Hanging Together

In a quote most often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, right after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, he is supposed to have said:

“We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Regardless of who actually said it, the sentiments expressed are as true and valid today as when they were first uttered.

Today, in the gun rights community, we see a strong polarization into two camps, those who take a pragmatic approach and those who feel that for the most part, working within the system is a waste of time.

The charges from each side, that the one side just wants to start shooting people and doesn’t take part in the political process, or that the other side will compromise their rights away and not fight back no matter the cost, except for extreme cases on each side are unfounded and untrue. I know people on both sides, so called “3pers” who write their congressmen and women, who vote their conscience and so called “prags” who have publicly stated that if anyone comes to confiscate their guns, they will shoot them. Both sides have more in common than not.

This is nothing as pathetic and transparent as Rodney King’s “Can’t we all get along?”, merely a call for some reason. None of us are the enemy. The enemy of our rights are the Brady’s and the VPC’s of the world, not each other. What we need to do is stop fighting each other and put our energies into fighting the real enemies of the second amendment.

Back when the early days of The United States during the time period of the expansion into the west, the Indians who lived there tried fighting back. They were unable to mount a solid defence. Why?

This quote from The American Plains Indians by Jason Hook and Richard Hook (page 40) I think illustrates the reason.

“One reason for the futility of the Indian cause was that they were divided by tribal feuds; Custer, for example, was guided to the Little Bighorn by Crow and Arikara scouts. A united Indian nation could have defended their lands more ably, but, in the words of Sitting Bull, they were ‘an island of Indians in a lake of whites’.”

If we’re not careful, I fear this will be our fate.

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