Brass Knuckles

It’s easy to forget how extraordinary the American experience is on this little planet.  We have a government founded on the belief that men had rights, inalienable rights granted to them by God, and that no man or government could take them away.  The Constitution is remarkable in that it lays out rights that were at the time, and still are today, utterly remarkable.

In our present day existence, we’re made very aware of the First Amendment and how it protects us from the government and the tendency of governments to infringe on the rights of free speech (to criticize the government), the right to assemble and the right to practice your religion without state intervention.  These are important rights, and both tools and weapons to make sure that the state does not break itself free from the source of its legitimacy; the people.

There is also a Second Amendment, that literally grants the people a weapon to use against a rogue government; the right to keep and bear arms. I believe in the right to bear arms; I’ve been to places where only the government can legally own weapons and can assure you that almost uniformly, the weapons were turned inward.  Almost more importantly, I’m a native Texan, and have owned guns and hunted since I was a kid, except for the fifteen years or so I lived in NYC.  I own a pistol, and am waiting on a second pistol.  I shoot on a regular basis, and am waiting on a reloading kit so that I can load my own ammunition.

Owning a gun is a huge responsibility, but not an unmanageable one; like anything else that involves a modicum of risk, there are rules to be followed and a sober attitude that must be maintained.  But let’s not kid ourselves here; shooting a gun is not the most dangerous activity I engage in during any given week.  Not by a long shot.  The odds of me shooting myself or somebody else exist, but the odds of me getting in a car wreck are exponentially higher. 

My 9mm fires a 148 grain bullet that packs about 300 foot/pounds at the muzzle – it doesn’t take a physicist to figure that my 2003 half-ton Dodge Durango SUV carries much more than 300 foot/pounds of energy while I’m screaming down I-10 at sixty miles per hour (sorry – as I get older, I just don’t get the point of speeding.  I can’t begin to tell you how sad that makes me). 

One of  the most common arguments I hear about allowing citizens to carry guns is that even the most sane, level headed, middle aged among us might suddenly flip out and start shooting.  Well, OK. But if I’m so far on the edge that I’m ready to commit manslaughter, wouldn’t I have already done it by now?  Have you ever been on I-10 anywhere along its length?  Something about that road; doesn’t matter if it’s in San Diego, El Paso or Florida, the whole length is engineered for traffic jams and packed with absolute jerks.  Imagine every stereotype about any driver from any ethnic group or age group, and you’ll see that it has its genesis on I-10.

The whole argument about gun control orbits around three base arguments; that you, no matter who you are, as a civilian are incapable of the responsibility of owning a gun (though government employees are?), that criminals will also surrender or otherwise stop using guns once the laws have changed, and that America is the sole provider of guns, and once America stops manufacturing guns, they will disappear from the earth.

All three are the wishful constructs of ignorant liberals.  I don’t mean ignorant as in stupid, I mean ignorant as in “unlearned” or “uninformed”.  Guns are not sentient beings; they are mechanical tools, and just as there are “rules of the road”, there are also rules to handling and maintaining guns.  Those of us who are responsible drivers and gun owners are aware of the rules and have received training at some point, be it formal or informal.  In this regard, those who would take our guns away are making judgements about a subculture they know nothing about, and more often than not simply acting on prejudices and per-existing biases.  Basically, it’s bigotry in another form, generally tied into condescending beliefs about “hillbillies“, “rednecks”, “trailer trash” and the “NASCAR set“.  It’s not that hard to find out about the gun community, really - take an introductory gun course in your community, if guns haven’t been banned yet.  You’d be surprised at how “normal” gun owners can be, once you get used to the howling.

The last point, about America being the source of all guns, is a silly and outdated notion.  The best of the affordable “Army .45’s”, the guns based on Browning’s 1911 .45 caliber automatic used by the US Army for about 70 years or so, are made in places like the Philippines, Spain and Brazil; where the labor is cheap, but there is still a strong sense of craftsmanship.  The world would go on producing guns if the US banned all production, and those illegal guns would enter the country just like the illegal plant matter does.  

When I write this stuff, there’s usually something that set me off.  Today, it was a post in a new blog, the Breda Fallacy, that I found via Neanderpundit.   Curse you Breda, a pox on your house, Og.   I could’ve been sleeping…

Breda is a shooter and a staunch Second Amendment proponent – she often takes friends to the range, and has chronicled the results on her blog – very good reading.   Today I found an article on her blog that talked about the Obama agenda for gun control and a speech by Rahm Emmanual regarding gun control.  

Immediately after the election, I vowed to never ever bring anyone who voted for Obama to the range with me. They had voted for the most anti-gun candidate ever, a man who said “yes” to the question “Do you support state legislation to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns?” so I decided I would not allow a liberal to touch my guns or use my ammunition. The protection of the Second Amendment was clearly not an issue they cared about – they were dazzled by hope! and change! despite all warnings that perhaps what they would end up getting would be the opposite of what they wanted – so I clung. Bitterly.

Time passed, I calmed down and for a while now I’ve wavered. I’ve thought that perhaps I could convert them somehow through my love of shooting, gently bring them into the fold, show them that being a free person means being able to take care of yourself. I vacillated, thinking that perhaps I’d take them to the range if they asked and paid their own way. I was willing to compromise.

But today, I woke up to this video. It was posted on almost every gunblog I’ve read so far this morning.

Don’t believe the line about sensible – not much coming out of that crew has been sensible. Now is a very, very good time to join the NRA. I did it this week, now it’s your turn.