A few days ago, I was commenting on Firehand's gun shop rumor, and in that particular post on his blog, he mentioned the question, "is it not too soon to shoot the bastards, but too late." I've been pondering that question the last couple of days, and here goes...
Would it ever really be too late? I think that one depends solely on a follow-up question, too late for WHAT? Too late for liberty to be preserved, or too late for massive bloodshed and all kinds of upheaval? And here's the reasoning behind that...
I don't think that it would ever be too late for the preservation of liberty as the Constitution and the Founding Fathers spelled it out. It's been said that man's natural inclination is to desire freedom and liberty, and I basically agree with that. Admittedly, though, years of statist indoctrination from politicians, the public education apparatus and the leftist media have seriously undermined that natural inclination in many ways. One that comes to mind, as Denise at The Ten Ring so succinctly put it, is the rise of...
Professionalization. This is an attitude that only a plumber can replace a washer, only AAA can replace a flat tire, only a cop can use a gun—we are witnessing the death of self-reliance.
And with the rise of the professionalization attitude, comes an attendant loss of liberty, because you're free only to the extent that you're self-reliant. And undoubtedly, a great many people seem to think that's an acceptable trade-off, as evidenced by, for example, the shredding of the natural right to arms in places like Chicago and Washington, D.C.
However, the question needs to be asked -- to what extent does the prevailing political attitude in Chicago, D.C., New York, etc. represent the prevailing political attitude in the country as a whole? I would argue, not to any great extent, as evidenced by the resurgence of conservatives in government in recent years (I know many of them have completely forgotten what they were elected to do, but that's another post entirely) and, for example, the not-overly-stringent state gun laws in places like Texas. (I know many would probably accuse me of playing right into the hands of Mike Bloomberg, Tom Menino, etc., but the fact is the scourge of crime in their respective fiefdoms is the result of their own fascistic local and state laws vis-a-vis law-abiding citizens' possession of firearms, to say nothing of other things that have precisely jack shit to do with the laws in other jurisdictions.)
But, you're probably asking, what does that have to do with the potential New Orleans- and Waco-type situations writ large across the country?
A great deal, I think. There are indeed a great many people who don't own guns in this country, but outside of the aforementioned statist shitholes, it could be argued that we gun owners are more or less viewed with benign neglect, as evidenced by the arguably less strict gun laws here -- that is to say, the people at large believe that a gun in the hands of a law-abiding citizen isn't something to be afraid of. And if it ever did come down to such outrageous Constitutional violations (of multiple amendments, mind you -- the 2nd, the 4th, the 9th and 10th), of law enforcement and military going from house to house, I think at least a few people -- gunnies and non-gunnies alike -- would be shocked out of their complacency and take action, whether it be getting the ball rolling on forming that well-regulated militia (OUTSIDE the auspices of the National Guard, of course), general civil disobedience, or what have you. And even if that phenomenon was not that widespread, all would still not be lost.
Consider the numbers. It's been estimated that there are 60 to 80 million gun owners in the United States. Let's just assume that only 5% of them would resist, or form some sort of organized resistance to, gun confiscations. That's roughly 3 to 4 million gun owners. We all saw the cluster-fuck that the siege outside Waco turned into, and there were less than 100 people inside the compound at Mount Carmel, not all of whom were armed. I am well aware of the numbers of law enforcement at all levels, and the military as well, but at least in the case of soldiers, sailors and airmen, it's not altogether difficult to imagine how disarmament of people who have done nothing wrong fits into their political views. Indeed, Bill Whittle wrote in "Freedom,"
A Marine Corps officer wondered to himself whether such an order to disarm law-abiding citizens would be carried out in the United States. He discovered that most of his men would not follow an order to disarm the populace by force.
Whether this Marine's survey could be accurately extrapolated to the armed forces personnel as a whole, I still find it heartening. I like to think that more people than not, share those Marines' worldview. And it's probably the biggest reason that I believe the question posed in the title to this post, is:
"No. It'll never be too late. We might well face bloodshed and upheaval, for as Thomas Jefferson said, the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants, but the ideals of freedom and liberty enshrined in our Declaraton of Independence and Constitution will live on forever -- even if it isn't in the country that's known as the United States post-upheaval. An armed and free people will see to it."
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