Reader Guy LoPresti writes:
Dear Gun Control advocates, progressives, and anyone left of center,
Congratulations on the March For Our Lives and your efforts to reduce gun violence. It looked like a big success. Only one problemL it showed you for the would-be totalitarians that you are.
You used young, uninformed children to push your agenda for complete disarmament of Americans in order to “save the children.” Still, you may have managed to convince an entire generation that the Constitution is anachronistic and the Second Amendment should be repealed. Good work.
You did a great job showing how much you care about children’s lives (unless they’re fetuses). However I have a hard time taking people seriously who think Donald Trump is the most dangerous world leader since Adolf Hitler, but advocate for the complete disarmament of the American people. There’s an inherent contradiction there you don’t seem to grasp. So please clarify your stance for me given the following scenario:
Imagine in the coming months and and years that all of your worst Trumpian nightmares come true. He decides to enact measures designed to MakeAmerica Great Again, as he sees it. And since he’s a racist, sexist, homophobic, islamophobic white supremacist, he will target groups he blames for destroying America.
First he will begin by stripping rights from all racial minorities and LGBTQ people. They will be forced into ghettos and then, possibly, concentration camps. Next, he will enact the Handmaid Doctrine requiring women to bear children and wear red dresses and bonnets, with no control over their reproductive rights.
Christianity will be the new state religion in an effort to create a theocracy. Next he will begin to eliminate political opposition and end the presidential term limit. He would then be able to continue his march towards remaking America to fit his vision to revive this nation, unopposed.
My question to you is this: what would you do about it? Would you protest in the streets? Would you march on the Capitol as you did on Saturday? Do you think he’d allow that? What are your options, practically speaking? Would you fight or would you just talk to the media’s cameras and broadcast your victimhood on Facebook Live?
You only have to look at recent history to see that this kind of thing happens all over the world in nations that don’t have the Constitutional rights and freedoms we enjoy in the United States. Why hasn’t it occurred here?
You’re probably saying to yourself “That can’t happen in our modern, enlightened progressive society.” You’re probably right, of course, thanks to the checks and balances built into our Constitution (the one you take such pride in denigrating).
But are you willing to take that risk with a dangerous demagogue like Trump in the White House? How would you really #resist a truly oppressive regime besides furiously hashtagging and virtue signaling? Would you join Antifa and begin fighting Trump’s fascist white nationalist supporters? With what?
The answer is right there in the Bill of Rights. It’s called the Second Amendment, where the God-given right of armed self defense is recognized. It establishes the final check on a tyrannical government by giving the power to the people to fight for their freedom should the need ever arise.
That right isn’t recognized to the extent it is here by any other nation. Read the Second Amendment it and you may come to see its truth. Focus on the phrase “necessary for the security of a free state,” and extrapolate from there. You won’t find a word about deer hunting there.
Before you advocate for the removal of a fundamental civil right from our Constitution, consider what you would be taking away from not only Americans you disagree with and despise, but from yourself as well. Think about what you would do if the day comes when you’re confronted by actual tyranny in the United States. I know what I would do and I have the means to do it. Do you?