Where in the name of common-sense, are our fears to end if we may not trust our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow-citizens? What shadow of danger can there be from men who are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen and who participate with them in the same feelings, sentiments, habits and interests? -- Alexander Hamilton - Federalist 29
I consider the Orlando shooting to be a blip. I'll salute the flag at half mast, but I'm not particularly outraged by the state of murderous violence in the US. It's a consequence of my belief in equality. So the Syrian Civil War looms much larger in terms of moral outrage. The burning alive of Yazidi women by ISIS, the kidnapping into slavery of women by Boko Haram. Those are headlines that get my attention. I'm not even particularly worried about Donald Trump, scumbag that he is, because I have come to appreciate what outstanding individuals and institutions we have in the US that have and will survive idiocy and even hostile intent. That confidence comes from the understanding I have gotten from hanging out with men of a certain character: men with whom I share the same feelings, sentiments, habits and interests. All of us to a man have found some reprise from the madness in this address by Netanyahu. He said all that needed to be said, in under three minutes.
It would have been nice if one of those men were Obama. I would have liked to like him. In the end however, Obama cost me $400 a month with his heathcare shenanigans, and as I predicted, screwed several foreign policy and geopolitical pooches. His irresponsibility and withdrawal from the world stage has let some particular nasties bubble up. He was a doofus but at least he was an ethical and personable doofus, a standup-guy with a good sense of humor, but as smarmy and self-righteous as they come. I think he may have done better than President Pierce when it all comes down to it, but perhaps I only think so now because what comes next will not be so civilized. He has cleared my head about the consequence of identity politics and leaves the country not so much principally divided as actually hating itself. He was congenitally unable to address that problem seriously, not only because it elected him, but because identity was not a box he could think outside of. And as he mouths off about so-called reasons for not using the term 'radical Islamic terrorism' he only digs himself a deeper hole. Today and all week, Americans have been bickering with each other because our leaders have decided to close their eyes to the world, and say that America's problems begin and end at home.
So the leader of the Democrats' vision of the free world has cosigned more rhetoric to make this shooting about gun control and gay rights I am predictably saddened. So I have come to I think there is absolutely nothing special about his government's approval, because it's not so much my government. I mean the 1% always get it, don't they? It's just a matter of certification and legal arrangements. The more lawyers you have... So where we're speaking in specific regard to the topic of gun control, the 1% and the lawyered up will do whatever bureaucratic madness eventually becomes necessary to shutup those opposed to the free franchise of gun ownership. That's not a moral standard is my point. It's a bureaucratic requirement, which in the end depending on your perspective is called either an entitlement or a loophole. Basically that's pretty much our relationship with the nanny state. One man's entitlement is another man's loophole. But does that matter morally? Not actually. I guess the analogy some 'liberal' might understand is how many fucks are given by rebels at Stonewall for the privilege of a government stamp of approval on their same sex relationship. Determined men are going to do what they will. So for myself and those like me, who have FFLs and friends with FFLs, we will get whatever guns we find necessary. And because we are resourceful, we will work within the law just like people with the highest paid attorneys work within the law. We will find the loopholes, because we're Americans, we're entitled to them.
But here's the thing about government entitlements. They never quite protect you the way you think they should. I mean how can it be now that Gay Marriage is a reality that all of the activists and social justice workers and the very law of the land could not protect a gay club in Florida? Could it be that all of them picked the wrong policy issue? After all the time and money and effort spent. After all the years pressing the issue and boycotts of Chick-fil-A and selfish cake-makers and wedding planners, could it be that they picked the wrong enemy? Don't we now have gay rights? If so how could this massacre happen? Clearly Obama didn't go far enough. He didn't get to ban all of the guns. That's what we really needed right?
So the focus changes to guns, and somebody is going to come up with a new gun policy. What I resent is the idea that ignorant self-righteousness under the figleaf of 'intelligence' or 'moral sanity' or however it is that those who think their outrage is so bloody brilliant is what guides discussions of security and public safety. Please. The ultimate effect will be to disarm the common man, period. Not clever bastards like me, or clever bastards like the insane murderous Orlando fuck, just the ordinary Joes. Because the ordinary Joes don't get loopholes. Today it seems that even their rights don't get the benefit of the doubt. Indeed now is the silly season of questioning the Second Amendment. To impugn the Constitutional right, is to sign the warrant that says the ordinary Joe's life is not worth defending with deadly force unless somebody certifies his life. Unless Congress writes him an entitlement, all he gets is wall to wall CNN coverage of his grieving on camera with a creche in the background. That and maybe a moment of silence. There are always people who hold themselves superior in judgment of what is or is not 'senseless violence', but not Joe.
Now this is the moment when I might hope for you to reflect on the point of the poor Yazidis and ask yourself if America is so retarded and regressive, then what exactly is there to stop all the evil people believe Donald Trump to be from subjecting us to more domestic terror? Is America impervious to tyranny? Are we so exceptional? Or are people generally all just evil bastards without the rule of law? Well, today America is exceptional because today the majority of us, even the ordinary common Joes, say that their lives are worth defending with deadly force, and worth it whether or not there is some government stamp on that defense. We take it as a right, and that the legitimacy of our government is based on the fact that it cannot abridge that right. We are met in an Orlando suburb testing whether that right or any right can long endure. We are testing if our faith in ourselves to defend these rights can survive what has become of our politics and our faithlessness in the leaders we have chosen.
I feel today that I have to read and study and apply the lessons of the Constitution independent of whoever is running Washington DC. It's a depressing feeling. I have to fight for all of my civil rights. So listen to and have personal friends that have possessed Federal Firearms Licenses. So I'm kinda well-informed. I studied for a year before I bought my first pistol. There was nothing I ever liked or cared for about guns in the first 50 years of my life. I was completely ignorant and subject to exactly the same illogical emotional appeals I recognize on this every day. I understand and accept that people will never give me credence. I don't expect that they will have the discipline, the patience or the motivation to know what I know. But I'm an expert here, relatively speaking. I have already discounted the willingness of people, voting citizens in America, to step out of their emotional reactions and listen to reason on this and many other issues. I'm not really upset except for one thing:
That is the willingness for people to take it on advice of authority to restrict the rights of the common man, in the assumption held by so many, that the common man cannot be trusted. As civil rights are eroded for each and every 'teachable moment', the American experiment dies. And like me and my FFL friends, and those of us with fancy lawyers, we will get what we want, but the presumptions of US government will be that the common man is on his own.
Go lookup your best hate crime statistics and see who has the most to lose. Should they have the right to defend their own lives with deadly force? I know some people might be persuaded that there are special cases to be made for LGBT or Sunnis in Dearborn, or migrant Mexicans in Texas, but none of that demographic detail means anything to me. I say there is one standard, universal with liberty and deadly defense for all free men. I have a right to defend my life with deadly force. I am perfectly happy to share that right with everyone else, in fact I insist on it. If and when we lose that right to the narrowly focused distrustful of American society anti-gun activism, I will use my privilege and power to defend my life with deadly force.
So if you're working for the new anti-gun regime, please go ahead and make your list of means-tests of the kind of certifications you in your infinite kindness and mercy deem necessary for government certification of possession of deadly force. That will be your definition of a free man. The rest, will be less than that suffered to your protection and guidance, for our own good. Many, many Americans will not be disarmed 'for their own good'. Be glad that some of us say so for consistent, universal, ethical reasons. I'd hate to have to join a well-disciplined militia. But I will.
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