[Joe Brower]

"Choose wisely."

Yes. And seeing as option A is becoming more and more the case whether you return fire or not, one might do well to remember: "The first one will cost you your life -- all the rest are free."

[rarestia]

So essentially, Joe, you’re saying that once the UN Gun Control schemes are ratified by the Senate and massive law enforcement efforts to bring in gun owners are underway, my fate is sealed one way or another.

By that rationale, the ratification of any gun ban treaty or law by our government means the death sentence of millions of Americans, specifically those who will ardently refuse to lay down their arms, myself included.

...comforting. Molon labe!

[spodefly]

We have seen this incrementalism before, again and again in history. I was born into an America that had no such thing as "SWAT Teams", "No Knock" raids, etc. Now, events are happening on a daily basis where innocent citizen's lives are put in danger or ended by these conditions.

It only gets worse from here, and that is something we all need to be aware enough to admit. Whatever happens to the economy, jobs, party in power, etc., doesn't change the trajectory, which is always toward more state power and control.

We have SWAT teams in every city now. They are the hammer in constant search of a nail.

The only question we need to answer is what do we do when we ARE the nail, either because of a wrong address, mistaken identity, association, previous resident at same address, etc.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? . . .” -Solzhenitzyn