A FREE REPUBLIC DEPENDS ON CITIZENS BEARING ARMS

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD, Neo Traditionalist

Almost every time a gun is used in a homicide, a chorus of special interests calls for gun control. These calls happened after the shootings at University of Texas in 1966 and in Columbine, Colorado in 1999 and more recently at Virginia Tech University where a student rampaged through the campus killing 33.  There was an organized outcry at Virginia Tech for banning guns. This was farcical since Virginia Tech, like most college campuses, was already a gun free zone.

On March 22, 2009, a prison parolee and felon, 26-year-old Lovelle Mixon, shot and killed four police officers in Oakland, California. The officers were upstanding citizens leaving behind families. The incident was predictably followed by a call for banning guns. Even if California had total gun control laws it would not have prevented the killing of the four officers. Felons already are banned from acquiring weapons.

Felons are antisocial beings who do not follow laws. Not surprisingly, when they want a gun they obtain it illegally. Criminals use the underworld not legitimate businesses to obtain guns. The Cato Institute has noted that since 1978, when the Washington, D.C. gun ban went into effect, violent crimes rose 55%.  The same phenomenon has been reported in Australia in1996, in England in 1997 and the Canadian 2003 gun bans. Preventing citizens from having guns increased violent incidents.

Disarming law-abiding citizens has more consequences than increased violence by criminals. It allows governments to more easily impose a totalitarian state. Defenseless populations are easily intimidated, rounded up, imprisoned or exterminated. In 1938 Germany passed gun control leaving the Nazis to round up with impunity and kill millions of people. In 1929 the Soviet Union established gun control eliminating 20 million of Stalin’s opposition in order for him to impose his transformational vision on the people of the Soviet Union. In 1935, China took control of the people’s ability to bear arms; Guatemala did this in 1964, Uganda in 1971 and Cambodia in 1965.

The same pattern of a government disarming law abiding citizens then intimidating and oppressing them with a show of force is as tempting to elements of today’s government as it has been throughout history. The removal of weapons from the hands of free men opens the doors of the power hungry political elite of any country to march into the homes of decent people and drag them out without fear of reprisal. In the same way a criminal avoids anyone who has a gun because it increases his risk of survival, a power-grabbing dictator waits to disarm the population before using the military to pounce and exterminate any opposition. Once the threat of a viable citizen uprising is minimized by taking people’s weapons, it becomes feasible for power grabbing government agents to move to the “final solution” of exterminating large segments of the population.

Our founding fathers understood that the citizen bearing arms is the ultimate defense against tyranny. The second amendment clearly states, “ A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms will not be infringed.”  There is no legitimate way to change the meaning of this statement by parsing words although power driven elites will continue to attempt to strip citizens of their will to be free by confiscating their weapons.

Establishing a despotic regime takes destroying the spirit of the people to fight back. By fanning the fears of disarmed and dis-unified people, their resolve to be free is weakened. Without weapons people are helpless against armed government forces invading their homes.

Every American watching television on June 28, 2000 has ingrained in his brain a shameful image: a federal agent with his finger on the trigger of an MPS submachine gun with it pointed at Donato Dalyrimple and 6 year-old Elian Gonzalez. In the dark of night a federal SWAT team backed up by 130 federal agents broke down the door of a terrified family. It felt to Americans as if we were watching something from a dictatorship not something that could happen in our United States of America.

Elian courageously escaped with his mother from Communist Cuba.  The fisherman who was holding him when the feds broke into his home miraculously found him on an inner tube. Elian was free for a little over a year then was sent back to Cuba to become a propaganda tool for Fidel.

Elian’s mother sacrificed her life for his freedom. Eric Holder, then deputy attorney general, and now attorney general of the United States, stole Elian’s freedom for some dubious international political purpose.

This unimaginable event happened in the United States in 2000. Imagine what would happen if Americans lost the right to bear arms. All of us have a vested interest in keeping the Second Amendment giving citizens their constitutional right to protect our freedom from political tyranny.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Remember we are not entitled to our freedom. We must fight for it or we will lose it.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting.  He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School.

Visit: www.drmaglio.com.

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