Perhaps it’s the sort of conversation one might expect in a gun store, but still it makes me shake my head in wonderment. “Nancy Pelosi is going to make a treaty allowing UN troops to take away our guns” said an otherwise apparently sane person. “When that happens” said the proprietor; “When that happens I’m going to burn my records and close the shop.”
I imagine Ms. Pelosi would be surprised to know the extent of her powers and I suspect that an international treaty allowing foreign powers to perform law enforcement in the US isn’t going to go very far regardless of who is president or speaker of the house and particularly when such enforcement would abrogate the Constitution, not to speak of sovereignty, but I suspect that the fantasy has more than one adherent none the less.
It’s not new, of course. Back when “Billary” was going to take our guns I listened in awe to a radio broadcast claiming that the UN was building a secret headquarters (with the cooperation of the Clintons) under Philadelphia from which their assault on America would be staged. Our involvement in the Balkans was, of course, designed to facilitate turning over command of our armed forces to the United Nations.
Anyway, it was hardly a surprise to me that the NRA sent me (no, I’m not a member) a slate of approved candidates last October that included Katharine Harris. Apparently, the threat of those “Liberals” taking away our guns is sufficient to justify voting for a proven incompetent and possibly felonious liar who thinks it’s sinful to vote for non-evangelicals and morally justifiable to interfere with the election process to install God’s other candidates. The NRA has often been called a purveyor of paranoid hyperbole. I think that’s overly gentle.
What I object to the very most however is that as a supporter of the Constitution as the true core and foundation of our government, I am sometimes lumped in with these people. As a Liberal, I prefer as Ben Franklin did, to accept risk rather than tolerate an excess of authority, whether in the name of “tradition” or security. When the Constitution says “shall not be infringed” or “shall not be violated” as concerns its protected rights, I take it seriously and I do not see the absolute eradication of crime or danger as an achievable goal much less a goal to be pursued at the expense of liberty.
Contrary to the bumper sticker popular in the 1990’s, it wasn’t God Guns and Guts that made America great, it was the constitution and when we have interpreted it so as to apply its protection and promise to all of us, we have prospered. We have prospered as freedom has prospered and we have been diminished as we have attempted to ignore it. It's that basis of our freedom and if you want to take it away, you’ll have to pry it from my cold dead fingers.
3 comments:
I come from a family that by any measure would be considered liberal, tolerant, religious (not the in-your-face variety) and reasonable: except when it comes to guns. The issue of gun ownership affects some people in the most peculiar, often irrational way. My recently deceased step-father collected guns and rifles, many of them, but not in the "gun nut" sort of way. He just enjoyed them, like coins and old cars. And despite all the above, he believed until his last day that the government was bent on confiscating his collection one day, and no amount of reason could persuade him otherwise. It wasn't even a political party thing - the "government" no matter who controlled it, was determined to make this happen. My parents never had locks on their doors (seriously), and the first thing my mother did the week of my father's funeral last year was to give away every gun my father owned, as she thought having them in the house threatened her security. So, she got rid of the guns and I installed locks on the doors for the first time ever.
Ironic, isn't it?
It brings out the irrational on both sides, I think. God, Guns and Gays make us passionately divided.
I like guns and particularly old ones and I like them the way I like old cameras or fishing reels or pocket knives. I know how to handle them and have more fear of cutting myself with a kitchen knife than of an accidental shooting. I don't hunt, don't like to kill things. I don't wear camoflage, but half the country will dismiss me as a homicidal nut. I tend to be a moderate Liberal in my politics so the other half will dismiss me as a gun grabber.
It's as thogh if we didn't have stereotypes, we wouldn't have types at all.
Capt. Fogg:
Exactly.
dK
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