fox files

“Why do you even need a gun like that?”

Whenever people find themselves answering that question, it seems their argument is strongest when walking the listener through the three key reasons for wanting guns: sporting, self-defense and the “fail-safe.”

The first two are self-explanatory, and so I’m just going to skip right to the third reason.

That final reason, that fail-safe, is the insurance policy on our Rule of Law. And this is the part that can be the toughest to explain and the easiest to distort and lampoon. Remember that the gun-control proponents are trying to paint responsible, shooters and armed citizens as anti-government radicals in order to marginalize them, so 2nd. Amenders shouldn’t give them more ammo through careless wording. (pun intended. lol)

THE LAST BULWARK

Our Constitution was written by a bunch of people who had just taken up arms against their government. You can read throughout the biographies of the Founders and in their own words in The Federalist Papers of how they toiled to balance power between the rich and the poor, the cities and the farmlands, the branches of government, the federal government, the states, the government itself and the citizens. They built in many layers to protect the Rule of Law, including an election cycle to enable a constant bloodless revolution, an amendment process and a Bill of Rights, even at the risk of limiting those rights by bounding them.

In that Bill of Rights, they wrote, “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.” And there are absolutely binders upon binders of books and publications that show what the Founding Fathers meant by a well regulated Militia was THE PEOPLE. NO IF’S, AND’S OR BUT’S ABOUT IT!

It has been awkward wording and punctuation that have vexed for centuries, those who have not studied the texts and words of the Founding Fathers, but to the rest of us — and to the U.S. Supreme Court post-Heller— the meaning is abundantly and absolutely clear: The people get to keep and carry arms.

Reasonable minds differ on the meaning and purpose. To me, an armed population is an ultimate fail-safe against foreign invasion or a government gone totally and genocidally crazy.

Make absolutely no mistake about this. The 200 million firearm owners in this country has most definitely given pause to other countries contemplating an on-shore attack of within the Continental United States.

Just because I say this doesn’t mean I advocate for the violent overthrow of the government or that I want to “shoot that feller when he comes to take our guns.” It means that if the Rule of Law breaks down — if we can’t protest, impeach, elect someone else, petition in a classical sense — and things have gotten so crazy that people are getting dragged off into the darkness never to be seen or heard from again, I want some sort of last-ditch option.

Do I think that day is coming soon? I don’t know. Do I think that day is coming at all? At this point, I think it would be foolish to proclaim one way or the other.

I believe in this country. I believe in a majority of it’s peoples. I believe in the Rule of Law. I believe in Americans and government officials to do the right thing.

But do you think it is impossible that such a day could come? How many totalitarian and genocidal regimes have we seen emerge in just the last 100 years? The trouble with the really bad guys is that they don’t announce their intentions decades in advance.

There are counterpoints worth considering. What can a bunch of yahoos armed with AK-47s do against a modern military? Well, having seen a bunch of yahoos with AK-47s in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Chechnya cause real problems for modern militaries, I would say more than you might think. But an armed population gives us a choice; and a chance; it gives us something better than being herded into the darkness.

Force isn’t — and should never be — a first resort. Some extremists and domestic terrorists may think they are justified in committing violence under this fail-safe logic, but for the most part, Americans have been extremely hesitant to resort to violence en-masse. Were that not the case, you’d have noticed by now.

DON’T DISENFRANCHISE ON ME

People don’t want guns so they can shoot whoever is going to ‘come for their guns.” They don’t want a hunting rifle. They want a weapon so that they can compete in a sport they enjoy. They want a firearm so that when the home-invasion robbery crew starts up the stairs, they can put something other than their pink, fuzzy, squishy body between them and their families. They want a weapon so they that, heaven forbid, they see a family member getting dragged into the darkness, they can do something other than begging them with their own lives instead.

If that makes those people “gun nuts” to you, then I KNOW those people will proudly wear that label. While we answer questions like these without coming across as hostile or radical, we need to emphasize that in a free country, the burden should never be on the people to justify having a right. That burden should always fall on the parties trying to curtail a freedom in order to explain why that right must be limited. To gun-control advocates, that proof is self-evident: “Guns kill people.”

Don’t let them gloss over their need to prove their case. Yes, guns are sometimes used to kill people, but prove to me that your proposed restriction is actually going to help that.

THEN, the question gets turned into “Why do you need to take our guns?”