…and lines in the sand. At what point do you draw yours?
My buddy Mule Breath posts a musing on the meaning and application of the Second Amendment. In it, he opines:
There are wing nuts on both ends of the gun issue, who make it difficult to conduct a reasonable debate on the subject; but I would like to try. I’ll start by posting the following. A friend sent this little ditty this morning by email, and I wanted to see if anyone is interested in commenting.
Go RTWT. You’ve probably seen the story in your e-mail inbox in recent days, anyway.
My comment was as follows:
Yet another example of the place where Great Britain used to be.For me, the 2nd Amendment is the citizen’s defense against government tyranny, and should be defended vigorously.
And while you say that you are not totally opposed to gun control legislation, what legislation in your eyes would be reasonable?
Keep in mind, now, that many citizens (or is it subjects?) of Great Britain probably felt as you do, that some reasonable control of weapons was a good thing. Only now, they’re seeing, much to their dismay, how much incrementalism has eroded their rights.
It starts with registration. Then it expands to outright bans. They target the weapons the Average Joe or Nigel neither owns nor understands. “That sounds reasonable,” they’ll muse. “Why would any normal person want one of those weapons?”
And they support the ban.
And then comes the expanded registration. Then the ban is expanded to include guns that aren’t so unfamiliar or scary.
Only now, the government has legal precedent behind them, and a generation of children has been raised without handguns, and hence even granddaddy’s fowling piece or stag rifle looks scary to them. So naturally, they support the banning of those weapons. “After all,” they muse, “what would any reasonable person want with those weapons?”
And so it goes, on and on, until one day they wake up and discover that not only aren’t they allowed to possess any weapons, but they aren’t even allowed to defend themselves, period.
That’s the place where (formerly) Great Britain finds itself today. And I’ll die before I see the same thing happen in the United States – probably at the hand of my government.
That’s what the politicians do, Mule Breath. When the original assault weapons ban was proposed, it would have outlawed such guns as my daddy’s Browning A5 or a Remington 1100. Whether you believe such lunacy was intentional on the part of those who drafted the legislation or you believe it was an accident resulting from people too stupid to understand what they’re trying to legislate, doesn’t matter. Your rights are stripped, just the same.
I’ve heard you say before that the only difference between liberals and conservatives is what part of the Constitution they’re willing to piss on, and I agree.
But the reason I largely vote Republican and not Democrat is because the Republicans seem less likely to deny me the one Constitutional right I can use to defend all the others.
I know most of my readers are 2A supporters, but there are also a fair number of the medical readers who favor some level of gun control legislation. Some read from overseas, and don’t understand the American gun culture. What they don’t understand is that it’s not necessarily a gun culture. It’s a rights culture, and they’re used to not having any.
So go over there, read, and leave your comments, pro or con. Keep in mind now that Mule Breath is a friend of mine, and owner of a sizable arsenal of his own. Moreover, he’s a Texas gentleman, and I’d ask that you keep your comments/arguments civil and courteous when you visit his blog.
It would piss me off if Mule Breath welcomed my readers into his home, only to discover that they shit on the carpet while they were there.
