{Searched and didn't find this posted earlier}
That has got to hurt real bad, being impugned by Pravda as “socialist”.
I’m rooting for Pravda and hating on our commie preezy.
It seems like yesterday that Reagan and Thatcher walked the earth.
No Communists left in Russia, except for a few fools.
Everyone else refers to it as "the Soviet mistake".
The Russian people are not fools. They all know where the tiny little group of frozen faced radicals who called themselves the "Big Party" (Bolshevikii) got their power: at the point of a gun.
They'd like to be able to prevent that from happening again.
Don't know that they can. Like other people, they confront a government with massive firepower, and no interest in sharing it.
But it is a bit surprising. You can buy a nice semi-auto Saiga in some of the shops in Moscow, along with lots of other fun stuff. Don't know if you have to register it, suspect that like everything in Moscow, you could just pay the cop to look the other way....
I's sure like to see a reference that ordinary people were allowed to keep and bear arms under the Tsarist regime. I very much doubt it.
My understanding is that this was one of the primary privileges of the Cossacks. They were given the privilege of bearing arms because it was assumed they'd be loyal to the Tsar, partly because of this privilege.
Also, by definition the Tsar was an autocrat. I suppose it's possible to be an autocrat but not a tyrant, but it's been accomplished only rarely. It is, however, true that the commies were much worse by almost any standard you care to use.
This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.
Various armies, such as the Poles, during the Смута (Times of Troubles), or Napoleon, or the Germans even as the Tsarist state collapsed under the weight of WW1 and Wall Street monies, found that holding Russian lands was much much harder than taking them and taking was no easy walk in the park but a blood bath all its own. In holding, one faced an extremely well armed and aggressive population Hell bent on exterminating or driving out the aggressor.
This well armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918 and wage a savage civil war against the Reds. It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own. If it had not been for Washington's clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently.
Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lieing guile of the Reds. Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors. Even then the battle was fierce and losses high. However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed. The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene. They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons: where they were promptly shot.
Of course being savages, murderers and liars does not mean being stupid and the Reds learned from their Civil War experience. One of the first things they did was to disarm the population. From that point, mass repression, mass arrests, mass deportations, mass murder, mass starvation were all a safe game for the powers that were. The worst they had to fear was a pitchfork in the guts or a knife in the back or the occasional hunting rifle. Not much for soldiers.
To this day, with the Soviet Union now dead 21 years, with a whole generation born and raised to adulthood without the SU, we are still denied our basic and traditional rights to self defense. Why? We are told that everyone would just start shooting each other and crime would be everywhere....but criminals are still armed and still murdering and to often, especially in the far regions, those criminals wear the uniforms of the police. The fact that everyone would start shooting is also laughable when statistics are examined.
While President Putin pushes through reforms, the local authorities, especially in our vast hinterland, do not feel they need to act like they work for the people. They do as they please, a tyrannical class who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from a relatively unarmed population. This in turn breeds not respect but absolute contempt and often enough, criminal abuse.
For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or "talking to them", it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.
The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly. So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted? Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?
No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.
So, do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self respect.
Stanislav Mishin
Wow...Pravada more conservative and supporting freedom than the New York Times.....By a lot....
I’ve now seen everything....
Did anyone notice this link in one of the comments?
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/52005
Some pretty frightening stuff, if true. I can’t recall seeing it here on FR.
It could work out that the gun grabbing will occur during an economic collapse. Political and military instability feed off each other, and the Federal government will have one hell of a time controlling welfare mobs and chasing down rebels when the Treasury runs dry.
In this scenario, the federal government would be vulnerable. The Feds Achilles heels include lack of real money, communication, and fidelity to the 0bama regime. If rebels recruit some talented hackers to disrupt the IRS, financial markets, some ex-military to disrupt communications, and some intelligence insiders to undermine the command structure, an overthrow would be possible.
These are truly confusing times when the old mouth piece of the Soviet regime makes more sense than many of our elected officials.
No matter, we will persevere.
I had to smack myself, is Pravda more conservative than many of our media companies like PMS-NBC, cBS ?
Today, I trust Pravda to get the truth out much more than the mainstream media. The media have become the enemy of the American People.
Ping...... cause I might need it later to show my commie friends.
1. Even Dems know they will lose their seat if they try this crap. Only Feinstein and Shummer types can try this and keep their jobs.
2. The Repubs control the House. They have a multitude of gun votes over the Dems,..... not even close.
3. The Constitution does protect us. The Courts have already ruled on our side.
4.( and I'm sure I could come up with a dozen more), The sheer number of gun owners. Lets say they did pass a law to confiscate guns. There is only a couple million military and maybe a couple more million law officers. There is estimated 80 to 100 million gun owners. Lets say 3/4 of those said, Ya know, I just don't want to die to save a chunk of metal. That would leave up to 25 million against maybe 4 million that would try to take them. I also KNOW FOR A FACT that most of the military and police wouldn't fire on family and citizens. Lets just say that would leave 500k to do the dirty work. If they try to recruit black panthers and gang bangers to enforce the law, ...what a mess. I don't think it's physically able to be done.
It's a shame we are here, but elections have consequences. My thought is it will never get past number one.
PS,...Some advice for some here. I know that some here are like many others here and have MULTIPLE guns. I have collected most of my life. There are guns I bought for $100 that are going today for $2000, I just read today. A couple of weeks back, I thought about selling a couple for $600 that are going now for $2-$3 grand. after going through the Clinton era and holding on, I found that when Dubya took over, the prices collapsed. IMHO, When this fervor collapses AK's will go back to $500 and AR's will go back to $900-$1000. Sell now and buy 2 when the time comes. That goes for ammo also. When Obama was elected, I didn't have enough 9mm to suit me. EVERYBODY was OUT, even WalMart. I ended up paying premo prices and then the price collapsed again. It will go down again,IMHO. Now I have a ton of 9mm and am just able to make money on them after 3 years. I will be culling some of my inventory to pay bills.
The reason people are doing all this buying is they are afraid they may NEEEED them. Well, if you find the need for your old collection, you can always place some lead poisoning behind someone's ear and get their collection. It's not going to be pretty, my friends. If you NEEED them, then you need them. If a soldier is the one giving you grief, then you become the insurgent. That's the way of the world. it's the same as in Iraq, or Viet Nam, or any other war we have been involved in.
Just as in "Red Dawn", you take you fathers 12ga or .243 deer gun you just couldn't sell, and take the enemies AK, rocket launcher, mini gun, ect. This is the last scenario, but just in case you think it's possible, all is not lost. For me, the problem will always be surviving the first few days or weeks. Until there is some sort of resistance organized, it's everyone for themselves.
My wife has always had one question. If the gubmint kicks down my door and takes my stuff, how will you all know what is happening? I think even my neighbors would look and say "He was always one of them weirdo's"... We stood around for months and watched Ruby Ridge and Waco, but nobody did anything. Same after Katrina. Nobody wants to fire the first shot. I would hope they would lose their ability to just kick our doors in after a couple of days before someone answered back. In "Red Dawn", you knew it was the enemy. If the police is breaking down doors, we tend to think it may be righteous. If it's the military,.....Well, most of us know about Posse Comitatus.