America’s Culture of Guns & Our Heritage of Freedom
On January 28th, in a Federal Way Mirror article about the 1994 assault weapons ban, we reviewed some important issues raised when the men that drafted the U.S. Constitution disagreed about the question of whether to authorize “standing” armies. There were those on one side that felt national security might be neglected without a Constitutional provision mandating a full time, professional army. On the other side were men like Thomas Jefferson that saw the potential for the proposed federal government to become a new form of tyranny.
The Founders included the right to keep and arms in the Bill of Rights largely in order to satisfy proponents on both sides of this question. The modern objection that usually follows is that any invading military force that gets through the US Armed Forces will not be deterred by an armed citizen standing on his or her porch with a handgun. Nor is he going to prevent domestic armed forces from suppressing the populace should domestic tyranny arise.
Thus, the Second Amendment is an anachronism. Or is it? The American “rabble” defeated Britain’s unrivaled superpower forces that dominated much of the world’s land mass and all of the high seas. One advantage held by the colonial “minutemen” were long-barreled Kentucky rifles, with state of the art grooves that sent balls of lead spiraling into British columns with accuracy at distances that British smooth-bore weapons could not touch.
Such rifle technology was available because colonial farmers and backwoodsmen were constantly handling and improving variants of evolving European designs.
Britain was across the Atlantic and lacked modern transport to bring the wily colonials to submission. The Soviet Union faced no such limitations when it invaded neighboring Finland- twice! Finnish citizen-soldiers halted Soviet troops in the 1939 Winter War and again in 1941!
Accurate shooting and deadly Mosin-Nagants (reworked by Finland's Sako Arms) combined with the Finnish ability to travel across frozen lakes and forests on skis, provided numerous opportunities to massacre Russian troops and obtain additional Russian arms (also Mosin-Nagants) and ammunition compatible with the Finnish weapons.
See documentary video Winter War.
Chinese Communist peasants and workers fought the well-armed Chinese Nationalists (supposedly at the same time that they were holding off invading Japanese forces). The Long March in 1934 seems to have been proof to Mao Zedong and his admirers, that allowing citizens to own guns is unimaginable folly. In fact, no dictator has ever permitted such a situation to exist for very long.
We aren’t talking about standing on your front porch with a pistol or even a deer rifle! The Second Amendment is about handling and working with weapons that are militarily useful.
When Ron Barrett developed the .50 caliber rifle (outlawed in California), his rifle represented a heritage that put Barrett alongside American innovators like Samuel Colt, John Browning, and John Garand.
Such designers working in private sector shops and garages developed efficient guns used by civilians and military. Military and civilian shooters and designers in the U.S. always come from the same cultural fabric. The Founders knew that freedom to handle militarily useful firearms prepares each generation to pass on that heritage in a world that is hostile to freedom.
If you still persist in doubting the ability of determined citizens to deter foreign enemies or to resist domestic tyranny, there are still a few facts to bear in mind. There will always be patriotic citizens that are also duly constituted magistrates that will provide authority and leadership for the resistance.
Even a state government (think Texas or Alaska) may resist domestic tyranny. If you doubt that men and women capable of taking such action are in our midst, look at those that are quietly going about their business in the military, police and other corridors of government, including the courts. Maybe you also doubt whether an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution has any modern meaning?
The bureaucrats within the United Nations and all the petty dictators (at home and abroad) that dream of ruling the world are going to think twice before enforcing some new world order in America the way that has been done in Australia, Britain, Canada and countless other countries where freedom of speech is now as "outmoded" as the freedom to own guns.
You will soon be hearing more than ever from the bureaucratic-media complex about how America's "culture of guns" is a barbaric and outmoded relic of the past to be replaced with a UN Treaty to prevent terrorists from getting .50 caliber guns and other weapons that have no "recreational purpose".
They just want some "common sense" gun laws- "common sense" gun laws which may allow you to own a one-shot .22 (for the time being) if you register it, store it with a trigger-lock and promise to turn it over- during national emergencies- to friendly UN peacekeeping forces when you are told to do so.
If you think we are peddling a conspiracy theory, wake up and smell the coffee. The UN has successfully pushed for such a treaty in other nations and the UN gun control lobby is already working overtime here in the USA.
See Lone Star Justice.
See also Mao, The Unknown Story.
