be living in a parallel world all of your own and applying the scissor strategy with Danny! Republicans want to enforce present laws, already over 20,000 in the books. But the Democrats are not only socialist authoritarians who want to control our lives but also take away our guns. For what purpose, we can only guess! “Keep the feet to the fire,” you say … don’t make me laugh. In fact I’m laughing! Your post is disinformation, KGB style. I’m falling off my chair laughing at this piece of disinformation!

        • Please, in what specific way was my post factually inaccurate?

          I have indeed posted Reagan’s regulations banning the carrying of firearms by private citizens on hundreds of thousands of acres of BLM and national forest lands.

          I also posted details of the legislation passed by the democratically controlled Congress and signed by Democratic president Obama, that not only protected individuals from predatory lending practices by credit card companies, but also gave us back our right to carry weapons on hundreds of thousands of acres of federal lands.

          And I think we can all agree it is a fact that republican president Donald Trump banned bump stocks, is that true on your planet also?

          And Democratic president Obama did not ban bump stocks, allowing millions to be sold to private citizens. He also did not ban binary trigger’s or arm braces, is that how it is on your planet?

          Help me to understand why you consider these facts as ‘spin’??

        • Because you know full well that the only reason barry signed the carry bill was because he had to to get the cc bill. Even goebbels let a grain of truth enter into his screeds on occasion. But that did not make him a reliable source.

          Just like you.

        • “the only reason barry signed the carry bill was because he had to to get the cc bill”

          Can you explain that? If Obama and Hillary are just Scheels for the Wall Street bankers, why were they working so hard to protect regular people from predatory lending practices by the big banks?

          And why wouldn’t Republicans be in favor of protecting working people from predatory lending practices by the big banks?

          In my posts, I quote the actual text of the laws and regulations, citing historical fact.

          In your replies you just call me names, with zero evidence to back up your position.

          Face it, your hero Donald Trump is the one who said “why don’t we just take the guns first and worry about the courts later”.

          That wasn’t Obama, that wasn’t Hillary, that wasn’t a democrat or a liberal or a progressive, it was your Republican president.

          Face it, the Republicans sold you a bill of goods, and now we’re stuck with a corrupt, narcissistic, sociopathic ConMan for president, all too willing to extort our allies to gain political advantage.

        • Sorry, you were wrong about the introduction of bump stocks being long after Obama was president, that’s just silly.

          From the fact check.org:

          “It’s true that, under Obama, the ATF — an agency within the Justice Department — ruled that it could not prevent the use of certain models of bump stocks.
          In June 2010, for example, the bureau responded to a request to evaluate a product sold by Slide Fire Solutions, a Texas company that makes the devices. In a letter, John Spencer, then the ATF’s Firearms Technology Branch chief, wrote that the device examined had no “functioning mechanical parts or springs” that made it perform like an automatic weapon.”

          And Donald Trump made his anti-gun policy is clear in a tweet criticizing Obama for allowing the sale of bump stocks, so who’s your friend?

          Donald Trump’s tweet from March 23, 2018:

          “Obama Administration legalized bump stocks. BAD IDEA. As I promised, today the Department of Justice will issue the rule banning BUMP STOCKS with a mandated comment period. We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.”

          Again, it was Barack Hussein Obama who was expanding your gun rights and preventing the ATF from banning accessories.
          But all that changed when you elected Trump.

          Smooth move, bowels.

        • Helen, you say:

          “Your post is disinformation, KGB style.”

          Please be specific, what part of the post is factually inaccurate and qualifies as disinformation?

    • Danny, you and others are forever free to spend all the money you wish on pie in the sky and massive amounts of free stuff. Just not MY money. Which is what everyone advocating such tripe says. You need to recall that if you subsidize something, you will get more of it, and if you punish something, you will get less of it. IOW, giving away free stuff based on some supposed “need” is not only stupid, it is destructive to the beneficiary.

      Your heroes like Pocahontas advocate “just two cents”, and that sounds just so simple. OK, forget the wealthy, let’s ALL contribute two cents! let’s see, 330 million people, two cents each, that’s $6.6 million, wow, we’re almost up to that $52 trillion already, only, let’s see here, $52 trillion to go. Listen, what the stupid witch is ACTUALLY advocating is a 6% tax on net worth every year. Who determines the net worth, don’t ask me, my education is accounting, and I have no idea how to determine an accurate net worth other than by complete liquidation, and this would be every year! But let’s say a Bill Gates is worth $100 billion, just for argument. Her proposal is to tax him $60 billion over the next 10 years, over and above the billions in taxes he already pays. How’s THAT for a promise of “just two cents”? In 15 years we would have discovered what Thatcher was talking about when she warned that we would run out of other people’s money, we would revert to a third world hell-hole where everybody’s worth was equal, as in, nothing. Except our masters in Washington, of course, they’d somehow be doing just fine.

      There is no such thing as free stuff, but in one country on this planet you are still free to go out and earn what you want. You are expressing a wish to stop that and force all to live on minimum wage, forever. There are plenty of countries which can provide that, but this is not one of them.

    • I honestly don’t care if they trace me. If the day comes when my mere posting online becomes enough to throw me in a camp, then the day has arrived that they can send what’s left of me in the pile of brass I leave behind.

      • I hear you merle o many are sick and tired of being threaten bring it on.once the population turns on the left and the police look out wemay not win but niether will they molon labe

      • You are absolutely correct. The day we fear expressing ourselves (in today’s jargon posting our opinions), we are slaves, fearful of masters. I know from personal experience in Cuba, an experience related in another book.

        • It takes far more than just willingness to win a war (massed armies or guerilla style) – which is what you are talking about. There may be many millions who would be willing to engage in such, but the vast majority know nothing about the nuts and bolts of it. Ask some of your friends if they have studied war or participated at a leadership level. Have they bothered to start with the basics established by Sun Tzu for example. Or have they studied only video games and Hollywood movies.

          • George s patton jr stated it this way attack attack attack and keep on attacking we become slaves when we surrender

        • It takes far more than just willingness to win a war (massed armies or guerilla style) – which is what you are talking about. There may be many millions who would be willing to engage in such, but the vast majority know nothing about the nuts and bolts of it. Ask some of your friends if they have studied war or participated at a leadership level. Have they bothered to start with the basics established by Sun Tzu for example. Or have they studied only video games and Hollywood movies. Warfare is not a 1st person shooter game or an action movie.

        • Bottom line is that we have seen over and over again throughout history what happens when communist and socialist ideas are implemented and it is always starvation and murder and a few oligarchs living in luxury at the top. Read or listen to Rothbard’s An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought.
          (https://mises.org/library/austrian-perspective-history-economic-thought) Among everything else, he details episodes of Christian communism in the middle ages and guess what? It went just like Russia, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, and all the rest.

          Having seen that there is only one outcome to the ideology being espoused by the left, and it is bad, we would choose to resist tyranny rather than suffer the certain outcome of not resisting, even though our resistance may be inept, inadequate, and possibly doomed to failure. I don’t believe it is. But given the choice, we would rather resist than wish we had later.

      • Right there with you. I’m all done being prudent and being worried. I am a young man, and as such have a duty to stand up for what makes our country great, and push back against my generation of busybodies and infantile emotional creatures. I don’t care who likes it or doesn’t. As you said, if we get to the point they come to take me to the gulag, then I’ve already lost.

        Quam bene vivas refert non quam diu.
        Dum spiro spero.

        • I think gun owners need to draw a line in the sand. And like the Spartans, if it comes to that:
          “Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
          That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.”
          Epitaph on the Cenotaph of Thermopylae

  8. I often wonder what happened to my relatives in Poland and Ukraine (Galacia) during WW2. Their fate, and the fate of those unfortunate Jews, Christians, and dissidents is a constant reminder for me how we should fight to keep all of our Rights given to us by God Himself. For me, what happened in Poland is personal and I will not be disarmed.

    • I’m sorry to say Gary, if they were officers, they were killed in the Katyn Forest massacre, 15,000 of them! bur for Stalin that was only a statistics, one person’s death a tragedy.

  11. The author brings up Rwanda… a few years ago, I was in Uganda (itself an example of a terrible government, but I digress…), and for a few days we were in a fishing village on Lake Victoria near the Tanzania border. There was a monument to the genocide nearby along a river that starts in Rwanda, flows through that corner Tanzania, and empties into Lake Victoria in Uganda. The fishing industry in that part of the country was nearly destroyed because so many hundreds (maybe thousands?) of bodies floated down the river into the lake, that all the tilapia were eating the deceased. And obviously, no one wants to eat fish that just fed on people. The fisherman spent weeks doing nothing but pulling the dead out of the lake.

    All killed largely by machetes.

  12. The picture that the author chose for this article was particularly moving for me. What makes a person feel safe?

    The feeling of safety is such a subjective thing. Quite often, the very thing that makes someone feel safe absolutely terrorizes others. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder it’s said. Some people are comforted by having a firearm at their side. Others want nothing to do with them. Your fear of guns (or anything else) does not translate to forcing me to be unarmed. Just like your lack of understand about computer technology does not translate to requiring me to dumb down to Facebook/Twitter. I will do for me and you can do for you. If help is needed then ask. It takes all kinds of people to make the world go around.

    My thing is….
    There is evil in the world and all manner of unspeakable horror inflicted on people. It is ultimately upto the individual to develop themselves and their own strength to either remove themselves from their circumstances and improve their lot in life or except that ‘it is what it is’. Sometimes people need help and that help is available (in all kinds of ways). But it is obvious to me that the answer is NOT going to be found in government. Too many people all over the globe think it is.

  13. The Second Amendment will never be a 100% guarantee. The concept however, is something that may never be taken by any person, group or government.

    I don’t worry so much about the feds, my concern is with private parties. I retired from the government. I know how eager our government employees are chomping at the bit to come take our guns…they’re fallible/lazy/human, just like the rest of us.
    Now, if you post your goodies on social media, it’s a banner that says “easy pickens!” While WE know better, criminals mostly don’t.

  14. I said miner they weren’t a problem until the vegas shooting now shut up and get your facts straight stupid

    • Frankly Jerry, you are a liar.

      You didn’t mention Vegas at all, here’s what you actually said in your comment:

      “Miner bump stops didnt come on scene until that half breed God hating muslim was out of office”

      The fact is, Barack Hussein Obama’s ATF ruled bump stocks were not prohibited by the law in 2010, allowing bump stocks to be sold for the next six years of his presidency.

      It was Republican president Donald Trump who band bump stocks, not Barry Soweto.

      Barry Soweto actually expanded your gun rights, rolling back Ronald Reagan’s prohibitions on carrying firearms in national Forest and BLM land.

  15. Great article. A point well made that should be heeded especially by the new breed of “I Will Not Comply.” My grandfather, a doctor, military officer and Olympic Shooter had declared “I will not comply!” in the early to mid 1960’s. Other than a few illegal arrests and attempted assassinations against my immediate family, everything went “well.” He kept all his firearms and the baby 👶, me, ate fresh game that he hunted; better than the canned “bear” meat from Russia we were sometimes rationed by the government. He stayed neutral on politics and had balls of blued steel so no one harmed us. But, this is a very anomalous will not comply story; even in the US most will not be that lucky.

  16. A number of posters here will be carrying the same ‘I want to feel safe’ sign when supporting mandatory vaccines. Hypocrisy runs deep.

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