Would You Give Up Your Guns if Thomas Jefferson Told You To?, by Victor Milán

Exclusive to TLE

Recently the pro-gun annexe of the freedom movement has got its collective panties in a bunch because some buffoon wrote a book purporting to "prove" that Colonial Americans were unarmed pacifists, and that American gun culture is of recent and somehow spurious provenance. Its arguments have been duly vaporized by one of freedom's truly great writers, Vin Suprynowicz http://www.infomagic.net/liberty/vs000917.htm [also TLE #91]

But really, who cares?

As Vin demonstrates, it ain't so. But if it were - so what? Would you give up your guns if it proved unquestionably true that the Founders were wimps as self-willedly helpless as Rosie O'Donnell? (Except - whoops! - like so many of our privileged-class pro-rape activists, Rosie's whale-like bulk habitually cowers behind the gun of a mercenary goon.)

How about that Second Amendment? Granted, it should be First, since we have no rights whatever if we lack effectual means - guns among other things - to defend them. Certainly, every scrap of actual scholarship confirms that the amendment unmistakably affirms an individual right to keep and bear arms: translated into modern terms, it reads, "Well-armed and trained guerrillas being freedom's necessary defenders, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Note also that the latter clause, which is manifestly the operative one, needs no adjustment. In truth, as I've said before, the first clause could read, "The moon being made of green cheese ..." and the net meaning would be the same: we have the absolute right to own and carry weapons of any description.

And yes, Virginia, that means RPGs and shoulder-launched SAMs. Nor has anyone who's seen the footage of the government massacre at Waco ("This is not an assault!") any excuse to doubt our need for such armament.

But again, so what?

Let's assume instead, in the face of the manifest, it were proven the Bill of Rights' authors had no intention of recognizing our right as individuals to arm ourselves for defense against violent crime - even, or especially, that carried out under color of government.

Would you disarm then?

Let's get down to the bare bones choice you will face, and soon: when the friendly local police you so unreservedly support come for your guns, will you hand 'em over?

I'm beset on a weekly basis by appeals - OK, "screeching demands" is more like it - that I contribute a chunk of my scarce wealth to combat this or that legislative assault on firearms ownership. Might as well knock it off, folks; it's all a scam.

The fix is in. The moment they think they have the force to do it and survive any armed insurrection it provokes, the permanent government will move to confiscate all private firearms. That's a done deal.

Your guns will be outlawed. In the meantime, a lot of opportunists, Charltons - excuse it; charlatans - and phonies (hi, Wayne!) are sucking handsome salaries out of your veins by pretending to hold back the tide. Yeah, them and King Knut.

There's no such thing as a pro-gun politician; there can be no such thing as a pro-gun government. You might see individual aberrations - Ron Paul seems as sincere as he is insignificant - but in political terms they are lethal mutations. Government is about theft, enslavement, and murder by nature, and cannot be about anything else. Participants in the continuing criminal conspiracy we dignify with the name of government only have incentive, and it is an overwhelmingly powerful one, to centralize power, profit, and privilege upon the State and its favored allies. Private possession of firearms is one of the most decentralizing agencies possible; therefore government's incentive is urgent and in even the medium term absolutely irresistible to destroy it.

The only thing which can prevent government's outlawing, and attempting to confiscate, all private arms is its totally collapsing first. You probably dismiss that eventuality as vanishingly unlikely, although the end of the evil delusion of external governance - the end of obedience - is our sole chance of attaining sustainable liberty.

Therefore, you'd best prepare yourself for the choice: will you obey the law? Or will you defy it - accepting all the consequences that come with that?

For generations we've had dinned into us that civilization would care for us. That in particular we need not concern ourselves with any business as barbaric and violent as protecting ourselves - indeed, must not, lest we taint civilization with our barbarism.

Guess what? It was all a lie, designed to lull us into rendering ourselves harmless for the benefit of those who prey upon us under guise of "ruling."

Has it worked on you?

Civilization is a gloss on the truth as phony as "democracy" or "limited government." The truth is you have nothing - not rights, not property, no, not friends or relatives or mind or soul or life - which you are not prepared to fight, to kill or even in seeming paradox to die, to preserve.

The most you can do is defer that choice. And when have you ever known a hard decision to grow softer with time?

The politicians will take our guns because they must. No amount of money you can spend, no vote you can cast, can prevent them.

Only disobedience can. By violence if that's required. The alternative is total expropriation, enslavement, and death - and not in half a century, not in a generation, but deadly soon. American ownership of private firearms is in a real and meaningful sense the Earth's last best hope for freedom. Which is why the governments of the Earth are united in hysterical determination to see us disarmed.

We - and behind us, all humanity - face two crucial questions.

Have we the guts to disobey?

Will we do it in time?

Watch for Victor Milán's near-future epic THE WAR FOR AMERICA. Freedom can win.

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