Chattanooga: The New First Responders, 2

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barack obama, Chattanooga, federal government, George W. Bush, government, john kerry

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In Chattanooga: The New First Responders I explained that we face a new model of warfare, warfare brought to American soil by the extraordinarily foolish choices and policies of our leaders, and by a barbaric enemy determined to impose Sharia on all mankind.

This is an enemy that will attack us at our most vulnerable, undefended and unprepared. It revels in murdering women and children, our unarmed military members, and all unable to fight back. We know this because this Islamist enemy has already done all of this, not only in America, but elsewhere. It need not infiltrate sleeper cells into America–though even our feckless federal government knows it has done so on a massive scale–but uses the Internet to recruit and radicalize so-called “lone wolf” gunmen. A single one of these diseased minds can wreck substantial carnage.

Future attacks will be carried out at military bases, military recruiting centers, malls, theaters, schools, and other gun-free zones, for while such terrorists cannot be deterred, they do take their chances for success into account in planning their attacks, and tend to avoid places where they know they’ll almost immediately meet armed resistance. Earlier, I wrote:

Fortunately, quite independently of the government at all levels, Americans have been preparing for just this situation. Since the ascension of Barack Obama, Americans have been arming and training themselves at unprecedented levels. Even many progressives have become first-time gun owners. Mr. Obama has truly been the greatest firearm salesman in history, which must enrage him to no end.

As state laws have been steadily liberalized to provide more and more firearm freedoms, Americans have responded by obtaining ever-increasing numbers of concealed carry licenses. Certainly, some of this increase in interest in firearms is due to increasing distrust of our federal government. Some of it is also a result of the understanding that the federal government cannot and will not protect us against terrorist threats. Unsurprisingly, as more honest citizens have become armed and capable, murder and violent crime rates have declined.

Concealed carry has provided undeniable benefits, not only in deterring domestic criminals, but in strengthening the national character. “Strengthening the national character?” How is this possible?

Progressivism seeks to make everyone absolutely dependent on an ever-enlarging government. It works to make Americans feel that self-initiative, individuality and responsibility are not only futile and unproductive, but harmful to society. Through insane regulations imposed and enforced by unaccountable, faceless bureaucrats, it works to make all submit to government. It practices the big lie, lies so counterintuitive to rational people, so outrageously and obviously false that, if repeatedly often and loudly enough and with sufficient conviction, many people will actually come to believe them.

Thus do the usual suspects argue that our military members must remain unarmed, because it will make them safer. Thus do they call the Chattanooga attack a “tragedy,” and a “senseless act of violence,” rather than the act of war it is. They encourage us to mourn and wring our hands at our own helplessness and repeat the lie that to be unarmed is safe, and that to refuse to resist terrorism is noble and civilized and morally elevating. Don’t descend to the level of the terrorists! Why, then they will have won!

While such people certainly disagree that anyone that joins our military is heroic, they go along with calling the four Marines and one sailor killed in the attack heroes because it focuses Americans on ensuring they and their families are appropriately honored and given the benefits they deserve rather than focusing on the act of war that took their lives. If Americans focus on that, their political masters might actually have to do something about that war. They might have to start by actually acknowledging its existence.

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Our current Secretary of State, John Kerry, a despicable traitor that has been doing his best to harm America since the Vietnam era, when running for President against George W. Bush, told a group of California college students that those that, unlike them, don’t get college degrees, “get stuck in Iraq.” Kerry made a gaffe: he accidently said what he really believed, that people like him are superior beings, and that people that join the military are stupid, less capable, less intelligent, fit only for cannon fodder.

But Kerry himself was in the military! He was a naval officer who exploited the system for an early release, faked citations for medals he didn’t earn, and immediately after leaving the Navy, began his political career by helping the communists–in Vietnam and elsewhere–harm America and our military. People like Kerry do not for a moment think themselves like most of the honorable Americans in our military.

We are fighting–actually, mostly ignoring–a generational, existential war. It is a war declared decades ago by our enemies, and reinforced daily in word and deed. For a rational and stirring take on this issue, visit this article by Mark Steyn. If you don’t know Steyn’s work, this is an excellent introduction. An excerpt:

Screw the cakes and balloons. We who did not know them cannot mourn them: That is for their friends and family. The nation’s duty is to avenge them – so that they did not die in vain.

THE HOMEFRONT:

Individually, we can only work to influence our representatives to behave like Americans. I was going to say, “Americans of days gone by; Americans of the Greatest Generation,” but I pray such Americans are not gone, relics of the past, no matter how much our betters try to persuade us that’s the case. Their efforts against honest Americans, their efforts to convince us we are weak and immoral, are strong evidence that they know the American spirit is not dead–not quite yet.

What we can do, each and every one of us, is prepare for the war that will, more and more often, erupt among us. We can continue influencing politicians, demanding they honor their oaths of office, changing public opinion to make gun ownership and bearing not just socially acceptable, but a virtue. The enemies of freedom resist this not because they believe that so doing makes us safer. They could care less about individual American lives. They resist because the individual armed American is free, able and likely to strangle their socialist plans in the crib. As much as they feign outrage at the idea that the Second Amendment’s primary purpose is to allow Americans to rise up and overthrow a tyrannical government, they know it exists exactly for that purpose, and they fear it, and free Americans.

Gun control is not at all about safety and combatting crime. It is always about controlling and intimidating honest, law-abiding, patriotic Americans who wish to remain Americans.

Beyond political activism, we must prepare individually. We do this in two primary ways: by carrying concealed handguns, and by practicing situational awareness. But first, we must make a conscious, momentous decision. Every American must ask:

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“Am I willing and able to kill an attacking terrorist? Am I willing and able to engage in combat, understanding that I might be killed? Am I willing to kill, and possibly die, to protect others?”

These questions get to the heart of what it is to be a free man, and more, an American. Consider this from Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1: 

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead.

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger;

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;

During my police days, I would, occasionally, discuss with my wife my work. She often said she couldn’t imagine me being violent. The same is true today. Few that know me would think me capable of violence of any kind: English teacher, classical singer, writer, a man of good humor, always smiling, quiet and caring. Yet I run toward the sound of gunfire. I know precisely what I am willing and able to do in deadly force encounters, for I have been involved in them. No, I have not killed anyone, nor have I had to shoot anyone. I was fortunate, and sufficiently well-trained, that it was never necessary. In peace, modest stillness and humility; in danger, hard-favour’d rage.

There is no conflict between the two ways of reacting to the world. It is a matter of preparation, situational awareness, and necessity. One need not be a super hero to be capable of it. One need only possess a firm resolve to protect one’s life, the lives of those they love, and perhaps, the lives of others. That, and the necessary preparation and training to carry out that resolve in the thankfully, unlikely event itbecome necessary.

Americans do not seek to conquer. We prefer to live in peace, to get on with our lives. But as the Japanese discovered in WWII, when aroused, we can be filled with a terrible resolve.

I will not, in this article or series, get deeply into how one decides whether they are fit for self-defense. The first article of my constantly evolving rationale for gun ownership series addresses that and other issues. Nor will I address in detail whether killing is morally justifiable. The second article of the rationale for gun ownership series discusses that and related issues. By all means, visit those articles for more of the philosophical underpinnings of this topic.

What we, gentle readers, must deal with today is the fact that while finding oneself in the middle of a terrorist attack is still, for most Americans, probably something on the order of possibility of being struck by lightning, there is nothing preventing it from happening to anyone at any time and any place. Who, a week ago, would have imagined, that an Islamist lunatic would murder five of our military members in, of all places, Chattanooga, Tennessee?

Who, hearing of the attack, was surprised to discover the killer was a young, bearded Muslim male?

What we also must deal with is the fact that the odds of such an attack happening in what we might think to be unlikely places, are increasing, and to our detriment. The more successful terrorists are in their overseas conquests, the more frequent and more deadly the attacks on our own soil will become as more and more Muslims are attracted to what they see as strength, and the will of Allah.

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For some, this will be an excuse, for they are psychopaths and sociopaths who are looking for any convenient excuse to torture, rape and kill. For others, their motivation is sincerely religious. For their victims, it will make no difference.

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What are you prepared to do if you, at your next trip to the local mall, find yourself in the midst of a terrorist attack? Do you duck and cover? Run? Attack the shooter? How and with what? How far are you willing to go to stop a terrorist? What are the legal ramifications?

Next week’s installment will focus on preparation and decision making, on answering those questions. I hope to see you here.