“To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.”
         ---Alexander Hamilton 

 The interesting thing is, I don’t own a firearm. Never figured I needed it. Now, I’m in the market for one. Several, in fact.

 I figure I’m going to need them soon.

 For more than 200 years, the Second Amendment has reminded Americans that, if ever threatened by tyranny from within their own government, if ever the government founded by men of vision should be subverted, they could change that government – by force, if necessary. 

Now, I fear, the Second won’t be with us much longer. Our last refuge against tyranny will soon be gone.

 Welcome to the new world, my fellow Americans. 

 Notice I didn’t call it a “brave” new world. Courage has no place in a world ruled by false security and complacency.

 The radical political left which currently rules this country will soon introduce legislation to repeal or modify the Second Amendment. They’ve been laying the groundwork for years, aided and abetted by their allies within the Fourth Estate, the news media. ABC’s 20/20, for example, will drive another nail in the coffin of liberty when it airs its piece attacking individual gun ownership on April 10, trying to convince those undecided on the issue of the fallacy of the notion that guns are defensive weapons.

 I’m sure that, as word gets out of the plans, the “progressive” politicians will find a way to mollify those remaining middle-of-the-roaders, offering a “compromise” – say, amending the Second in such a way that allows firearms ownership for certain individuals or certain purposes, but under the strictest of regulations. The aim, after all, is to infringe on that clause in the Second which reads: “…shall not be infringed.”

 Many of those who read this missive will, no doubt, roll their eyes and file it in their mental inventory of tin-foil hat conspiracy stories. They believe what the government tells them, that we have become too civilized to think about something as horrible as an armed insurrection. They believe what Hollywood tells them, that people who own guns are violent kooks out to impose a theocracy or Nazi totalitarianism on them. They have absolutely no clue that the real threat of fascism has arrived in our country on the wings of a concept known as “globalism.”

 Jefferson and others of our Founding fathers made it clear from many of their writings that the Second Amendment’s purpose had little to do with enabling people to shoot one another over card games or to get revenge on school bullies. They were aware that the system of government they had crafted could be corrupted, and the Second Amendment was the citizens’ final recourse against a time when our federal government took unto itself power never granted by the Constitution and began ruling, rather than governing. 

 The right to keep and bear arms is included in the Constitution as a safeguard against government tyranny – that purpose, and no other.

 As Patrick Henry of Virginia observed during the debate over the Bill of Rights: “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.”

 Sadly, the man whose actions did the most damage to the Constitution’s protections saw what he had unwittingly unleashed in his zeal to strengthen the power of the federal government at the expense of the independence of the States. Late during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln wrote to Col. William F. Eakin: “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

 We have only to see the way in which our elected politicians in Washington, D.C, have unconstitutionally abused their powers to provide financial bail-outs of banks and other institutions after they criminally manipulated money markets out of sheer greed, to know that Lincoln’s fear has become reality. Every American who pays taxes now owes debts that will extend far beyond even their children’s lifetimes because our federal government believes it has the power to do it … and no one save the gun-owning kooks challenges that.

 The Obama Administration has allowed it to leak that in crafting legislation for a new “assault weapons ban,” it will include firearms such as the AR-15, which is the semi-automatic civilian version of the military’s M-16. It’s already planning new taxes on ammunition which will make ammo prohibitively expensive. Yet the violent criminals the political left says it’s protecting us from with this ban and these taxes don’t use AR-15s and don’t buy their ammunition from reputable gun dealers. The drug cartels of Mexico the administration says it wants to protect us from don’t import firearms from the United States because the fully-automatic weapons they prefer aren’t sold here legally; they get them from Venezuela, China and Russia.

 There’s a reason the federal government continues to seek to restrict public access to military-grade firearms while using criminal activity with non-military firearms as justification. As the esteemed Noah Webster observed in 1787:  “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.”
 The complacent types will scoff, of course, because after all, we’re far more civilized than they were in 1787. We don’t need guns to change the government, we’ll just vote for the other party next election and they’ll fix things. It’s a fine ideal and it would be great if it worked that way – but when, pray tell, was the last time the federal government gave up power it had gathered to itself? When was the last time the size of the federal budget went down instead of up? Indeed, the party which touts its platform as “limiting the size of the government” in fact nearly doubled it during the last administration’s heavy-handed rule, and the current administration has already moved to do more damage in a few months than the previous one did in eight years.

 Our federal government is broken, and the political system which staffs it cannot be fixed. As Alexander Tyler observed, the electorate has realized that it can vote itself gifts from the public treasury by election of individuals who promise those gifts – call it welfare, call it earmarks, call it $750 hammers and $2,000 toilet seats, it’s all gifts to a segment of the electorate. Our system is doomed to economic collapse. And Tyler’s observation on the life cycle of democracy notes that dictatorship always follows the collapse of democracy.

 Jesus of Nazareth once told his disciples to “Render unto Cesar what is Cesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.” The take I get from that is that He was telling his followers that no government made by Man will ever be perfect and right, and that his followers should not expend much energy on trying to perfect the creations of Man, since the government they seek will be one in Heaven, not on Earth. As someone who professes a nondenominational belief in most Christian concepts, I know that were I a true follower of The Way I’d quit my bitching and accept what is.

 But, may God forgive me, I cannot live as a slave. God gave me free will, and the ability to reason, and I will not surrender it.

 And so, whether or not they’re still legal when I finally raise enough money to buy them, I’m going to get myself some firearms and ammunition. I’m going to gather with others who believe as I do, and when the feds come to take those arms from us, we’re going to fight. And we will probably die. But we will die free.

 Better, I say, to lie unhallowed and uncelebrated in some unmarked pauper’s grave branded as a “rebel” than to live another hundred years as a meek, cowardly servant of the faceless, stateless corporate globalists who have destroyed mankind’s greatest attempt at establishing self-government.