With many of us enjoying day off from work due to yesterday’s 4th of July holiday, today seemed like a good opportunity to note that gun ownership is patriotic and beneficial to the United States of America:
An appreciation for history
An appreciation for gun rights often goes hand in hand with an appreciation for history. Gun rights supporters understand that the history of gun control in the United States is a history of racism. The first American gun control laws expressly forbid the newly-freed slaves from owning guns, so as to prevent those slaves from defending themselves against racist attackers, or from standing up to the terrible discrimination of the day. Those who respect gun rights also recognize the fact that just about every major genocide of the last century was preceded by gun control laws which disarmed the future genocide victims, leaving them defenseless to the slaughter which followed. They also understand that even today, gun control laws tend to have a racially discriminatory effect against minorities.
Gun control, however, is inconsistent with those historical and present-day facts. It encourages defenselessness against hate-motivated crimes, and creates a situation in which the good, law abiding members of society are unable to save themselves from crime.
Appreciation for the Constitution
An appreciation for the Second Amendment teaches citizens that our constitution is to be respected in its entirety. Those who respect the Second Amendment are more apt to recognize that no portion of our constitution is without meaning, and that a right in the constitution is not to be ignored by those who find it politically expedient to do so.
Gun control, on the other hand, encourages citizens to disrespect portions of our constitution that they don’t personally like. It teaches that if one can come up with a slick-enough-sounding argument and sell it to the masses, then it possible to unravel the carefully constructed balance between individual rights and governmental power that the founders of this country created over two centuries ago.
Maintains America’s small arms industrial base
In the event of war, the government’s need for small arms and small arms ammunition tends to skyrocket. Having a civilian population that purchases small arms and ammunition during peacetime ensures that the industrial base needed to produce those items during wartime is maintained. The result is that a skilled workforce, along with the necessary machinery, is maintained ready and able to begin producing to meet the military’s needs, in the event of war. Even when no major war occurs, the government get the benefit of lower prices, as the manufacturers of small arms and ammunition can reap mass-production economy of scale benefits by producing for the government and civilians.
Gun control produced the opposite result, gutting our small arms and ammunition industrial base. When the government is the only customer, production lines are scaled back during peacetime, causing skilled workers to lose their jobs and prices to rise. When those workers and production lines are again needed, it is more difficult and time consuming to regain that lost production capacity.
Already trained civilians in time of a draft – especially AR-15 owners
Should our country ever need to reinstate the draft, having civilians who are familiar with firearms will be a major plus. It will take less effort to familiarize those draftees with the operation of their government-issued firearms, and less time for those draftees to become proficient marksmen. This especially true of those civilians who own an AR-15, as a person who is proficient with a semiautomatic AR-15 should very quickly adapt to using the automatic M-16 that is our army’s main battle rifle.
Gun control, on the other hand, leads to a situation in which citizens are discouraged from owning or even learning about guns, and are instead taught to fear guns. In the event that such citizens are needed during a draft, they would come into the military with a fear of and aversion to guns that would take effort to cure. Even once that fear and aversion was corrected, the draftees would still have to start from square one insofar as knowledge about the operation of guns is concerned.
Armed citizens stop terrorists
Case after case from terrorism-besieged countries such as Israel demonstrates that armed citizens can and do stop terrorists, saving lives. This should come as no surprise, since terrorists strike without warning and often the only people poised to act in time are the civilian victims in the immediate vicinity.
Gun control, on the other hand, ensures that armed terrorists will have a monopoly on guns, since those terrorists are more than willing to break a gun control law as they prepare for mass murder. Gun control also ensures that even terrorists without guns will be able to use whatever weapons they do have (e.g. boxcutters) will give them an advantage over the law-abiding citizens.