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According to Robert Heinlein's Lazarus Long, a human being should be able to do certain things. Just out of curiousity, I'd like to find out which of these things my readers can do. Can you...
Total Voters: 83
Loading ...I’ve spent some time this week thinking about the differences between the pro-rights side and the anti-rights bigots and I had a revelation. This may seem obvious to you and I, but to an anti, it’s as incomprehensible as basic algebra is to a Chimpanzee. I read somewhere, I don’t remember where, that we are two nations, sharing a common border and language, and nothing else. I agree with this assessment whole heartedly.
On the pro-rights side, we have in general, self sufficient and self reliant people who take responsibility for their own security. Often times they fit the stereotype of the “hick gun owner”, but people from every walk of life are represented. From librarians to rock musicians, to IT people and truck drivers. Lawyers, doctors and other un-stereotypical people also own guns.
The reasons for owning a gun range from collecting, hunting, protection, target shooting and competition, to just about every other reason you can think of.
In point of fact, there is no stereotypical “gun owner.” We’re just average Joe’s who work and play and raise our families. Many of us are religious and worship God, but there are also agnostics and atheists in our ranks. We’re just people. One thing we do more than the general public however is write our representatives.
We’d never force anyone else to do anything, including owning guns. We might shake our head in disbelief that someone would willingly abdicate their rights, but we’d never force you to own a gun or defend yourself.
The anti’s however can be split into at least two groups. There are those who fall into the “do-gooder” mold and just want to save the world, even if it kills you, and can’t understand why anyone would disagree with them. Our self reliance and stubborn insistence in looking out for ourselves instead of letting the government take care of and protect us, confounds and perplexes them to no end. Why anyone would not gladly scramble under the wing of the government like baby chicks to their mother is consternating to say the least.
Self reliance and defence are abhorant. Why, someone could get killed, and it matters not whether it’s the bad guy or the good guy. They believe steadfastly in their world view and nothing will make them reconsider.
The other type of anti you’ll run across isn’t out to save the world, it’s control and power they want. The facts and logic mean nothing to such an individual, and they’ll twist what facts there are to fit their agenda. These people are smart and know what they’re about. They slowly chip away year after year in an attempt of shaping the world to fit their ideal, no matter who they hurt. They’ll employ the police and government agencies to do their dirty work in enforcing our nations 20,000+ unconstitutional gun laws and it doesn’t matter if you’re guilty or not. You must be controlled at all costs.
Together, these two types of anti’s present a formidible foe who never sleeps and never gives up.
People often wonder why pro-rights people like myself get so upset when someone pulls out another anti-rights talking point and trumpets it as the truth. It’s because we’ve heard it all before and no amount of facts or figures or logic will make a bit of difference. Their minds are made up and reasoned discourse breaks out the instant you disagree with them, however mildly.
Anti-rights bigots like to meddle in other peoples lives. I’ve touched on the second amendment here, but there are other areas where they meddle too. People don’t like to be meddled with; just like the lion who keeps being poked with a sharp stick and one day kills it’s tormentor. If pushed too far we will push back, but not because we want to.
There is one easy way to avoid such a scenario however. I call it, “Leave Us Alone.” It’s short and sweet and is easily understood by everyone. Patented LUA is one sure fire way to keep the peace between our two sides. In addition to LUA, there is also LUTHA and LUTFA, in case the first course of LUA didn’t work. If neither LUA, LUTHA or LUTFA works, then the only thing left will be to invoke Rule 303, but no one I know wants to do that.
Ambrose Bierce once said “Liberty is defended with three boxes: The ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.” Let’s stick with the first two, shall we?
THE BELGIAN CORPORAL
By Neal Knox
In the summer of 1955, I was a young Texas National Guard sergeant on active duty at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. A corporal in my squad was a Belgian-American named Charles DeNaer. An old man as far as most of us were concerned, being well over thirty, Charley commanded a certain amount of our respect, for not only was he older than the rest of us, he had lived in Belgium when the Germans rolled across the low countries by-passing the Maginot Line on their way into France. He had seen war.
One soft Oklahoma afternoon, sitting on a bunk in the half-light of an old wooden barracks, he told me his story.
In Charley’s little town in Belgium, there lived an old man, a gunsmith. The old man was friendly with the kids and welcomed them to his shop. He had once been an armorer to the king of Belgium, according to Charley. He told us of the wonderful guns the old man had crafted, using only hand tools. There were double shotguns and fine rifles with beautiful hardwood stocks and gorgeous engraving and inlay work. Charley liked the old man and enjoyed looking at the guns. He often did chores around the shop.
One day the gunsmith sent for Charley. Arriving at the shop, Charley found the old man carefully oiling and wrapping guns in oilcloth and paper. Charley asked what he was doing. The old smith gestured to a piece of paper on the workbench and said that an order had come to him to register all of his guns. He was to list every gun with a description on a piece of paper and then to send the paper to the government. The old man had no intention of complying with the registration law and had summoned Charley to help him bury the guns at a railroad crossing. Charley asked why he didn’t simply comply with the order and keep the guns. The old man, with tears in his eyes, replied to the boy, “If I register them, they will be taken away. ”
A year or two later, the blitzkrieg rolled across the Low Countries. One day not long after, the war arrived in Charley’s town. A squad of German SS troops banged on the door of a house that Charley knew well. The family had twin sons about Charley’s age. The twins were his best friends. The officer displayed a paper describing a Luger pistol, a relic of the Great War, and ordered the father to produce it. That old gun had been lost, stolen, or misplaced sometime after it had been registered, the father explained. He did not know where it was.
The officer told the father that he had exactly fifteen minutes to produce the weapon. The family turned their home upside down. No pistol. They returned to the SS officer empty-handed.
The officer gave an order and soldiers herded the family outside while other troops called the entire town out into the square. There on the town square the SS machine-gunned the entire family — father, mother, Charley’s two friends, their older brother and a baby sister.
I will never forget the moment. We were sitting on the bunk on a Saturday afternoon and Charley was crying, huge tears rolling down his cheeks, making silver dollar size splotches on the dusty barracks floor. That was my conversion from a casual gun owner to one who was determined to prevent such a thing from ever happening in America.
Later that summer, when I had returned home I went to the president of the West Texas Sportsman’s Club in Abilene and told him I wanted to be on the legislative committee. He replied that we didn’t have a legislative committee, but that I was now the chairman.
I, who had never given a thought to gun laws, have been eyeball deep in the “gun control” fight ever since.
As the newly-minted Legislative Committee Chairman of the West Texas Sportsman’s club, I set myself to some research. I had never before read the Second Amendment, but now noticed that The American Rifleman published it in its masthead. I was delighted to learn that the Constitution prohibited laws like Belgium’s. There was no battle to fight, I thought. We were covered. I have since learned that the words about a militia and the right of the people to keep and bear, while important, mean as much to a determined enemy as the Maginot line did to Hitler.
Rather than depend on the Second Amendment to protect our gun rights, I’ve learned that we must protect the Second Amendment and the precious rights it recognizes.
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Permission to reprint or post this article in its entirety is hereby granted provided this credit is included. Text is available at www.FirearmsCoalition.org. To receive The Firearms Coalition’s bi-monthly newsletter, The Knox Hard Corps Report, write to PO Box 3313, Manassas, VA 20108.
