Firearms freedom can be habit forming
by Kirby Ferris
© Copyright Jews For The Preservation of
Firearms Ownership (www.JPFO.org) 2012
At the risk of sounding overly optimistic, it would seem that the last several years have added much needed momentum to the efforts to restore the Second Amendment. (Some folks would use the phrase "preserve the Second Amendment", but we need to actually save it, restore it, before we can then preserve it in the true moral and pragmatic form in which it was originally rendered.)
Every cloud has a silver lining. Good can actually, on rare occasion, come from bad. Let’s examine some "silver lining" issues regarding our guns first.
The election of Barack Hussein Obama represented such an obvious threat to our gun freedoms that every single year of his Presidency has been a record year for guns sales to American citizens. Something about this creepy Marxist mesmerist has just never smelled right. Bottom line: I’ll keep my guns, thank you. And give me one of those high capacity magazines over there.
Americans bought guns and lots of ammo "just in case". Even liberals who voted for Obama joined the lines at sporting goods stores and gun shops. Women, the voting block that ushered Obama into the Oval Office, were the most significant expansion in guns sales demographics.
The Congressman Giffords shooting horror in Arizona, was, when all was said and done, viewed in the cold light of pragmatism and common sense by a vast majority of Americans. The Brady Babblers seem to have lost their grip on the hysteria card. Arizona had recently become a "Constitutional Carry" State, joining the ranks with Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming. Arizonans are not turning back. They’re buying more guns. And packing them, whether openly or discreetly.
The crass vulgarity called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), true to its lie-drenched storm trooper mentality, simply could not stay out of trouble.
"Operation Fast and Furious" (who comes up with these adolescent code names anyhow?) has brought the glare of congressional scrutiny down on Obama’s supposed "under the radar" "gun control" scam. Smuggle the guns into Mexico, with the FULL INTENTION that when they were used in violent crimes, they would then be tracked back to U.S. gun shops. Ironically, Obama’s stealth program against the Second Amendment has now popped up on the radar screen like an eighteen wheeler doing ninety-five into a small town speed trap.
The above are just a few examples of how the "silver lining" effect has been working in the favor of American gun freedom. Americans now smell the rats. The utterly insane bailout schemes and blatant deceptions in every backwater of the Federal political swamp solidified the obvious in our minds: We are lorded over by crooks, liars, and not a few downright idiots. With very, very few exceptions, if you put a (D) or an (R) in front of the politician’s name you’re still talking about someone who deserves a gallon of hot tar and a sack of feathers.
But the icing on the cake is that owning a gun has come "out of the closet". A recent Gallup poll reported FORTY PERCENT of adult Americans declaring that they owned a firearm. (You know the true figure is more like fifty or fifty-five percent. Quite a few of us wouldn’t tell a stranger on the telephone that we own a gun.)
Freedom is addictive. Once appreciated by a people it can be quite difficult to wrench it away from them, especially if they are armed. However, freedom can be seduced away. That’s what has happened for more than fifty years in this nation. Somehow a majority of Americans were sold the insanity that "helpless is safer". Does anyone really think that line of illogical slime is working any more?
Like Popeye’s affinity for spinach, let’s keep up this growing addiction to freedom. Buy a friend or loved one a gun and teach them to shoot. Teach your neighbor’s kids to shoot. Exercise zero tolerance when some bone head mouths off against self defense and gun ownership.
And now I’ll tell you what sadly might be the best thing for American freedom in the immediate future. Obama is re-elected in 2012. Or how about Obama and Hillary? Sweet, huh?
Aaron Zelman and I used to debate the saying "Worse is better". It’s a troubling, even masochistic, concept, but the gloves would be off. Battle lines would be clearly drawn. It would complete the polarization of America and the Big Dance would start. The cultural Marxists’ tactic of silent, secret, and subversive would be splayed open in all its fetid rot for us to examine. Where might it go from there?
Happy New Year.
Frequent JPFO contributor and strategist, Kirby Ferris, collaborated intensively with Aaron Zelman over the last two years of Aaron’s life. Ferris is currently the Research Director of JPFO.
See all of Kirby Ferris’ articles.
© Copyright Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership 2012.
