'The main reason people must have the right to bear arms is for the balance of power. Once the government even knows the location of all the weapons, the people no longer have the ability to stop despotism. (This, of course, implies that the people would want to stop it, as is clearly not the case in the U.S. ) . . . As for snipers and mad bombers, they are only the first symptoms of a disintegrating democracy. Americans should expect it to get a lot worse, regardless of any controls placed on weapons.' PAPAGORE, Progressive Review Newsletter [9]
'Never before has the freedom of U.S. citizens been under more attack from all sides. Even from our President, who swore as his oath of office, to defend the Constitution of the United States . Let the firearm confiscations in England and Australia serve as examples of what can happen and stop that from happening here in the United States .' ~ armed-citizens.com [10]
Let's not beat around the, uh . . . Bush. The United States Government and its various corporate sponsors (known hereafter as THE MAN), exists for one purpose: to enrich and empower HIMSELF. HE does this in two ways:
-
1. dominating and debasing all non-Americans and making them miserable
-
2. sucking the life, liberty, happiness and physical and intellectual resources from Americans to help him dominate and debase all non-Americans and make them miserable.
Closed loop. Bad cycle.
Fortunately, there are over 50 million gun owners in the United States . There's still some hope, so long as you don't try to 'interpret' the infamous Second Amendment, but ignore it. Because if you read it carefully, you'll see it has nothing to do with giving anybody but the State the right to bear arms:
'The second amendment of the United States Constitution states: 'A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State , the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.' Obviously the need for a state militia has been replaced by the National Guard and Coast Guard whereby trained military personnel are entrusted with the defense of this country against domestic enemies. Their weapons are tightly controlled and safeguarded.' ~ JOE BIALEK, Progressive Review Newsletter [9] (italics mine -- AE)
Note the Amendment refers to the security of a ' free State ,' an oxymoron if there ever was one. Note also that the Constitution is no longer worth the soul of the dead lamb it's printed on.
Did all sorts of research online concerning who's for gun control, who's against gun control, the issues of gun violence in America . Seems the pros and the cons have a few things in common: they all have some sort of insignia on their sites representing the American Flag; they cite the Constitution; they work through lobbying Congress. 'Write a letter to your Representative. We'll show 'em who's Boss, we will!'
Hmn.
They're what we on the left/right/anarchist/libertarian fringe might call The Mainstream. They're the 100 million people who voted for Gush Bore (not including myself, my grandmother and the 15 or so other people who voted Nader just to be spoil-sports). Whether they're for gun control, outright prohibition, tougher registration laws (yeah, registration; why don't I just send my photograph, fingerprints and letter of intent to the FBI?), it all boils down to writing a letter to your congressman or some such nonsense. Now, I don't mind having a lobby group like the NRA to do their bit for the right to bear arms. Just like I'm happy to have the ACLU around to protect my right to speak. The thing is, they're both missing the point. Whether the NRA wrangles lighter gun control legislation from THE MAN is as irrelevant to my ownership of a weapon as the ACLU's lawyers' haggling with THE MAN over my right to speak. THE MAN and his shredded Constitution have nothing to do with my decision to defend myself from HIM or talk trash to HIM. They might, the NRA on the Mainstream right, the ACLU on the Mainstream left, both be doing a disservice by perpetuating the charade that this is some sort of society or democracy, that we do everything all fair and legal around here.
Circumstances change. Governments change. The Law is cold and hard, yet malleable. A tool of self defense is cold and hard, but if properly maintained, won't turn on you, as THE MAN has, as HIS laws have. For verily, they are HIS laws. Always have and always will be subject to HIS red pen.
The constitution is a blueprint for a State that might have one time existed as a democracy (with black people and women as property and natives open game for genocide), but is now little more than THE MAN's organic cannon-fodder farm. While some Mainstream 'liberals' believe the "right to bear arms" refers to an organized militia (but not a free militia: the police, or worse, the National Guard), and Mainstream 'conservatives' refer to the constitutional right to bear arms as an expression of individuality, both are batty to think THE MAN has anything but contempt for their interpretations of HIS Constitution.
The Mainstream 'left," Democrats usually (as opposed to the real left) is essentially asking a State armed with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and using those weapons to pursue aggressive policies worldwide, to "protect" them from civilians who may or may not attack them personally. Is not each individual obligated to protect himself? Is it fair to ask a cop, who is essentially a mercenary for THE MAN, to sacrifice his safety to protect yours? On the other hand, the Mainstream 'right,' Republicans usually, represented by groups such as the NRA, like good children, seek permission from THE MAN (via laws etc.) which THE MAN, being the ultimate enemy of liberty, has no right to give.
If anyone should be bearing arms it is the Mainstream liberal, not to protect himself from burglars, but from the power of THE MAN. Similarly, the Mainstream right, if it practiced what it preached, would realize that THE MAN has no say in the matter. Self defense is the right of all human beings. The predator the gun owner should be concerned with should not be the "second story man" who, odds are, will not visit his home, but the Police State, which most certainly will, if it has not done so already. Think USA/PATRIOT ACT; TIPS; FBI/ATF; NSA; TIA; CIA, and the new UBER BUREAUCRACY that'll attempt to put 'em all under one roof. Not good.
According to former admiral and ex-convict Poindexter's Total Information Awareness (TIA) Office:
'The TIA program strategy is to integrate technologies developed by DARPA (and elsewhere as appropriate) into a series of increasingly powerful prototype systems that can be stress-tested in operationally relevant environments, using real-time feedback to refine concepts of operation and performance requirements down to the component level. The TIA program will develop and integrate information technologies into fully functional, leave-behind prototypes that are reliable, easy to install, and packaged with documentation and source code (though not necessarily complete in terms of desired features) that will enable the intelligence community to evaluate new technologies through experimentation, and rapidly transition it to operational use, as appropriate. Accordingly, the TIA program will work in close collaboration with one or more U.S. intelligence agencies that will provide operational guidance and technology evaluation, and act as TIA system transition partners. Technically, the TIA program is focusing on the development of: 1) architectures for a large-scale counter-terrorism database, for system elements associated with database population, and for integrating algorithms and mixed-initiative analytical tools; 2) novel methods for populating the database from existing sources, create innovative new sources, and invent new algorithms for mining, combining, and refining information for subsequent inclusion into the database; and, 3) revolutionary new models, algorithms, methods, tools, and techniques for analyzing and correlating information in the database to derive actionable intelligence.' ~ Total Information Awareness [11] (TIA)
That's THE MAN's techno-bureau-speak for YOU ARE BEING WATCHED.
I just hate this terrible feeling of being . . . naked. A boy in his birthday suit defenseless against the mightiest State on Earth. 'An Army of One,' the commercials say. Well it's a pretty damn BIG ONE, armed with nukes, ultra-magnetic wave doohickeys, jet fighters, and other toys you and I paid for. Don't I have a right to at least a symbolic trinket of resistance?
Nevertheless, unlike lipstick or a cigarette in a Salinger story, my trinket is a potent symbol. It's like this: I have no illusions that my little weapon will do any major damage to THE MAN; however, if I go down, I'll at least be able to take one of HIS attack dogs with me. Imagine if 100 million people could say that? The MAN spent billions on cruise missiles and stealth bombers so he would avoid the unpleasantness ' and possibility of defeat ' involved in house-to-house fighting in Iraq or Serbia or Afghanistan or wherever HE sets in HIS cross-hairs. Think he wants to take on Chicago? And New York ? And St. Louis ? And all the other major cities of America , not to mention their sprawling suburbs? I suppose HE can bomb the cities and suburbs of the Homeland. But sooner or later someone will realize that if HE does this, there'll be no one left to pay for HIS military or buy HIS crappy consumer goods. Anyway, he couldn't even take a couple of million Viet Cong, or Al Quaeda, much less a hundred million armed denizens of HIS own country.
I'm talking paranoid, you say. Worse case scenario. But this is indeed a bad case, and it's only going to get worse with time.
Can't happen here? Please. Men and women of Arab of east Asian descent are being 'questioned' and detained daily. Yeah, I know: 'Terrorists.' I don't buy it, nor do I believe that I am safe from the accelerating authoritarianism of THE MAN. David Koresh wasn't. What was his crime? Cult leader? I guess they're going to go after Bill Gates, or Steven Jobs, or the guys who run Disney and McDonald's next. Cults with larger followings than Koresh ever dreamed of. And George Lucas, that wicked pied piper, has hypnotized our sacred children into dumbfounded obedience to expensive, intergalactic treacle and numerous product tie-ins.
Every person is obligated to defend himself, his family and friends, and beyond. To fight for liberty wherever it is threatened. Like in America , for instance. Can I forget watching the Feds incinerate children and parents at Waco in order to . . . SAVE the children from their wicked parents?
Ask your Arab or southeast Asian neighbors who, be they citizens, students, or legal aliens, are catching hell from THE MAN and the Idiots Who Love HIM. 'But I'm white as a ghost,' you say. 'And employed, and a nice guy to boot, and I keep my mouth shut.' Well, you're lucky, for now, but don't tell me you're off the hook. What happens when THE MAN wants your kids to fight one of his expensive foreign wars? What if one day you do open your mouth? Could happen. Anyway, I'm not talking to you. White, nice guy, fine with me. But keeping your mouth shut? What do you use it for, a repository for THE MAN's chewy chocolaty goodness? Anyway, you're not as safe as you might think:
'The evidence is rolling in, and it is unmistakable: the Bush people are assembling purely political lists of individuals and groups to be targeted during some future crisis, real or manufactured. The list makers probably do not yet know what they plan to do to the people on their enemies lists, which are still fragmented among various agencies. However, once such lists are compiled, eventual government action becomes all but inevitable. It is already clear that the list will be a very long one, reaching into broad categories of what the current rulers consider to be dangerous dissenters. In an article titled 'Grounded,' the mainstream Salon.com related the experience of Center for Constitutional Rights assistant legal director Barbara Olshansky, who was forced to pull down her pants in view of other travelers at Newark International Airport. When the lawyer protested the indignity, a security agent replied, 'The computer spit you out. I don't know why, and I don't have time to talk to you about it.' Six other employees of the center had been pulled out of an airport boarding line a month earlier. Since all had purchased their tickets separately under their own names, it was plain that the Center for Constitutional Rights staff were on some kind of list. Readers familiar with the workings of bureaucracies will immediately recognize the clanks, squeaks and grinds of cumbersome government machinery getting into gear.' ~ The Black Commentator, 'Bush's Domestic Enemies List [12]'
Knowing that unlike Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Maoist China, HE cannot subjugate an armed populace by force, THE MAN resorts to propaganda. And you've gotta hand it to HIM, between Hollywood , Washington D.C. and Madison Avenue, HE'S developed the most effective propaganda system the world has ever seen. But as WWII; Hungary, 1956; Czechoslovakia, 1968; and Vietnam/Cambodia 1964-75 proved, even propaganda has its limits. Eventually, when the people recognize how deeply they're being had, and resist, the State resorts to force. Hungarians tried and lost to the Soviets, as did the Czechs, but the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong, with a fraction of the 200 million arms Americans possess, beat the American Superpower, or at least bloodied its nose and sent it home crying like the bully it is. Not with a superior army, but with armed, committed individuals, who would rather die than see their country overtaken by yet another colonial power.
I'll be damned if I'm going to ask THE MAN, who's pursuing death and destruction at home and abroad with a multi-trillion dollar Military/Police apparatus, for permission to defend myself against . . . THE MAN. For permission to speak out against THE MAN.
That's like asking Himmler for a bar of soap and 'permission' to shower.
