Why We Need Guns

What was and is the main reason the Founding Fathers - all of them - wanted us to have guns, guns we would bear (carry) on our persons? Why did they say so, again and again? Hunting. Yes, hunting certainly was one reason. Even today, many Americans still go hunting to put fresh kill on the table. Some even have organized to express their joyful dominion, and call themselves P.E.T.A., People Eating Tasty Animals. What about sport? Yes, there are many gun sports, such as skeet, or even plinking at cans, which offer wholesome recreation. But neither sport nor hunting is even remotely the main reason. Well, what about self-defense? Surely self-defense is the reason we seek. No. It's important, yes. Sometimes, regrettably, we do need to protect ourselves and our families from private criminals who are armed, and a gun is the best way to do that, unless you happen to be Chuck Norris or Steven Segall, which most people are not. Then what is it?

Hang on now! Here it comes! And, like everything your intrepid correspondent writes, it is going to be a shock.

The Founding Fathers want us to carry guns in case we ever need them to overthrow the government.

What? What did you say? Look out! Here it comes again! The main reason the men who created this country want us to bear arms is that we'll have to use them if we need to overthrow the government. No other reason even comes close.

All right. Sit down. Lean back. Wait a minute while your heart restarts and your blood recirculates. When your mind kicks in again, remember the situation when the Founders wrote the Second Amendment into the Constitution that created this country. The new nation had no history, no prestige, none of the tradition we revere today. It was simply a utilitarian device, an experiment they concocted to solve the problems of the Articles of Confederation. They were much more loyal to their respective states, some of which were already more than a century old, had been independent nations, and did bind them with all the ties a man feels for his motherland. That feeling persisted into the War Between the States, when Lee's loyalty to Virginia was greater than his feeling for the Union.

Remember also that the Fathers (and the Mothers) were suspicious of what they had done. They feared they had given the new-fangled shebang too much power; that it could perhaps get out of control. Everyone knows about Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech at St. John's Church. Not enough people know that Patrick Henry spoke tirelessly, for hours every day, for weeks, against the proposed Constitution, because he feared the government it would create. Because he did so, we got the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment. In the same spirit, Jefferson warned that every generation the tree of liberty must be watered by the blood of patriots and tyrants. Remember, he said "every generation," which means very often.

Consider also that the Communist Party has given the overthrow of the government a bad name. But, at the time, there was no Communist Party, and no Communists using the name. And remember that the Founders themselves had overthrown a government, which proves that overthrowing the government isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes, it's good, even necessary. The question must always be asked: Who is overthrowing what, why? For instance, would anybody out there seriously argue that the subjects of Hitler's Socialist dictatorship did not have the moral right to overthrow it? That Pol Pot's victims didn't have the right to kick him out if they could?

So, what the Founding Fathers are telling us is this: Because we are imperfect and man is hopelessly rotten with sin, we've given you the protection of the separation of powers and the Bill of Rights, but it's still just possible that our preposterous, little experiment will get out of control, in which case it will be your responsibility to unwrap the Tennessee long rifles. In short, we've given you a Republic, if you can keep it.

Question: Who is coming for the guns? Answer: The government. The often admitted goal of the present salami tactics (a slice at a time) would be a government that has almost all the guns, "private-sector" criminals who have some guns and a population that has no guns - exactly the opposite of the arrangement the Founding Fathers left us. And you think the utterly phony "war on drugs" is out of control now? How would BATF and FBI and other alphabet serial killers behave if they didn't fear, rightly or wrongly, that you were waiting in your darkened living room with a Dirty Harry special, to Make Your Day? Remember Ruby Ridge and Waco? Well, punk, do you? Remember the Scott ranch outside Los Angeles, which they tried to steal? In the course of the attempted confiscation, they killed the owner, who thought he was defending his wife from a home invasion by men wearing black.

How would a government near-monopoly of guns be expressed? Well, of course, the FBI would have the guns. You remember the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Incineration. BATF would have the guns. But you don't see such people every day. Well, which agency of government do you see every day? The police. In the system the confiscators want, the police would have the guns; you wouldn't. Who are the police? In Nazi Germany, where the Nazis confiscated the guns, they were the Gestapo. In Soviet Russia, they are the (renamed) KGB, which confiscated the guns. Who are the police here?

In Los Angeles right now, the courts and the D.A. are overturning dozens of convictions. People are being released from prison. Policemen are being fired, tried and locked up, for committing a long list of unspeakable crimes. They shot and crippled a man who now turns out to be innocent. They planted evidence to get those convictions. They perjured themselves. They trafficked in drugs. Every day, more crooked cops are exposed. The victims could number in the hundreds, maybe more. Word now comes from Seattle that police there acted as agents provocateur in the recent turmoil surrounding the World Trade Organization, provoking the violence they used as their excuse to crack down. In New York, a policeman has been convicted of using a blunt instrument to sodomize a man in his custody. As I write, other policemen there are being tried for shooting a man in his apartment lobby. These are just a few examples.

And, of course, they are egregious exceptions. Most policemen by far are clean and shun such acts, which embarrass the profession. Remember that LAPD itself uncovered these crimes. For many years, I have written and worked in defense of the police, whom the federal government is trying to nationalize.

Despite which, the fact remains that the FBI, BATF and the criminals in police uniforms who haven't yet been caught would be the only people with the guns. One would expect that the latest epidemic of police scandals would give even the most ferocious gun grabber pause; would certainly raise a question in the reasonable mind. But it hasn't. If anyone in the Prostitute National Press has experienced a shadow of a doubt, we haven't heard about it. And did you know that the police are not legally required to defend you? Time after time, crime victims have sued the police for failing to protect them. The courts have always ruled against them.

Notice also that the Prostitute National Press hasn't even mentioned the present crime waves in England and Australia, where the people were tricked into giving up their guns. They won't mention it, because the goal of the confiscators is a totalitarian (world) government, and in such a government the people are disarmed. As Franklin Roosevelt loved to say, nothing in politics happens by accident. That is why any and every attempt to "inform" the media, the government, or the private confiscatory groups is fruitless. They know perfectly well where they are going. And they know they will never get there as long as the deadliest creature who ever stalked the earth stands in their way: an armed civilian who has served a hitch as a U.S. Marine Corps sniper.

Is it time to overthrow our government? We feel the breath of Hitler on our neck, and the triumphant Horst Wessel fills our ears, but I would say no, not yet, because we still have the vote, the Bill of Rights and the Internet. I hope I'm not wrong. Remember that most dictatorships are not announced. A Hitler doesn't get on Radio Goebbels and say: "Guten morgen. Ich bin Adolf Hitler. Since early childhood, I have been a psychopath. I love to step on people's faces, especially if they are Jews. So, today at noon, I'm junking your rights and imposing a totalitarian dictatorship."

No, almost always it is difficult, impossible, to put a finger on when the dictatorship was imposed. Most of the time, it oozes in. Later, historians argue about it. Did it happen when Hitler became Chancellor? Or when he burned the Reichstag? Which development made Germany a dictatorship? Here too we have suffered a long train of abuses. Where and what are we?

About the Author Alan Stang was, for two decades, a senior writer for the John Birch Society's American Opinion magazine, and was Robert Welch's closest confidant. A former talk-radio host, he is also the author of ten books, including, most recently, Perestroika Sunset, surrounding our Government's deception in the POW/MIA arena. He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.

A former talk-radio host, he is also the author of ten books…

I don’t remember him being a host. I remember him having a top-of-the-hour, Paul Harvey-type segment on the local AM station in Medford, OR. He’d always sign off with “This is Alan Stang… Think about it.”

My grandfather would try to stop the world to listen to his segment. “Shhh! Alan Stang is on,” etc. He also subscribed to The Spotlight and never paid income taxes. But then the JBS disappeared and so did Alan Stang. I’ve never heard anything about him (until this) since about 1976.

I really liked listening to Alan Stang, and agree with what he wrote. It is pretty scary and I understand what he means by "but I would say no, not yet, because we still have the vote, the Bill of Rights and the Internet. I hope I'm not wrong" With so few people paying attention to what is happening to our freedom, I wonder how long we have?

Mr. Stang raises a very interesting question: At what point does a government become an oppressive, totalitarian regime whose overthrow in morally justified? Is the USA there yet? Only an irrational person would say so. We do still have the ability to vote, to own guns, the right of self-defense, to make un-PC political statements. What about England? Gun ownership banned, free speech banned, right to self-defense (even with non-leathal weapons) banned - Yes, I think the case can be made there. While the Brits can still vote in elections, how long will that last if things keep going to hell there? Could they really turn the totalitarian clock back in an election? Or, are the elections just a sham? When I think about how it is in the rest of the world - even supposedly free countries like England, I realize how much freedom we have here - and how important it is to preserve it.

.

The Preamble to The Bill of Rights

Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

.

We need guns because billandhill still walk the land.

BILLSANDHILLS have always been around, that is why RTKABA is an un-alienable right that is only acknowledged by the Constitution's Bill of Rights not granted by the BoR.

Basically, there have always been @$$holes walking around that had to have a weapon (GunKnifeSwordClubwhatever) shoved in their ... face, to keep their act straight.

Occasionally, mass quantities of citizens have had to storm the gates and kick said @$$holes back to the stoneage. They will always pi$$, whine and moan about how it is "against the law" (their self serving law) while the general population they just got finished declaring "commoners" is beating the TAR out of them.

Rightly so...

Even the people of the Soviet Union had the "right" to vote. A lot of good it did them. Our elections are rapidly approaching non elections. With the ability of redistricting, most elections are non competitive and the choice between candidates is becoming a joke. Pretty soon we will be allowed to vote for the incumbent or not.

Why we need guns is simple. There is no way that the average American woman or elderly person will ever be able to defend herself from the average 20-ish male American felon - even with Mace, even if facing just one such felon. After all, predominantly large male police carrying Mace invariably also carry guns - for a reason.

GUN REVIEWS free from ad-money bias - emphasizing woman-friendliness of tested guns!

Get all these pro-English Empire bozos who oppose free firearms rights to comment as they are shot in the streets in places like Zimbabwe and London.

If we fall, where is there to go?

Please God, send them to France. The people smell good there.

We do still have the ability to vote, to own guns

Except in Washington DC and to a lessor extent Chicago, New York City, etc. They do let the peasants vote in those places, even the ones in the graveyards.

When liberals say they can't think of a single reason why anyone would need a gun, they're being disingenuous. They know EXACTLY why we need guns. We need guns for three reasons: To kill criminals, tyrants, and dictators before they kill us. Liberals fear guns so much because they are all three of those!

Now's a good time to remind everyone that Schumer is trying to sneak another bill under the radar that would effectively disarm millions of Americans, called the "Our Lady of Peace Act." Hillary's the "lady" and she'd sleep much more peacably if we lesser beings were unable to defend ourselves.

Oh, especially the graveyard electorate! They are are the most important voters of all here in Illinois! It's funny how even lifelong Republicans undergo a "conversion" experience after death to join in that most faithful of Democratic constituencies.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.