Liberalguy

Liberals Fear Firearms By Arnold Ahlert (bio)

One of the paradigm shifts in my lifetime was liberals’ success in teaching their children and other gullible Americans to implicitly fear firearms. Not firearms in the hands of criminals. All firearms–period. Most Baby Boomers, if they’re being honest, can remember a time in their youth when shooting guns–mostly .22 rifles–was taught in schools or at summer camp. Guns were not inherently “evil.” They were tools which one was taught to use responsibly. The ascension of liberalism changed everything. Law-abiding Americans who owned guns became “right wing gun nuts,” and a soaring crime rate was blamed, not on criminals using firearms, but firearms themselves. Why? Because the genuine factors contributing to rising crime rates–moral relativity, nuclear family breakdown, the abandonment of religion for secularism, Miranda rights, the elevation of rehabilitation over punishment in the prison system, and the idea that one’s social deprivation was an excuse for committing crimes–could all be tied directly to liberal ideology. As a result guns became their scapegoat. Such thinking is now so embedded in the liberal psyche, that they are apparently unable to see any difference between criminals and law-abiding citizens owning firearms. Their idea of self-defense consists chiefly of allowing oneself to be a victim of a crime and calling the police after the fact–assuming you survive. Otherwise, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, they contend our neighborhoods will become “shooting galleries.” Memo to liberals: many neighborhoods already are, and the people who live in them–as opposed to those who pass by or through them–are sick of it. In short, the Second Amendment scares the hell out of liberals. It is anathema to one of their cherished ideals: bigger and more controlling government. And it stokes one of their primary convictions about ordinary Americans: we’re too stupid to run our own lives, much less own weapons. Fortunately, the Founding Fathers knew better. The Second Amendment isn’t about one’s individual right to self-defense, per se. Its chief concern was to prevent the rise of tyrannical government, which the Founders believed could happen far more easily with an unarmed citizenry. It is ironic that the American left, which has complained loudly for seven years about the loss of rights courtesy of the Bush administration, is the same bunch who would leave ordinary Americans as defenseless as possible. Unfortunately, many Americans can’t imagine having to defend themselves from such a government takeover. That is a testament to both their ignorance of history and an arrogance that arises from never having lived without the freedom they take for granted. A coup “could never happen here?” The hell it couldn’t. If liberals want to fear guns, that is their right. But as of yesterday, it is no longer their right to tell the rest of us that we have to lay down like lambs to satisfy their utopian pipe dreams of a “gun-free” society. People who can’t imagine being at the mercy of a burglar, a rapist, a car-jacker, a murderer or any other psychotic thug are free to be as “idealistic” as they want–with their own lives. Ditto for those who think freedom is the “natural order” of things. Here’s hoping they never learn about the true nature of the world the hard way. For those of us who know better? Lock and load.