Part XVII: Wave Goodbye To Red Dawn
This issue has been weighing on my mind for a while, and it’s time I got it out there.
We gun owners are a naturally suspicious lot, especially when it comes to our Second Amendment rights. At various periods, such as during the Dark Times (aka. the Clinton Administration), such suspicion turned, with some justification to paranoia—because aided and abetted by GFW organizations and their lickspittles in the mainstream media, the Government really was out to get us.
Legislation followed regulation followed legislation followed regulation, with, it appeared, only one goal in mind: civilian disarmament. (And please, no lies about “only handguns” or “only assault weapons”—we all know that’s a lie, and I won’t be insulted by having that crap handed to me, and expecting me to believe it.)
While GFWs moaned about the NRA “having a desk in the Bush Oval Office”, the fact of the matter is that Handgun Control, Inc. was far closer to Bill Clinton than the NRA has ever come to George W. Bush.
Times have changed since then, and the world changed with it.
After 9/11, the biggest group of gun purchasers was not formed by conservatives (we were already armed), but people who had formerly disdained gun ownership in the fond belief that the State could always protect us.
Well, we all know how that turned out.
And more data was to follow: looters declined to rob disaster-struck houses or businesses because of armed householders and business owners (eg. the Rodney King riots, where one of the most telling images was that of Korean storekeepers standing guard over their premises armed with the very same “assault rifles” which had earlier been so vilified).
Still more was to follow: despite wails that laws permitting concealed-carry would cause “Dodge City shootouts” and “vigilante behavior”, states which passed such laws saw crime rates plummet. Finally, the failure of the AWB renewal last year did not cause street gangs to become “better-armed than the police” or similar nonsense: crime committed with actual (ie. full-auto assault rifles) stayed at about the same level as it had always been—as close to zero as makes no difference.
The sea-change in mainstream public attitudes towards guns has come about achingly slowly (too slowly, for my liking), but change it has. There are only a few holdouts (in, of course, the mainstream media, academia and among liberal/neo-socialist politicians), and even they have lost all power to persuade, despite a frenzy of alarmism.
Gun control has, pretty much, become the real third rail of American politics. How else could one explain the haste with which even gun-hating twerps like John Kerry suddenly donned camo and pretended to be serious shooters, during recent election campaigns? And even during the Dark Times, voters were incensed enough to hand control of Congress back to Republicans, which promptly passed anti-gun control measures like the Firearm Owners Protection Act in 1986.
In terms of domestic policy, guns are no longer an issue, except in hopeless cases like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, which persist in holding onto the failed mantras of the past. Just as importantly, international efforts to control “small arms” continue to fail, simply because we, as the most heavily-armed nation on Earth, refuse to go along with it, and we will continue to do so—especially when faced with the evidence of places like Britain and Australia, where gun control is severe but crime continues to climb.
In short, we gun owners don’t have to be that paranoid anymore. Yes, a lot remains to be done: a whole raft of horrible gun control legislation and regulation has to be turned back; supporters of gun control still have to be met with rebuttal and ridicule every time they spout their lies; and I myself will not rest until nearly every household in this country is armed.
Which brings me to the next point, and it’s a big one.
We gun owners need to stop acting like a bunch of paranoid morons.
Here are a couple of newsflashes:
- The United Nations isn’t going to take over this country. Forget all those wet dreams about shooting down blue-painted helicopters or taking aim at blue-helmeted stormtroopers. The UN can’t even maintain order in West Africa; how much chance would they have in Alabama?
- The United States isn’t going to be invaded: not by the Russians, not by the Chinese, and not by the Cubans either. There is not a single country or entity in this world which can even contemplate a full-scale invasion. Not gonna happen: the movie Red Dawn was just a movie, not the Prophecies of Nostradamus.
- We’re not going to start shooting BATFE agents, either. That’s not going to work, so quit your childish dreams of 2A martyrdom. Yes, they act like total pricks a lot of the time; but the way to eliminate this horrible bunch of goons is by legislation, not by gunning them down as they bust down your front door.
Here’s the bottom line of all this kind of talk:
it makes people uncomfortable. And I don’t mean current gun owners, either (although it certainly has done that, too).
The real problem is that if people who don’t already own a gun are confronted by some guy who says that “This here MagnaWingDinger is guaranteed to go right through a blue helmet at 300 yards”, the net result is that the prospective owner will believe that gun owners are just like they’re painted by the frothing liberals: a bunch of paranoid pitchforkers.
You know where I saw evidence of this? At the NoR/RWVA shoot a couple of weeks ago. I was standing in the front of the crowd, and as speaker after speaker talked about taking out UN soldiers or “Gummint agents” (by inference), I saw several looks of unease among the audience members.
And I wasn’t imagining things, either. In the days following the shoot, I received emails on this precise subject, and all the senders showed the same unease.
Look: the discipline of becoming a skilled rifleman or pistolero is a worthy goal in and of itself. We don’t have to play at being soldiers/partisans/mountain men to make it more palatable or more enjoyable.
As for the outfits… oh hell. We have Cowboy Action Shooting, where people call themselves “Hickory Slim” or “Pistol Pete” and don cowboy outfits, even though they’re lawyers or investment bankers. So I don’t care about the people who wear coordinated camo outfits when they go shooting, either. That’s harmless fun, even if it sends a frisson of fear through GFWs and their ilk (and causes giggles from Daughter, who calls them “redneck Barbie outfits").
All this play-acting—whether AQT, IPSC, IDPA or all the other alphabet soups—has a worthy goal: that of turning us back into a nation of riflemen.
But I’d like all this to stop when it comes to muttering darkly about “blue helmets”, “JBTs” and (gawd help us) “black helicopters”.
And yes, I’ll plead mea culpa to being guilty of the occasional irresponsible remark myself. But no more. A joke among friends is not the same as public utterances in front of crowds of people.
Whenever I hear some old boy dressed in camo make some loony paranoid comment in public about “U.N. soldiers”, I can’t help but remember the classic line from The Sting: “Try not to live up to all my expectations of you.”
All that said: I expect Government agents not to act like jack-booted thugs, either—and I won’t be shy to call them that, if their behavior warrants it. And every time some NGO at the United Nations tries to sneak in some anti-gun nonsense which might end up infringing on our Constitutional right to be armed, I’ll be at the head of the line to hand them their asses (figuratively speaking).
But it’s time we gun owners grew up. When there’s reason to be paranoid, we should be. What I’m saying is that we don’t have to be paranoid anymore—just eternally watchful, and suspicious.
There’s a world of difference.
