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All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke

The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him. - Sun Tzu


The reason I don't support gun bans is because I believe they are important in the event we must defend ourselves. I've had the police called on me once. The police station was about a 5-10 minute walk from where I was, but it took them almost half an hour to respond. In a life or death situation I feel it is more effective to deal with the threat myself than to wait for the police to respond. In the event of an armed intruder I am a pretty burly guy so I personally could potentially fight an attacker off, but what of someone who is physically impaired?

What of assault weapons? You don't need an assault rifle right? The second amendment was written in a time where muzzle loaders were used. The founding fathers never even dreamed of fully automatic weapons. Maybe they did and maybe they didn't. I've heard a lot of trigger words and improper use of "full auto" when a gun is actually "semi auto" Rather than go on some big rant about the difference I'll just ask you look up the difference yourself if you want to know. The context in the writing of the 2nd amendment is more important to me than the technology gap. Back then the revolutionaries used the same guns as the British. Today semi autos are relatively close to what the military uses. It's not near the same volume of firepower, but it definitely comes closer to leveling the playing field should we need to fight our government.

The American revolution was brought about because the founding fathers felt they were under the rule of tyranny. They were able to fight off the British government in part because they were armed. Should the need ever arise that our government were to become tyrannical they wanted us to be well armed to overthrow them. To be clear I am not saying that time is now. I am saying should the day ever come that we need to fight our government I want us to be able to do so effectively.

There is some talk going around that the recent shootings were a government plot to disarm citizens. I'm not saying it's definitely what happened, but I do believe it a possibility. Some psychopath with guns kills innocent children and it makes sense to get rid of a lot of guns. Going back to my point about armed resistance against the government this would let them tip the scale in their favor. Back in 1939 German soldiers stole Polish uniforms and performed a terrorist attack known as the Gleiwitz incident. The Germans used this as an excuse to invade Poland thus starting WWII. Before someone talks about Godwin's Law I use this example not to compare someone to Nazis, but as an example of a government staging an attack to push an agenda. If one government has done it others have as well and our own government could do the same.

So should civilians be given jets, tanks, and nukes too? That's a fair enough of a point. Eventually I do think a line needs to be drawn. I just don't think semi automatics are the place. I acknowledge not all people should have access to all guns. Unfortunately I can't think of a system that can determine who is responsible to own what without the government being able to abuse it to keep anyone from getting guns.

I keep hearing about how background checks need to be more thorough. I'm not sure how much help that is. A lot of shooters didn't have a criminal record and I'm not sure how much mental health shows up on a background check if you haven't been institutionalized for it. I would also like to bring up Operation Fast & Furious. The drug cartels sent straw purchasers to the states to buy guns. A lot of these straw purchasers were spotted on their background check, but the government gave the go ahead to sell guns to them. Fast & Furious has been kept relatively quiet since it reached the public. The NRA made a big fuss over it and the firearms community as a whole has been talking about it, but outside of that I haven't seen much media coverage. That flop of a mission resulted in the cartels getting the guns they have used to kill 200 Mexicans and 2 border patrol agents. The idea behind the mission was to try and track the guns down after the cartel bought them and try to link higher cartel agents to the crimes. If our government will circumvent our own regulations to get the guns to the bad guys on purpose I do not support them punishing the law abiding citizens for the actions of criminals.