With the election of Senator Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States, there are still ongoing reports that Americans are buying more guns. Americans are not buying more guns out of fear of future confiscations – if you have one or ten, confiscations would take them all, wouldn't they? And for gun owners, more than one gun is like having more than one fire extinguisher. Gun ownership is not on the offensive, it is on the defensive, and it is not fear; it is preparedness.
The belief of many Americans is that the new Administration will change many things, judging by official remarks. Examples would be predominantly how crime is managed, what is ignored or allowed in a double-standard, watering down of victim rights, choking the system with cases in the administration of justice, police asset response times, budgetary changes and priorities, programs and policies on self-defense, new technologies of evidence and evidence collection, electronic surveillance, and other abstracts which bring a powerful truth to the minds of these tens of millions now — the idea that we are on our own in the first moments of a violent crime, the first days of civil disturbance, and all the first weeks of widespread disaster. And here is the frightening part: though there is nothing new in the fact that we are on our own – I said it myself after Hurricane Katrina – what is new is the banking scandals and utter defiance of the electorate accompanying these new changes in respect for the law. There is a very serious movement of officials in a greater and greater defiance of the electorate.
But our government has never really tried to care for people in working to replace us as head of household or parent. It has been a reality for those who work without a net and an illusion for those looking for paternalism. For the latter, officials have never been able to take your place and do better; all they have done has been to create greater dependency by closing all exits and punishing the very thought of our independence from our servants. New Medical Care proposals will do the same. They will not do better, but they will close all exists for you do to better on your own. Thus it is with fighting crime via gun control. It is a dependency on officials which vexes and punishes all thoughts of independence from our servants.
Let's catch up with some truths many non-gun owner Americans do not know in what it is about guns. Think personal independence from our servants and a suspicious resentment of any insistence to give more than we want them to give. The right to carry a gun was preceded by the right to carry our own burdens. Put another way, we are on our own not by adversity or bad luck, but by choice. Preferring to carry our own burdens is not a family value of pride, it is a national safeguard, and more Americans are coming to appreciate this truth as a safeguard of independence from our servants that has been pushed aside, especially in the last few years. Millions will be emphasizing this in 2009 as a matter of personal dignity as much as an essential of liberty, and they feel their liberty is threatened if not defied.
Nowhere is this very first burden more evident than in how we meet violent crime and love our families on various levels. The very first burden we carry is that, for ourselves and for our loved ones, we are the first line of protection in all things, and the first line of defense in time of violence, and no police and no policy will every change this. No one will ever be able to take your place as the first line of defense, no matter what they promise.
Each of us is loved, each of us is important to someone, each of us is precious, and the first obligation of gun ownership is not in the safe operation of a lethal mechanism, but in accepting and rising to the responsibility of protecting self and loved ones in the absence of first responders. The safe operation of the weapon will always be second to its purpose in first acquiring it.
What it is about guns is not only that we alone are responsible for our safety, but that the armed citizen's insistence on being on our own is essential to keeping dozens of silly programs at bay. Defiance of this insistence claims to manage life better if only the citizen will surrender, but in the process of officially insisting on lifting our burdens, these programs lift our liberty with them. This is what has awakened people in 2008 and 2009 -- the idea that we are urged to cooperate with officials when the very reason officials are hired is to cooperate with us.
More than a right.: Authority. Most non-gun owners are not aware that the citizen has all legal authority to stop a crime in progress, to use up to lethal force when facing grace danger alone, and may even come to the aid of another. Rape, murder and abduction are high on this list. Understand that being on your own and resisting is more than a right, it is your authority to act. It is this authority which we confer to police, but do not give up any of our own. It's easier and easier to see now how so-called anti-violence programs have actually grown violence by obfuscating this individual authority to act.
What it is about guns? More than a right, it is about Independence on the truth that the armed citizen can impeach dozens upon dozens of costly anti-crime programs on the very face of them. These anti-crime programs from RFID Chip tracking of humans to zero-tolerance to a National ID Card are all unnecessary, really, when based on the defective theory of fighting crime. Crime grows not because people are armed, but because citizens do not understand their authority as well as 90 million gun owners do. And we understand it the way the Founders declared it; sovereign. Imagine how many silly go-nowhere programs can disappear as worthless when the armed citizen is commonplace. If you believe that the Second Amendment was written to thwart tyranny, then it serves America well in impeaching such incremental predatory programs as never really needed. Gun control ignores this and grows many seemingly unrelated programs in bigger government.
With awareness of your authority, then, the freedom to exercise the right to carry a gun anywhere at all times and the authority to bring it to bear if necessary are a prime indicator of the overall health of our nation by what sort of anti-violence programs conflict with that authority to act.
Why a gun for the household and for family away from home? Why not pepper spray, a whistle, a big dog, or baseball bat? Because less-than-lethal doesn't cut it. Dogs, whistles and baseball bats don't work well on multiple assailants or other common conditions. How does one make a choice at this hour to limit your response at that hour of facing grave danger? Less-than-lethal limits the target's ability to match force to threat assessment. Without the choice, the target's response in a ladder of force cannot become the superior force necessary to de-escalate the situation. One of the smartest moves this year has been the affirmation of the armed citizen in our National Parks. Wilderness itself is dangerous, and it’s tough enough to locate visitors in the expanse of parks, not to mention effect urgent rescue. Such expanses even forbid requests for aid, much less arrival in time. the armed citizen is one of the best assets of the United States, for it is more than a right, it backs our very authority.
You can see how the anti-violence movement, then – a movement which discourages the very idea of resistance – has obfuscated choices and the use of your own authority, and this adversely affects whole communities. Obfuscating citizen authority has adversely affected the nation. This has become a model for various other programs, creating the sudden, awakening experience of 2008.
Remember that crime is not fought by chasing it after-the-fact – once a criminal act is completed, crime has won. Crime is not fought by chasing it, crime may only be caught by chasing it. How does one now prepare for during-the-fact choices on their re-invigorated authority to act?
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John Longenecker is author of Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns. Safe Streets is the only Second Amendment book in the Dr. Laura Family Reading Corner Catalog.