Open Letter To Liberals Favoring Gun Confiscation

I know a lot of liberals. Hell, some of my best friends are liberals. And to those liberals, who so often favor gun control and gun confiscation, I have just one simple question....

Let me tell 'ya a little story 'bout a man named Adolf. In the 20's the National Socialists were heavily armed (heavily for that day, anyway). The Bolsheviks were also somewhat armed, not to the degree of the Nazis. They were both probably better armed than the regular army, which was through the Treaty of Versailles, rendered next to useless.

German gun control didn't begin under the Nazis. It began in large measure because of the Nazis. They did not demand it, though. It was being aimed AT them. Yes. You heard me right. Check your history. The politcal establishment of the Weimar Republic wanted gun control to control undesirables in the population. To disarm them. They all thought it was a peachy idea.

It didn't work. German gun control was aimed at the Nazis and the Bolsheviks, the radical parties of the day. Because the National Socialists weren't about to obey laws that were not in their interest, gun control only wound up disarming what little armory was already in public hands.

What happened? One of the groups who refused to disarm ultimately took over the country. And there was absolutely nothing their opponents could do about it. Because they were without an army and without many firearms.

Now, the Weimar Republic is not a direct comparison to today's United States. But fast forward to today. There are a lot of people, most of them liberals of some type, who say one of the major reasons they want to disarm Americans is because of guns in the hands of "them crazy rednecks", like me. (Even though I'm Black, Indian and Jewish) Well, let's assume for a minute you get your wish. Let's say that HCI and the Brady bunch get everything they want in their political agenda passed into law. Who is and is not willing to obey those laws is of prime strategic importance to the liberal agenda.

Under a gun confiscation, who will likely surrender arms and who will utterly refuse to, cuts sharply across political lines. The liberals will probably cooperate, for the "good of the children", or "the environment", or whatever pablum of the day they're being fed. Maybe a few radical anarchists won't. But most of your mainstream Democrats will comply. After all, they TRUST the government to take care of them.

However, the groups who will not are the conservatives and the libertarians. The conservatives, who prominently feature the Religious Right caucus. The Patrick Buchanan anti-immigration caucus. The anti-gay caucus. And the libertarians who plain and simply represent the "leave me the hell alone" caucus. The libertarians who would if they had their way gut as many liberal government programs as they possibly could.

Of course, the criminals will not comply. Not ever. They never do. They will, of course, profit from the illicit traffic from those who feel the need to have a weapon without the permission of a government bureaucrat or local police official. But I'm not really talking about the criminals here.

So what would happen under strict gun control is that the political groups most likely to be armed to the teeth are the conservatives and the libertarians, and the Religious Right and Buchananites with them. To a distinctly disporportionate degree.

Now, if you are a liberal, ask yourself this question.... do you really feel comfortable about that. Do you really WANT the conservatives to have significantly more guns than you? Because that group of armed individuals will be able to throw out any election they wish: you all complain Bush stole the 2000 election. Well, son, under strict gun control, you ain't seen NOTHIN' yet!!!

And they would likely, in the case of an armed insurrection of any serious import, be the people who take over the government. Either that, or a very organized somewhat fascist element within the government will defeat them, and take power themselves. Where would the liberals fit in the picture? Disarmed, with no power, no agenda and no voice, with their pet programs likely in shambles, with both camps of a civil war who hate them.

The SINGLE STUPIDEST thing that liberals could do for their causes is pass gun control. They would be writing their own death warrant, just as the Weimar Republic did.

I reiterate the question. Does anyone here want their activist movement fully disarmed, and completely trusting the other side in power without the check and balance of the potential for armed revolt? Let me guess: some of you reading this right now, are thinking with your gut. And your gut is telling you: "the more I read of your essays, Liz, the more I see the need for strict gun control. So people like YOU won't have guns."

People like me, understand, as Mao understood, that power flows from the barrel of a gun. So people like me will NEVER not have guns. Your gut feeling is the same gut feeling the Weimar Republic had about the Nazis. I'm not going to challenge your feeling..If you understand my politics, REALLY, it's in fact, nearly laughable, as someone like Hitler or Stalin is practically the diametric opposite of myself.. But let's go with your feeling for a sec. Say I am the danger. Me and my "conservative libertarian anarchist radical antigovernment whatever" thugs are going to march down and destroy America. So what then...."WE GOTTA TAKE EVERYBODY'S GUNS!", you say. And let's pretend for a bit that you manage to get legislation to that effect. Who will obey it and who won't?

I'll tell ya, who, my liberal friends. You will obey it. The liberals will dutifully obey.

I won't obey it. The libertarians won't. The radicals won't. The conservatives won't. The religious right won't. The gayhaters won't. You may think they will but you don't know them like I do.

I won't obey it because in the end, in addition to saving my own ass, and the asses of people who think like me, I may have to save YOUR asses as well.

Who will have more power, liberal friend, at that point? Who will have more power? The liberals or the conservatives? The left or the right? Because at that point, my side, and whoever happen to be my allies, whatever you think of my side, will have all the guns. Yes, the government will have them, too. But do you really think that the government agencies with the most arms give a rat's ass about the liberal agenda? Do you REALLY think the GOVERNMENT... do you really think that government agents at this point in time, care about benign things such as gay rights, women's rights, racial minorty rights and human dignity?

At that point in time, the only real battle left will be between the government and the conservatives and their allies. Unless, the conservatives take the government and consolidate absolute power, which Hitler did. So you either will have a government dominated by the conservatives, or dominated by FBI-CIA-DEA types.... or you will have a government in shambles due to a domestic rebellion....and remember that libertarians LIKE to see governments in shambles. And you will have encouraged the only Americans willing to oppose these people to disarm themselves.

At that point in the equation, liberal friend, unless your side is armed, your side won't count. Your side will not only be irrelevant, but to quote former California Governor Pete Wilson, it will be "f***ing irrelevant". And if you disarm Americans, remembering that we won't disarm, you will have no power, and we might very well have all of it.

In the light of what I've just written, liberal friend, let me ask you again. Do you want to disarm the American people so that they will not be able to fight back against a tyrannical government? Or do you want to trust whomever comes to power to not be a tyrant. Germany did the latter and got the Third Reich. What will YOU get?

By the way, lest anyone have a cow, I do not believe conservatives and libertarians can possibly be equated with the Nazis. But I'm comparing the Weimar Republic to America of today, in one aspect, and one aspect only, and that is exposing the fallacy that the political enemies of the ruling government can be successfully disarmed by disarming the society at large, which is what we're really talking about. I am responding specifically to people who say that the NRA, the GOA, myself, and many of our allies are so dangerous that we need to be disarmed, and that that could be accomplished by disarming the populace as a whole.

Targeting the most military styled political enemy you have in a nation with general gun control against everyone actually strengthens the political enemy.

I can also use Weimar Germany and probably a 100 other examples to demonstrate that in most conflicts, that when the "gunphobics" decide to square off against the "gun lovers", the gun lovers almost always win. To beat us, you have to become just like us. Ultimately, to successfully disarm us, you will have to pick up a gun and make it so. Or hire someone and pay them to do the same.

This is why I am so adamantly against the gun controllers. Because I know that. I know ultimately that for them to win, they will have to turn into far worse than whatever they perceive we are. You still think you all will simply talk us out of it or legislate us out of it, but I know better. I know that either you will lose to us or you will beat us by becoming monsters. And I know there will be no other choices.

Remember what I said, people. Nothing you do will cause the hardcore conservatives and libertarians to disarm. Probably, gun control will only cause more of us TO arm. Because we know what happens next if we don't.

Governments in the 20th century have killed 100 million people. Almost all of those governments had one thing in common.....they stripped their eventual victims of firearms. Almost every people who have tried to appease a tyrant have lived to regret it. There is a more important spiritual lesson, in your zest to avoid the sword, that some of you have forgotten...."Put not your trust in princes". By disarming, you are trusting the princes.

Hitler probably would have come to power anyway in Germany. However, with a disarmed populace, he came to power with a minority of the vote, and without a check and balance against his power. Had there been an armed populace, he might not have been able to consolidate absolute power. Probably no World War II. Probably no Holocaust. Guns in the right hands could have stopped it all.

It doesn't really matter who it is, or what party they belong to. Just understand this: gun control strengthens their hand. YOU personally disarming strengthens their hand.

Again, I'll reask the question of those who support gun control. Have you lost your minds?

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There are only 4.5 Million members of the NRA. The total of GOA and JPFO combined is less than that. Those are the only people fighting for gun rights on an active basis. No one else cares about fighting for their guns like these people. Everyone else in the country will disarm when they are asked to.,

Before I answer the substance of what you say, let me say that nothing in my response is intended to advocate any type of violence. It is a speculative answer, based on my knowledge of history and current events, to a hypothetical scenario.

You speak only of those who are hard-core gun rights supporters. While they are, in general, the best armed and best trained gun owners in the general population, they are far from alone. As Eric pointed out, there are many other gun owners who won't voluntarily surrender their arms.

How many? Well, it has been estimated that there are between 60-80 million gun owners, who own a combined total of roughly 250 million guns. Personally, a find the latter figure to be laughably low - I know MANY people who own at least 10 guns, and many more who own at least 5. This figure also only takes into account legal, registered guns - how many weapons have been imported without the knowledge of authorities in the last 100 years? How many fully automatic war trophies did our WW1 and WW2 vets bring home? Nobody really knows, but the answer is probably at least in the tens of millions.

So, you may ask, what does it matter if most of these people are not so hardcore, if they'll surrender what they own upon receiving a letter from some government agency saying that they must turn in all guns, ammo, etc., on pain of fines, imprisonment, loss of job, etc.? Well, most probably will comply - our pubic education system has made most people into non-thinking, compliant risk-avoiders. Let's be wildly optomistic (from the gun-grabbers' point of view, not that of freedom lovers), and assume that only 1% of gun owners keep their weapons. This will leave 600,000 to 800,000 people (not including those in law enforcement or the military who take their oath to "preserve, protect & defend the Constitution" seriously). Not so many you think? Well, think again. These will be the most highly motivated, the best trained, the best armed people in society. Many of them have spent thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, plus hundreds or thousands of hours preparing themselves, their families and their property for just such an eventuality. There are millions of hunters in this country that regularly dress up in camoflage clothing in order to follow wild animals through miles of woodlands in order to take down a man-sized target (a deer) at 200-300 hundred yards, not to mention tens of thousands of accuracy fanatics who get ticked off if they can hit a plate-sized target at 600 yards. In addition to hidden guns, they will almost all have large stocks of military caliber ammunition, reloading equipment and supplies needed to produce yet more ammunition, compasses, knives, food reserves, etc., etc. - all of the things necessary to carry out a guerilla war against an oppressive government. Most of these type of people are former military, and they have the knowledge and experience necessary to plan fairly sophisticated small-group operations, as well as to train others without such knowledge.

By way of reference, the hard core in the fight for freedom during the Revolutionary War (i.e. those willing to take up arms) was only about 2% of the population. Most of the rest of the population was either Loyalist or indifferent or scared to help them. Yet the most powerful government and army of the day were defeated.

Do you think that our state & local cops can handle this many real rebels? What about simultaneously handling the existing criminal element (which is nearly out of control in some areas now)? No, that is in the realm of fantasy. Oh, you say, we have the FBI, army, national guard, etc. Yes, we have them - but they were brought into existence, and continue in existence today, to handle quite different missions. We do, after all, need the FBI to handle foreign spies, drug lords, mafias of various ethnic stripes, etc. The armed forces are already stretched thin defending our shores and our vital interests overseas. Do you want to guess what the "Axis of Evil," not to mention China, Syria and a host of other potential enemies would do if a President ordered half the army to begin fighting a guerilla war at home? And, by the way, does any President KNOW for a fact that everyone in the armed forces will obey orders that clearly will lead to a police state? Further food for thought: what will many uncommitted people do when they see the "nutty" predictions of the most pro-gun people coming true (i.e. the imposition of a police state)? The answer is lots of passive support, and lots of passive resistance to the government, and possibly some volunteers to the side of the hypothetical rebels.

In short, Shooter 2.5, you don't need that many well trained, well armed and highly motivated people to carry out an effective (or even winning) resistance in a country this large. The reason it hasn't been tried is that it can't work, and most of those (especially politicians) who have seriously thought about it have probably come to the conclusion that they and/or their families would not live to see the end of such a fight.

Thanks for writing all the information. It's really something to think about.

The reason I gave the numbers that I did was that I don't believe the government will ever go house to house confiscating weapons. That sounds like a fantasy of all those people who have the bumpersticker like "..From my Cold Dead Hands.". I think it will be treated like the drug wars where the majority of the people will beg the government to come arrest that nasty gun owner, and only about six million[since I forgot about the SAS] will try to do something about it. Forget about the deer hunters who aren't members. They just want to be left alone and there's no way they will help someone else or even stand up for their rights. Why? Because they're not standing up for their rights while it's easy. It is easy. If we want to get rid of the gun grabbers, All we have to do is vote them out of office because we outnumber the gungrabbers and the leftists.

Going to rallies, donating time and money is ridiculously easy. Why should anyone believe the people on the sidelines will do anything when it's difficult?

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