Tuesday, December 18, 2012

And Then There Were None


The lines extended down the aisle and near the door in the first store. Came the second, the story the same, doubled lines, clerks on the phones working computer searches as quickly as the computer system would allow. The price was not an object. The seller could command whatever he would choose, the seller held no compunction at meeting the demand. In part, it was the season; a time for gifts and giving for a splurge on items not normally bought in such quantity. But that was not the driving force behind the exchanges. The purpose was to be found upon the morning news programs and from the bellicose discourses of those in places of power in Washington. In anticipation of a knee-jerk reaction from Washington over the Connecticut school shooting, citizens were buying up firearms as fast as the stores could sell them.

Tragedy had swept down upon the nation once again and the faces of the victims would strike at the soul of every person with a heart. The innocence of children had been decimated in a few short minutes by a single deranged lunatic who had somehow put his hands upon a .223 rifle and a Glock semi-automatic pistol. It would take only a couple of hours after the shootings before those full of anti-gun rhetoric would fill the halls of Washington. The forces behind the U.N. Small Arms Treaty, so touted by Secretary of State Clinton, and lackeys of both anti-gun groups and the rogue nations of the United Nations will be quick to be heralded by the current president. Their desire is to move this country backward to a state of restrictive laws infringing upon the rights of the law abiding citizens. They would take aim at the Constitution of the United States, specifically the 2nd Amendment, namely the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms.

Already a Huffington Post column by an attorney titled, “Supreme Interference: The Justices’ Improper and Dangerous Reading of the Second Amendment” decries the stance that the 2nd Amendment allows citizens to own guns for hunting and self-defense and is not what the Founders declared when arguing for a ‘well-regulated militia’ obfuscating the point that militias by their nature are citizen responders to an emergency who are armed, not by the state, but with their personal firearms. Yet, he invokes the appearance of a weeping president calling for something to be done for these horrific killings. Whether it was a tear that the president touched from his eye with a light sweep of the finger or pathetic melodrama; apparently it was enough for this attorney, who places himself above the Supreme Court, to declare the president to be “tearfully confessing” a need for action.  Such will be the diatribes of those who battle against the 2nd Amendment.

It is upon the backs of the gun holders, sportsman, law abiding citizens, officers of the public peace and those who would secure the blessings of liberty to citizens today and their progeny to stand strong against the public pressure that is bound to come. Often it is said in a whimsical tone that ‘when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns’ yet it is not beyond the realm of possibility that there are those who seek to permanently withdraw the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms regardless of the criminal elements of society. The enemies of America, of the American way of life, would not hesitate to fully back the cacophony of voices of those who seek to remove citizens’ firearms and their right to self-defense.

In a free society it is almost impossible to completely prevent such tragedies, as this most recent mass shooting, from happening. Had there been a police officer or a legally armed civilian in the school that day, the tragedy may have been diverted.  The country will never know. Americans who value their freedom must take a stand for the law. It is not true that proposed severe restrictions on individual rights for gun ownership will eliminate such catastrophes as these horrific shootings. Sadly, no matter the legal ownership rights of citizens, such events may well continue to be part of the American landscape. Such restrictions would not stop the deranged killer from having a weapon with which to attack the unarmed populace. It would only severely limit the number of persons who may be able to intervene and stop such tragedies from happening.

That does not mean that Americans are hopeless or helpless. As the argument was made in part 1 of this series The U.S. Citizen, the Second Amendment, and the U.N. Small Arms Treaty, for preventing crime, “Suffice it to say, the responsibility does not lie with the local gendarme, a father, a brother, or even the generous soul performing Neighborhood Watch down the street. It can, and must, only reside with the individual.”