Gun Rights
The debate on gun control is a hot-button issue in the USA. You can do a quick google search to come up with plenty of arguably weak positions against the right to bear arms. So let’s review the arguments in favor of gun rights and do a quick rundown of how they relate to you and being independent of government control. So what are the most important reasons to fight for gun rights, from an independence perspective?
1. Freedom
How can a person be truly independent if their government has to tell them how to live? The government lobbies and creates thousands of regulations on our lives already. Do we actually believe that adding more and limiting our constitutional freedoms will ever benefit our struggle to be more independent? Of course not. Because for the proponents of gun control, it is not about freedom. It is about getting control over everyone else.
Consider the Eighteenth Amendment. The amendment that banned alcohol from being produced, transported, or sold, which effectively made alcohol illegal. This amendment still holds as a pristine example of banning items that you do not personally agree with. Ironically enough, this amendment was considered “progressive” and was largely fought for by “female and mom groups”. Sound familiar? Just the same as liberals today use the term “progressive” for any of their policies, and rampant anti-gun organizations such as “Mom’s Demand Action” tout the same recycled jargon.
How’d that turn out?
It turned out to apparently not be that progressive of an amendment as it was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5th, 1933, not more than 14 years later. Not until massive damage had already been done, however, as gang and criminal enterprises had become a widespread phenomenon. Crime rates had soared from this amendment, much the same as it would if guns were legalized. The fact is that a huge percentage of Americans own guns, and don’t intend to give them up anytime soon. Any type of legality change or ban would only shift the market from out in the open to the criminal variant. As politicians profited off of ignoring certain speakeasy establishments, they would profit the same with illicit firearms manufacturers. Likewise, in the process, it would wreck any source of freedom we still have from our already overly controlling government.
We are independent people, free to make our own decisions in life. Thus, we do not need a mommy state to tell us how to live and what not to buy.
2. Self Defense
Let’s face it—in a life and death situation, cops are only minutes away. You can’t rely on someone else to protect you and your loved ones. When SHTF, you have to be able to provide for yourself. Any type of limitations on gun laws in effect hinders this necessity. Sure, you could go to the black market to get the items you need, but then you are at risk from the police. It would be a hell of a lot simpler if the government didn’t get into your business and you could have the items you need without escaping to the black market.
24% of Americans say they own guns, and 48% say they own them for protection from a report by the Pew Research Center. The number of self-defense style shootings is increasing. As are the number of people getting a firearm for protection. These people all understand the mantra that you cannot be dependent on others when it comes to your own safety.
3. Privacy
Sometimes proponents of gun control say, “We aren’t coming for your guns.” Or you hear the same silly language like “common sense gun control.” These are all catch phrases for an invasion of privacy. “The right to be left alone” as it is commonly interpreted, is the important aspect of these amendments. Justice Marshall wrote that “If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch”.
This is what gun control proponents seem to have a hard time with. If you are performing background checks on individuals just for buying an item, that is a clear invasion of privacy. Similarly, it is a clear breach of the “right to be left alone” if the government comes calling for individuals to forcibly register their firearms.
The government has no authority to declare what someone can or cannot do in their own home. That includes owning a gun and defending yourself with it.
4. Strength
As the saying goes, God created Man but Sam Colt made them equal. You can claim to be the reincarnation of a Roman warlord all you want, but if you get circled by 5 men, you will have a hell of a fight getting out of there. Firearms give us a leverage, one that no person has ever had before in the history of our species. We need this leverage to keep ourselves, and the government, grounded in reality. In the early years, do you think a woman could have fought off two men with swords? Not a chance. Could she in 2016? Absolutely, all she would need to do is flash a gun and they would go running. Women’s rights involve gun rights.
That is of vital importance for gun rights. The weaker can match with the strong. You don’t have to know seventy-four different techniques of Krav Maga and hold the endurance of a swarmer boxer. You just need a firearm with the knowledge of how and when to use it. This gun rights aspect levels the playing field for any type of assault that may be done to a person. So then, we don’t have to be dependent on others for protecting us. A woman doesn’t have to have a bodyguard to walk alone at night in a rough neighborhood, she can be her own bodyguard.
5. Survival
A big part of being independent is factoring in the unknowns of life prior to making decisions. Is society going to collapse? Unlikely. Has it ever happened? Plenty. Look at the fall of Rome, Constantinople, the Ottomans, Mao’s takeover of China… the list goes on. All of these came about rather unexpectedly. There were buildups for each, but the finalization only took a few days. Being prepared for potentials is simply strategic planning.
Having firearms and well-equipped knowledge of how to use them is part of this planning. Staying off the grid is essential for that approach. That is nearly impossible to do legally if you have to register everything you own that is firearm related. Gun rights aren’t just about owning a gun; they are about survival. Whether it’s survival for a government takeover, or for surviving living in a bad neighborhood.
6. Defense
Compounding on the idea of survival above, we also have to consider defense. Defense from outside forces. Foreign entities, threats directly correlated to outside of America. A mainstay quote for gun rights activists is “You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass”. While this quotes origin is always raised into question, it still is an accurate representation of current mainland USA. Should a foreign country invade, we have hundreds of millions of individual citizens (not police or military) also equipped to fight the invasion.
Simple put, America is one of the hardest countries to invade for this very reason. We have a stable history of gun rights. It provides us with a layer of defense that allows us to stay free from outside forces. While our military does an excellent job of that already, we have no way of being sure where our military will go in the future. I, like millions of other Americans, would rather not take that risk. While Russia is incredibly hard to invade because of winters, America is very hard to invade because of armed citizens.
7. Corruption
Do you trust the government? Unlikely. Hardly anyone does. Pew Research Center found that only 3% of Americans say they trust the government to do what is right “just about always”. 3%. On the bright side, that means that 97% of Americans still have a functioning brain! With the recent WikiLeaks reports, Snowden uncovering the massive domestic spying, and corruption with public officials, why would we trust them? And better yet, why would we allow only them to have the ultimate tools of power?
Firearms are the largest power tool an individual has, besides his words. Granting a government’s exclusive rights over this power of life and death is asinine. Especially when we all know we cannot trust them. Many times you will hear liberals speak about how cops are corrupt and shooting inner-city blacks because they are racist pigs. Then, they turn around and say “only cops should have guns!”.
Not that I assume all cops are bad people. But granting them exclusive rights of power is not the best path, either. Finding a comprehensive solution to policing while also keeping our own constitutional rights is by far the best path to take. If a police state ever did occur, I would want to have the ability to fight back, rather than cower like a cornered hyena.
8. Government Tyranny
Many declare that it would be impossible to fight against our own government. These individuals should probably meet some of the people that already have fought it. The Vietcong were a loose band of renegades that successfully caused our eventual withdrawal from Vietnam. They used makeshift weapons, and many were simple farmers before joining. We can’t forget the Iraqi’s and Afghani’s that continue to use guerrilla tactics against us to today. Not convincing enough? What about the Lenin and the communists that overthrew the Russian government? Mao Zedong overthrowing the Chinese government (and subsequently banning all guns from civilians immediately thereafter)?
There are hundreds of examples throughout history of vastly outnumbered and under-powered groups successfully fighting against their opponents. Minority groups can gain advantages through their low numbers in certain situations. It’s not so much the ability to win that matters here, either. It’s the ability to at least fight. To at least have that opportunity. And to stand up against tyranny, even if it is a losing battle. I would have rather fought and died fighting Pol Pot than suffer through his purges after. We need that freedom to stand up and fight in the face of evil. We can’t just throw rocks at them.
Why?
I don’t want the next generation to be defenseless to whatever we put them through. I want them to be independent, free, and prosperous. This requires gun rights. After all, it was how America came to be in the first place. A small militia took on the entire might of the world’s arguably strongest power: Great Britain. And we won.
Every other right in our country depends on the second amendment. We, as citizens, cannot stop the government without some form of power. Our biggest source of power supposedly comes through voting. But what happens if we lose that power? Then, all we have left is the threat of an armed population. The government knows this, and many times in history, when a tyrannical government comes to power, they take the firearms first.
When speaking about an authoritarian takeover, you very often hear from anti-gun activists that it wouldn’t have made a difference. Maybe not. Maybe they wouldn’t have stood a slight chance. But wouldn’t they have rather died fighting for their life, rather than being shipped to a concentration camp? I know I would. And you probably would, as well.
