Parkland-A Patriot’s View
Parkland. Yet another terrible school shooting, by an angryand deranged young man that had no business possessing firearms and one who gave friends, family, schoolmates, teachers and LEO every possible ominous sign before he carried out his murderous act.
Predictably, many people of good faith are calling for destruction of the NRA and enacting tougher gun laws. A few loud voices are even calling for total gun confiscation.
The volume and ferocity of the gun grabbing lobby, using children who survived the Parkland Massacre as emotional leverage and aided by the biased media, is overwhelming. There were 14+ mass shootings during Obama’s terms and the outcry never reached the current level. Even worse, when James Hodgkinson, a deranged Obama and Bernie Sanders supporter attempted to kill Republican house members at a baseball practice there was no outrage from the Left or calls from the Media to stop the NRA. There is only so much hypocrisy that can go unanswered.
The Gun Grabbers use “Incrementalism“, focusing on one small part of an issue to slowly win, bite by bite. This is why they’re focusing on the AR-15 rifle now. Getting a successful ban on one gun wouldn’t stop any future shooter, but the left doesn’t care about that; it’s playing the long game.
But, as factions battle for their “truth” one side is missing: a deeper analysis of why millions of people, myself included, “cling to their guns” in the words of President Obama. Why do we insist on citing the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution while a seemingly endless numbers of killers slaughter innocent people with legally obtained firearms ? because we believe, to our core, that private gun ownership is the final bulwark against a government that would strip that right and then systematically remove our essential American freedoms.
Some history for context: America would not exist without guns. As we know, our forefathers fought a bloody war with the British to secure our nation’s freedom. Our 19th century predecessors fought the Civil War over state sovereignty and it cannot be stated more clearly that without guns slavery might still exist today. Nearly 300 years after its creation America is Freedom’s greatest, most successful experiment; no attempt at revisionism can erase that. Guns brutally ensured those freedoms.
The 2nd Amendment was enacted so that no future citizens would ever be subject to tyranny again. It wasn’t written for hunters nor to guarantee membership in a militia, the Founders recognized the inherent flaws in human nature and chose to give patriots their “last line of defense” against a future government that might seek to enslave them.
The reality many of us lived in was shattered by 9/11. The wars in the Middle East that played only on our TVs came to our homes on that day. Many wondered why, instead of Terrorism being defeated, we found our freedoms at home diminished, and the very ideology that perpetrated 9/11 celebrated to the point that anyone who called out the fatal flaws of Islam was singled out and called a racist or Islamophobe. There has never been a more effective propaganda win by a direct enemy of America. Patriots paid close attention to the actions of their government during and after 9/11.
From the beginning, many have disagreed with our founding principles and fought tirelessly to undermine them. These are the same type of people that, like vultures perched waiting for carrion, call for gun confiscation after every shooting.
In 2008 The American public’s long-simmering White Guilt and desire for absolution delivered Barack Obama the presidency. Many people, myself included, did our research and tried to warn the voters that Obama could not and would not be a worthy president, not because of his party or skin color but because he had spent his entire life as a Leftist ideologue and would never truly represent any American with a different worldview than him. Not only were we right but we underestimated his zeal to weaken America As Founded.
During his 2 terms in office he doubled the national debt and never cracked 3% growth, weaponized the IRS against Conservative groups, ran an illegal gun running scheme to gin up support for gun confiscation, Watched idly while soldiers died in Benghazi, continued the wars he decried while running for office, installed Obamacare, ended work for welfare, apologized to the world for America, wasted billions chasing the lie of Global Warming, weaponized federal bureaucracies , and on the way out the door allowed all 17 intelligence agencies to freely exchange unfiltered data on innocent citizens. And, after every mass shooting on his watch he reliably called for Gun Control.
In short, Barack Obama tried every scheme, wasted every dollar he could find and print to diminish America’s power in the world and shackle her citizens to an ever expanding, unfriendly federal behemoth. Knowing that can we be blamed for being wary about the true intentions of our government.
To be fair, this has been ramping up for generations. Bill Clinton severely damaged the presidency with his infidelity, lying and under his watch Americans recoiled as the FBI murdered civilians at Ruby Ridge then burned the Waco Compound to the ground, killing 76 after a 2-month siege. After 9/11 George W. Bush pushed the US into 2 deadly and costly wars in the Middle East, abused the very Patriot Act he pushed through, let the NSA surveill citizens illegally and sat back while scores of his administration were caught abusing their positions.
But most egregiously, the Steele Dossier/Trump Surveillance scandal is simply criminal negligence at best or a coup attempt by the Obama/Clinton machine at worst. Either way, we see the willful blindness it takes for the public to not see what is in front of their faces daily.
Now imagine what they’d all have done if we had no guns.
With those events in perspective it’s understandable that folks like us aren’t so quick to hand the tools of our freedom to a government that A. fails at a great number of its core tasks and B. demonstrates daily how deep its totalitarian impulses run.
Those impulses are evident in many different ways. In the beginning of September 2017 hurricane Irma formed in the Atlantic. As Irma bore down on the East Coast the management of government darling Tesla made a decision, they would flip a switch and give Tesla car owners in the affected areas an extra 30-40 miles of battery range to help escape the path of the hurricane. Many celebrated Tesla’s move as a compassionate corporation but others wondered how many other secrets their cars held and exactly how much control Tesla could exercise over their private transportation. These are the same people pushing for ‘Driverless Cars“…should we worry about their intentions and the ability to switch our cars off when theywant to ?. What about the push for “Cashless Societies” ? would it be wise to trust this same government to always allow us access to our money ? i’ll be sticking with cash until that question is answered to my satisfaction.
So you see, private gun ownership tempers the authoritarian passions of those in power that would take Constitutional rights under the cover of “Safety” or convenience. I’ve heard it said that the government will always have bigger guns, our puny handguns and rifles ultimately no match for their tanks and planes. This is True. However, we will decide if and when to give away our defenses and cannot be swayed by arguments of scale or force.
The signs of Authoritarianism are long past obvious, Trump’s election was a result of that. The Deep State will not go quietly and has been trying to remove Trump since before he was even elected.
To the people of good faith that are calling for gun restrictions because you see the murder of innocents, I am with you and will work to find common sense solutions that keep guns out of the hands of criminals, madmen and murderers. But, to those that use these tragedies for political gain know that I and people like me are your enemy and will not allow your emotion-based arguments and conjured crises to cadge our guns away.