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With the advent of the Biden/Harris/Whoever Administration—Joe Biden, Temporary President—the efforts of anti-liberty/gun/America cracktivists have been turbocharged. Biden’s handlers are trying to confirm an anti-gun/America zealot to head the ATF, and they leap at every opportunity to demonize inanimate objects, and particularly, free women and men that own and carry them.

I do not advertise the fact that I carry a concealed handgun, or that I am an instructor. However, on the occasions when this comes up, people are often amazed. Not because I am a diminutive wisp of a fellow–-I’m anything but, though I’ve lost 60 pounds and am less of a man than I once was–and if I do say so myself, and I do, I’m roguishly masculine (anyway, Mrs. Manor says she likes me)–but because I am a retired English teacher and singer, and my default facial expression is a smile. The resulting conversation usually goes something like this:

Friend:  “Really?  You carry a gun?”

Me:  “Yup.”

Friend: “Where?”

Me:  “Everywhere.”

Friend: “Everywhere?!”

Me: “I even carry a spear gun in the shower.”

Friend:  “No!”

Me:  “No; but everywhere else.”

Friend:  “But why?”

I usually hit on a few of the high points, issues of logic, common sense, law—you know: reality–gentle persuasion enabling those that already know me to accept a side of me previously unimagined. Employing my most frequently used weapon–the keyboard–let us, gentle readers, reason together.

credit: wikipedia.org

NOTE: I will make references to God.  Because I choose Christianity does not mean everyone must. In fact, a fundamental tenet of Christianity is willing choice: one must choose to believe. One may accept and practice moral precepts–and reason–without professing a faith, and I make no judgment about anyone’s relationship with God, or lack thereof. I merely choose God, which is a deeply rational choice.

I CARRY A HANDGUN BECAUSE:

* Evil exists and may confront anyone at any time and any place.

*God exists and expects me to protect myself, those I love, and those that can’t protect themselves.

*When God leads me into perilous situations, as He sometimes has, He expects me to be prepared, and so I am.

*Self-defense is a God-given, natural, unalienable right.

*To fail to protect God’s greatest gift–the gift of life–is inexcusable.

*My life is worth far more to me, those that love me, and to a just society than the lives of vicious criminals and terrorists.

*The lives of the innocent—friend or stranger—are worth far more to me and to a just society than the lives of vicious criminals and terrorists.

*Three times in my life I raised my right hand and swore a solemn oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.  I have never betrayed those oaths and never will.

*By carrying a handgun, I honor the foresight and wisdom of the Founders in writing the Second Amendment, which acknowledges, but does not create, the right to keep and bear arms.

* The Constitution is only paper and ink, a statement of principles and intentions. When the will wavers and when some wish to change, ignore or destroy those principles and intentions for imagined good reasons–or bad–only the threat of, and if necessary, the application of, the force of arms will serve to preserve liberty.

*Seldom in American history has a reminder of the immediacy of that threat been more obvious than the dramatic, chilling and accelerated rush of the Democrat Party toward Socialism/Communism since 2020.

*The Biden/Harris/Whoever Administration wants to ban common, usual firearms. 

*Never in human history has a government disarmed the people for good reasons.

*Never in human history has a government disarmed the people to ensure greater individual liberty.

*Any government that would disarm the people cannot be trusted.

*While I’d prefer to carry a rifle or submachine gun, that’s impractical, and tends to excite the easily excitable.

*A handgun is the most convenient, usual and effective means of self-defense.

*Going armed reinforces and upholds the Social Contract.

*An armed society is a polite society.

*Those who lawfully carry concealed weapons are among the most law abiding.

Thomas Jefferson

* Thomas Jefferson was right: 

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

That’s why we have a Second Amendment, not for hunting, not for self-defense, but always and primarily to deter tyranny, and to allow the common man, the normal Deplorables of the great cultural wasteland of Flyover Country, to resist and overthrow a tyrannical government.  Democrats/Socialists/Communists scream bloody murder when anyone says this.  That’s understandable; they’re the tyrants about who Jefferson was writing, and the domestic enemies liberty, of Normal, law-abiding Americans.

*Our government has labeled normal Americans domestic terrorists. They do this not to protect the Republic, but themselves.

*Circa June 2021, the force of arms may be necessary if we wish to preserve the factual history and great legacy given us by the Founders, including their images on canvas, in bronze and in stone.

*The Second Amendment merely recognizes the unalienable right to keep and bear arms. It does not create the right. Government does not grant the right, nor can government take it away–not that some governments care about that.

*It demonstrates, as nothing else can, that I am the master of my government, not its slave; that elected officials work for me and only with my consent.

*I am a free man and no evidence of that fact is more meaningful and convincing than that I own and carry the firearms I prefer.

*It makes those that would rule me—all of us—through tyranny, soft or hard, red with rage. It couldn’t happen to worse people.

*It reminds them that in America, there are lines no rational, honest politician dare cross. They hate that.  They want to draw the lines where they will and whenever it’s convenient.

*It reminds them that every iota of power they possess is on temporary loan from me and every other American. They hate that too.

*It reminds us all that the whims of the most connected and powerful politician may not prevail over the Bill of Rights as long as it lives and burns brightly in the hearts of patriotic Americans and is not merely fading ink on yellowing paper.

*As politicians try to abolish or emasculate the police, hire private security for themselves with taxpayer money, wall off the Capital and surround it with troops, encourage and support lawless mobs, refuse to enforce the law, and continue to try to disarm the law-abiding, it reminds us we’re on our own.  We always have been.

*It is the very means by which an oppressed citizenry may force despots to respect the natural rights of honorable men and women.

*It reminds even Supreme Court Justices their pronouncements will be honored only as long as they honor the Constitution and exclusively base their decisions on its text and the intentions of the Founders.

*Politicians harboring tyrannical intentions fear armed citizens like a vampire fears daylight. Their hatred serves to positively identify those that would steal liberty and hide behind spin, teleprompters and transparent lies they think clever.

*Semiautomatic handguns with “high-capacity magazines” are precisely the kind of common and usual firearms the Founders intended Americans to keep and bear.

*”Common sense” gun control isn’t; “common sense gun safety” is neither common sense nor safe.

*Anti-liberty/gun cracktivists wail common semiautomatic rifles and handguns would be of no use against a modern military.  They know better, and they expose their lie by trying to seize those weapons.

*Gun grabbing politicians don’t want me to have the most effective weapons, or any weapons.

*A single virus reminds rational Americans how fragile civilization can be, and how quickly it can all go bad.

*So did a temporary power outage in Texas, and gas shortages in the East.

*Corrupt D/S/C politicians are increasingly convincing the police actually enforcing the law and helping honest, law-abiding Americans is far too dangerous to their modest fortunes, the welfare of their families and to their liberty.

*Most politicians care about the welfare and continuing existence of individual citizens only in the abstract, only as occasionally useful talking points. Even honorable politicians can do little more than those who only pretend to care.  We’re on our own.

The reality the Left envisions for us all–but not themselves

*Even in our representative republic, tyrants are always present and always waiting their chance.  When the Constitutional convention was over, Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government the Founders had established.  He replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”  Whether we can keep it remains in doubt.  Without the right to keep and bear arms, we can’t keep it.

Benjamin Franklin

*The 2020 election has revealed as never before, how passionately D/S/Cs hate normal, honest, law-abiding Americans, and what they intend to do to them when they seize power.

Hubert Humphrey
credit: wikipedia.org

*With this in mind, Hubert Humphrey, one of the most famous and orthodox Democrats of the last century was right when he said: 

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

Imagine a D/S/C today saying what Humphrey said.

*Those who willingly and meekly surrender to criminals surrender more than valuables; they surrender their dignity and honor; they surrender civilization itself.

*I am old-fashioned enough to think it my duty to protect those who have less ability than mine to protect themselves.

screenshot from a Glock commercial

*I could not live with myself for failing to protect women in danger.  Call it sexist if you must, but if you’re unarmed and under attack, would you really think to call an unarmed, untrained D/S/C? Would an Antifa “activist” assist you?  A BLM “protester”?

*Exercising the Second Amendment helps remind women it is the ultimate women’s issue.  No one–apart from children–benefits more from the ability to stop criminal attacks.

*I know human nature.  Like the Shadow, I know what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

*I know some criminals experience pangs of conscience.  I also know that it does not prevent them from being predators, only that it occasionally causes them to feel badly for a few fleeting seconds thereafter.

*I know sociopaths exist, in greater numbers than most imagine, and they have no conscience.  They care nothing for the feelings and pain of others.

*Some people really like hurting others.  One need not engage in psychological navel gazing to understand the actions of predators. They do it because they want to do it, because they like it, and some, because it is an intense sexual thrill.

*Such people are everywhere, and are for most, impossible to pick out of the mass of mankind.

*Such people can be stopped only by the presence of overwhelming and imminent force: the gun.

*Living a self-imagined virtuous/politically correct life is no defense against such scum.

*Having a D/S/C political and social philosophy not only is no defense against such thugs, it encourages, helps, even creates them.

*Politicians sometimes speak of a “war on crime.”  They have no idea.  The streets, and increasingly, our homes, are the battlefield, and whether we like it or not, we are all the combatants.

*The political pendulum has, once again, swung toward releasing predators from prison.  The same people that brag about “criminal justice reform” also want to abolish the police, disarm Normal Americans, and use tax dollars to hire private security.  We’re on our own.

*The predators that would carry that battlefield into our homes are usually the most dangerous of all. They don’t care if people are armed; they just want to hurt the innocent.

*The possibility of having to fend off an armed attack in a mall, theater, restaurant, or other public place has never been greater, and if D/S/Cs get their way, it will become the new normal.

*Gun-free zones are actually free-fire zones for killers.  When the 2021/22 school year begins, many school districts will have banished the police from their buildings.  Every mass shooting for decades has taken place in a “gun-free” zone (virtually all schools are gun free zones, and stupidly proud of it). This is no coincidence.

*Anti—liberty/gun D/S/Cs know this, but feeling good about their superior intellect and morality in establishing such zones is far more important to them than the lives of the little people like you and me– and our children.  They want you to “feel” safe.  Being safe matters only for them and their families, not you or yours.

*The police have no legal obligation to protect me—or anyone.

*The police simply can’t protect anyone; there are far too few of them–fewer than ever before–and far too many of us, and circa 2021, proactively doing their jobs is a sucker’s bet.

*When seconds count, the police are always minutes (or in blue cities and many other places, an hour or more) away—when they respond at all.

*I accept personal responsibility and live accordingly.

*As an adult, I am solely responsible for my continuing existence.

*Accepting personal responsibility encourages me to be continually aware of my surroundings.

*Having situational awareness means it is more likely I won’t ever need to use my handgun.

*My training and experience give me confidence that if I do need it, I will use it effectively and properly, though I will still pray to God to make me fast and accurate.

*It gives me the ability to deter those younger, stronger or more numerous than myself.

*It gives me the ability to defeat those younger, stronger or more numerous than myself if they are too stupid, too drugged, or too predatory to be deterred.

*Criminals fear the guns of armed citizens far more than the guns of the police. They should.

*Domestic terrorists and murderers have always been with us.  The victims and survivors of Columbine High School (1999), Virginia Tech (2007), Sandy Hook Elementary School (2012), the Boston Marathon attack (2013), the Pulse Nightclub attacks (2016), the Las Vegas Attack (2017), the Sutherland Springs attack (2017) and the Parkland attack (2018)—and I–have no doubt of this.

*In virtually every school shooting in recent American history, the police played virtually no role in stopping the killers. In some (take this link and the next), Armed citizens did.  

*When danger threatens, on school grounds or elsewhere, nothing is faster or more effective than an armed, prepared free man or woman ready to then and there, deal with it.

*We are at war with uniquely deranged, blood-thirsty terrorists determined to slaughter Americans on American soil.  The citizens of Orlando, and many other American cities now have no doubt about this.

*Our borders, have been thrown wide open, our federal border law enforcement agencies emasculated, and riding the wave of illegal immigrants are vicious gang members, drug cartels, violent felons, sex criminals, foreign spies and terrorists.

*Terrorists prefer to focus on where we are most vulnerable.  It’s safer and easier for them.

*I frequent the places (schools, theaters, shopping malls, grocery stores and other soft targets) terrorists long to attack (go here for a fictional account of a school attack).

*I can imagine few feelings worse than being unarmed when and where a terrorist or mass shooter attack takes place.

*Even unarmed, I would have no option but to attack killers shooting innocents.

*Armed, I would be able to save at least some lives and stop at least some killers.

*I could not bear the thought that I could have saved lives, but was prevented by virtue signaling politicians and other self-righteous fools.

*It is important to me to know that I can make a real difference when it most matters.

*I appreciate well-designed and made devices.

*Firearms are like fire extinguishers.  When one is needed, it’s needed right now, badly, and nothing else will do.

*The discipline of the gun helps to make me a better, more aware and more effective person.

*Thomas Jefferson was also right when, in 1785, he advised his 15 year-old nephew and ward:

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind.

This kind of wisdom is, in part, why some hate Jefferson and want to tear down his statues.

*Shooting and being a part of one of the oldest American traditions is uplifting and great fun.

*I recognize I am the weapon; the handgun is simply a tool.

*I will never surrender essential liberties without a fight; that’s what Americans do.

*Foremost, I am an American; I am a free man; it is my tradition and heritage.