Since I'm on a posting tear anyway, and since I put in several references to guns in my last post, I thought I'd make a post specific to guns.
When I see calls to ban guns, to confisticate guns, to eliminate common ownership of guns I have to shake my head. In our largely urbanized society we forget a lot of things that, none the less, remain absolute truths.
One of those truths is that we live in a violent and dangerous world. The state of peace that we, in the West, have largely enjoyed for the last sixty years is, in fact, a historical anomaly. It is unnatural, if not at all unwelcome.
That unnatural order came directly from the barrel of a gun. It was, in fact, a direct result of World War Two.
Around the world everyone realized that the old world order was gone. The casual belligerence of nations would not stand, and that a new day had dawned. We de-fanged the Tiger of Asia, who had destroyed the old and decrepit Dragon before it, and in Europe the old kings and enemities realized that the ultimate winner of any future wars... at least for the foreseeable future, would not be who had the greatest army, but who could bring the slumbering giant to their side.
Faced with that truth, they disbanded their armies, beat their swords into ploughshares and were content to spend the money that once bought bullets upon butter, building one of the most pleasant places in all of history to live.
At home a million veterans returned to work, to fatherhood, to lives. They rarely had the stomach for casual bloodshed, and it is, to me, no surprise that the horrific levels of violence, the local gang wars and anti-union massacres all but disappeared after the war. Look at the tenor of the twenties and thirties, and compare it to that of the late forties and fifties and tell me I'm wrong? Tell me we were not a more violent nation before The War.
Ah, but correlation is not causitation, it is true. But it is still correlation.
You don't see mass civil disobedience and violence again until their children are grown, until the Chicago Riots, the Kent State Massacre and so forth, often instigated, if not outright conducted, by the counter-culture movement, by the disaffected youth that explicitly rejected the Old Order, the world their parents had built.
And not coincidentally, the Peace they had bought with their bodies and their blood.
I cannot, for the life of me, fathom the idea that a veteran of WWII would believe he could do good in the world by planting bombs, as William Ayers did. I cannot fathom that a man who had seen in person what high explosives did to the human body, to his friends, could believe that any political point could be worth inflicting that on non-combatants.
That is not to say such men have not existed, or could not exist. I have long since outgrown the sort of naivety that would allow me to hold such a untarnished view of mankind.
What baffles me most about those who are anti-gun is how many small, peaceful people are among them. Women especially confuse me in this regards.
The history of violence shows that the strong always oppress the weak. The large man crushes the small man and women are at the mercy of men who wish to do them harm without a male protector.
This is history. Women feared for their cities to fall to conquerers because they were helpless agains the wanton rapes and slaughters perpetrated by victorious armies. Helpless.
The curious thing about the gun is that the gun does not care if you are large or small, strong or weak. It cares nothing about if you are a man or a woman. Anyone can use a gun, and anyone can die to a bullet.
It is the ultimate equalizer, the great leveler.
To borrow a famous quote
"God created Man, Sam Colt made them Equal".
Well.
Yes. Exactly.
Why then would people who shun violence, who shun the physical training that makes one capable in a fight, who shun the high protien diets necessary to grow to great size... why THESE people, of all people, are the first to reject the gun?
It is, quite literally, the only thing between them and becoming a permanent class of victims.
Not that it matters. Pandora's Box has been opened, the genie has been let out of the bottle. All the King's Horses, and all the King's Men can't stuff any of it back in again.
We will never live in a world without nuclear weapons. We will never live in a world without guns or bombs or planes or tanks. We will never live in a world without violence and danger. No amount of wishful thinking will ever change that. No number of protests or parades will ever eliminate the danger, or remove the threat hanging over all our heads. No law can save you from the man who wishes to do you harm, and no drumming circle will change his mind.
Its time to take the Red Pill and Free Your Mind.
When I see calls to ban guns, to confisticate guns, to eliminate common ownership of guns I have to shake my head. In our largely urbanized society we forget a lot of things that, none the less, remain absolute truths.
One of those truths is that we live in a violent and dangerous world. The state of peace that we, in the West, have largely enjoyed for the last sixty years is, in fact, a historical anomaly. It is unnatural, if not at all unwelcome.
That unnatural order came directly from the barrel of a gun. It was, in fact, a direct result of World War Two.
Around the world everyone realized that the old world order was gone. The casual belligerence of nations would not stand, and that a new day had dawned. We de-fanged the Tiger of Asia, who had destroyed the old and decrepit Dragon before it, and in Europe the old kings and enemities realized that the ultimate winner of any future wars... at least for the foreseeable future, would not be who had the greatest army, but who could bring the slumbering giant to their side.
Faced with that truth, they disbanded their armies, beat their swords into ploughshares and were content to spend the money that once bought bullets upon butter, building one of the most pleasant places in all of history to live.
At home a million veterans returned to work, to fatherhood, to lives. They rarely had the stomach for casual bloodshed, and it is, to me, no surprise that the horrific levels of violence, the local gang wars and anti-union massacres all but disappeared after the war. Look at the tenor of the twenties and thirties, and compare it to that of the late forties and fifties and tell me I'm wrong? Tell me we were not a more violent nation before The War.
Ah, but correlation is not causitation, it is true. But it is still correlation.
You don't see mass civil disobedience and violence again until their children are grown, until the Chicago Riots, the Kent State Massacre and so forth, often instigated, if not outright conducted, by the counter-culture movement, by the disaffected youth that explicitly rejected the Old Order, the world their parents had built.
And not coincidentally, the Peace they had bought with their bodies and their blood.
I cannot, for the life of me, fathom the idea that a veteran of WWII would believe he could do good in the world by planting bombs, as William Ayers did. I cannot fathom that a man who had seen in person what high explosives did to the human body, to his friends, could believe that any political point could be worth inflicting that on non-combatants.
That is not to say such men have not existed, or could not exist. I have long since outgrown the sort of naivety that would allow me to hold such a untarnished view of mankind.
What baffles me most about those who are anti-gun is how many small, peaceful people are among them. Women especially confuse me in this regards.
The history of violence shows that the strong always oppress the weak. The large man crushes the small man and women are at the mercy of men who wish to do them harm without a male protector.
This is history. Women feared for their cities to fall to conquerers because they were helpless agains the wanton rapes and slaughters perpetrated by victorious armies. Helpless.
The curious thing about the gun is that the gun does not care if you are large or small, strong or weak. It cares nothing about if you are a man or a woman. Anyone can use a gun, and anyone can die to a bullet.
It is the ultimate equalizer, the great leveler.
To borrow a famous quote
"God created Man, Sam Colt made them Equal".
Well.
Yes. Exactly.
Why then would people who shun violence, who shun the physical training that makes one capable in a fight, who shun the high protien diets necessary to grow to great size... why THESE people, of all people, are the first to reject the gun?
It is, quite literally, the only thing between them and becoming a permanent class of victims.
Not that it matters. Pandora's Box has been opened, the genie has been let out of the bottle. All the King's Horses, and all the King's Men can't stuff any of it back in again.
We will never live in a world without nuclear weapons. We will never live in a world without guns or bombs or planes or tanks. We will never live in a world without violence and danger. No amount of wishful thinking will ever change that. No number of protests or parades will ever eliminate the danger, or remove the threat hanging over all our heads. No law can save you from the man who wishes to do you harm, and no drumming circle will change his mind.
Its time to take the Red Pill and Free Your Mind.
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