Gun Control and Freedom, Part 4

                The topic of discussion for this Freedom Friday is the simple fact that gun control takes away freedom and security.  This fact has been proven time after time in nation after nation.  Is the United States doomed to follow the pattern?  We can know only by looking back, but heaven help us if we do. 

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states:  “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  Put simply, the reason for the Second Amendment is for the security of the people, individually and in groups, from our own government as well as from invasion by enemies.  Consider the Third Amendment in connection with the Second Amendment:  “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”  Our Founding Fathers trusted the common people more than they trusted the military!  This is the reason why they wanted every person to have the Right to keep and bear Arms.  We have the Second Amendment in order to provide security for ourselves and our neighbors, not for hunting and sports shooting as some claim.  In fact, it is the Second Amendment that protects all our other Rights.

President George Washington obviously thought the Second Amendment was for more than hunting and sports shooting because he said, “A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”

Millions of people in numerous nations – Nazi Germany, Communist China, North Korea, and Cuba to name a few - have suffered loss of freedom and even death through gun control and then confiscation of the guns.  Russia is one of those nations where citizens lost their freedom to protect themselves.  A Russian blogger by the name of Stanislav Mishin published the following opinion piece, titled “Americans never give up your guns,” on his blog, and his article was later picked up by Pravda.  Considering that Pravda was once the official press of the government of the United Soviet Socialist Republic, I find it strange for that specific newspaper to be publishing this information about the history of Russia to the world.

                “These days, there are few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains:  the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one’s self and possessions.

                “This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth.  This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar.  Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns, were everywhere, common items.  People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered.  Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples?  Well those are bullet holders for rifles.

                “Various armies, such as the Poles, during the CMYTA (Times of Troubles), or Napoleon, or the Germans even as the Tsarist state collapsed under the weight of WW1 and Wall Street monies, found that holding Russian lands was much much harder than taking them and taking was no easy walk in the park but a blood bath all its own.  In holding, one faced an extremely well armed and aggressive population Hell bent on exterminating or driving out the aggressor.

                “This well-armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918 and wage a savage civil war against the Reds.  It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own.  If it had not been for Washington’s clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently.

                “Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lying guile of the Reds.  Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors.  Even then the battle was fierce and losses high.  However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed...  The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene.  They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons:  where they were promptly shot.

                “Of course being savages, murders and liars does not mean being stupid, and the Reds learned from their Civil War experience.  One of the first things they did was to disarm the population.  From that point, mass repression, mass arrests, mass deportations, mass murder, mass starvation were all a safe game for the powers that were.  The worst they had to fear was a pitchfork in the guts or a knife in the back or the occasional hunting rifle.  Not much for soldiers.

                “To this day, with the Soviet Union now dead 21 years, with a whole generation born and raised to adulthood without the SU, we are still denied our basic and traditional rights to self defense.  Why?  We are told that everyone would just start shooting each other and crime would be everywhere…. but criminals are still armed and still murdering and too often, especially in the far regions, those criminals wear the uniforms of the police.  The fact that everyone would start shooting is also laughable when statistics are examined.

                “While President Putin pushes through reforms, the local authorities, especially in our vast hinterland, do not feel they need to act like they work for the people.  They do as they please, a tyrannical class who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from a relatively unarmed population.  This in turn breeds not respect but absolute contempt and often enough, criminal abuse.

                “For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2^nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room.  Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position.  In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases.  As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or homemade bombs (everywhere), insane people strike.  They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or `talking to them’, it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.

                “The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly.  So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted?  Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?

                “No, it is about power and a total power over the people.  There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed.  Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns.  Oh, no, they do not.  What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology.  They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question.  They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

                “So do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self-respect.”

                Did you notice the author’s comment that the Russian people still do not have the right to self-protection even though the Soviet Union fell 21 years ago?  I believe it will be much easier to defend and protect our right to keep and bear arms than it would be to retrieve it once it is taken away. 

Did you notice that the author considers the American way of life to be a “light” to the rest of the world?  President Ronald Reagan spoke about a “shining city on the hill,” and this is what he meant.   The people of the world recognize that the United States has what they want to enjoy; they want their nations to have the same freedoms we enjoy.  We cannot and will not give up our liberties!  America is the last best hope for the freedom of the world!