Handguns - A Moral Imperative
by Kath Graham (e-mail: KGraham@liberator.net) [January 23rd, 2002]You’ve been lied to, friends and neighbors. You’ve been lied to by some of the slickest and most dangerous conmen you will ever encounter. The lies have been coming thick and furious for so many years that you have trouble seeing the truth – in spite of all your brains and good, old-fashioned common sense.
You’ve been told violence is a terrible thing. You’ve been told that folks are killing each other all over the world, and they will certainly stop if we can just control this terrible flood of weapons and keep them in the hands of the officials who should properly have them. Most recently, the U.N. is trying desperately to improve everybody’s life by getting firearms off the open market. The world will be a safer and kinder place if they can just manage it.
If you truly believe that, my friends, please allow me to sell you some oceanfront property in Utah.
Is violence a terrible thing? Yes, it most certainly is. Is violence morally wrong? Of course. Will it go away? Not before Hell freezes colder than a well digger’s backside in January! It is the human condition.
Well, then, should we contribute to violence by allowing firearms to be sold?
This is the trickiest question of all. You see, firearms do not contribute to violence. Only people can do that. And taking firearms off the general market will have appalling sociological consequences.
That’s right. You heard me correctly. I said “appalling consequences.”
I know you’ve all heard the argument that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns, so I won’t talk about that today. Let’s play a little game instead. Let’s pretend that every single gun on this planet can be destroyed. Let’s pretend that enterprising souls won’t make any zip guns in their garages. Firearms are completely gone – history. Not so much as a slingshot left. It’s over.
This would be the end of a terrible chapter in human history, wouldn’t it?
Oh, no. It wouldn’t be the end of Hell. It would be the beginning!
It would be Mayhem. You, your wives, your kids, and your friends – you would all be at the mercy of every gorilla with a knife, a club, a set of brass knuckles, or even a good-sized rock. No one alive today remembers when might was right, but we’d learn about it again in very short order. Pool cues and fire pokers would be the order of the day. No woman would be safe, ever again, and damned few men. You’d stop carrying a wallet and shift to a money belt, and then it would just be a question of time before everything you own was taken from you, and probably your life as well.
It would be absolute horror, and it would be inevitable.
Okay, bad idea. So let’s keep a few guns, just for the cops and the military. That should solve the problem, right?
Wrong.
The founding fathers of this country knew what they were doing when they wrote the Bill of Rights in 1781 AD. In that day and age, it was unthinkable for a grown man not to have weapons, so why did they need to specifically state that the right to keep and bear arms was sacred?
They said this because most of them had come here from Europe, from countries where they had good reason to fear governmental authority. Most European countries were already beginning to disarm their citizens, and an intelligent man didn’t need a roadmap to see where this was going. An armed government and a disarmed populace is an absolute guarantee of tyranny.
This is what the U.N. wants to do to you. They want you to surrender your arms meekly and beg the protection of your government. They want to permanently forbid you to sell arms to less fortunate men and women anywhere in the world who are shedding blood to resist tyranny. Of course, keep in mind that the men and women who are trying to make this decision for you are all representatives of various governments themselves, and many of those governments are very repressive indeed. Small wonder they want their people disarmed and kept that way! It might help to keep their collective hides unperforated for just a bit longer.
I believe it is time to remove our nation from the United Nations, and to remove the United Nations – forcibly if necessary – from U.S. soil. Have you written your congressman to say so?
Is it moral to carry arms? You bet it is! When I enter your home or your business with a firearm, concealed or otherwise, I am tacitly agreeing to share with you the responsibility for defending your property and your family. When I eat in the same restaurant, I am prepared to shed my blood in your defense. There are survivors of the horror at Luby’s in Killeen, Texas, who would appreciate what I am saying here.
I will never, never need to ask some poor cop to die for me. I value my own life enough to defend it myself. I carry arms proudly, as a free American.
Do you?
Cornell Law School: U.S. Bill of Rights United Nations: Conventional Arms Branch Houston Chronicle: Shooting Rampage at Killeen Luby's Left 24 Dead