Why You Should Support the 2A Even If You Don't Like Guns

 The Freedom To Own Firearms Benefits Everyone 

By Robert E. Wright 

Joe Biden has again threatened to “defeat” the NRA and pass blatantly unconstitutional gun regulations. Even if you don’t hunt and are willing, despite the events of the summer of 2020, to entrust the lives of your loved ones to law enforcement, you should still oppose gun control. 

Why? The same (il)logic used to justify gun laws was used to justify the lockdowns that locked up your family and wrecked your business or job, or at the very least destroyed your favorite small business haunts. Americans need to oppose specific bad policies but also the patterns of thought that make them possible. Specifically, Americans need to make clear to policymakers that the misdeeds of a few do not justify the punishment of all. 

The illogical train of thought runs like this: only X does bad thing Y, so all X needs is to be punished to prevent Y. So we hear arguments like: only gun owners commit gun crimes, so punish all gun owners and there will be no more shootings. Only commoners spread Covid, so punish all commoners (while elites play all night and day) and Covid will go away. Only sinners sin, so punish all sinners and sin will disappear. The same twisted logic could be employed on anyone, for anything, at any time.

That sort of “logic” used to earn first year college students a solid F but because universities have used dirty pool tactics to denude themselves of their best professors, such “reasoning” is now passed, and even applauded. Every day, Community looks less like a comedy about fictional Greendale Community College and more like a documentary about U.S. higher education. 

Thankfully, the mob that attacked the Capitol was almost completely unarmed. Only a handful of firearms were recovered and I haven’t found any reports of the rioters brandishing guns much less firing any. Apparently, there were more Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs about than firearms, likely because DC’s strict and unconstitutional gun laws made explosives more attractive alternatives. Thankfully, nobody yet wants to more fully regulate distilled liquors, rags, match heads or plumbers, or to ban Class C Motorhomes, the “assault rifle” of bombers. (Nashville on Christmas. Remember?) 

“Other” states, like Massachusetts and New Jersey, also greatly restrict gun ownership and carry. What is gained from locking down law-abiding gun owners? About as much as is gained from “quarantining” people who aren’t sick! Evidence comes from the same quarter, too.

For decades, South Dakota was a permissive “shall issue” state when it came to pistol permits. A few years ago, after people like me kept asking why any permit at all was necessary, the state adopted “Constitutional carry,” which allows anyone to carry pistols and/or long guns concealed and/or openly in public spaces without a permit. 

Constitutional carry has not turned South Dakota into the Hollywood version of the Wild West. In fact, firearm murders in the state are relatively rare. The state ranks 5th best in the country according to this study, with much lower gun homicide rates per capita than either Massachusetts or New Jersey. That’s remarkable considering that South Dakota is home to six of the 50 poorest counties (the big Indian Reservations) in the country, and according to RAND ranked ninth in the country in per capita gun ownership between 1980 and 2016.

Note the parallel to Covid lockdowns. In both cases, the eastern states push authoritarian, unconstitutional policies that do not even do what they purport to do. And why should they as they are based on the base illogical moralism laid bare above? Some citizens fulminate, and a few sue, but mostly they just obey or, seeing the writing on the wall, turn on their neighbors and become unpaid tools of their oppressive states.

South Dakota, by contrast, while far from perfect, sticks much more closely to the Constitutional baseline that ensured America’s prosperity and its once well-deserved reputation as a beacon of freedom. Adherence to the hoary lodestone of the Republic has rendered the state’s economy and society resilient in the face of shocks; its well-armed citizenry deploy reluctantly but steadfastly when threatened with violence, as they did over the Memorial Day weekend when Antifa-types tried to foment a riot in Sioux Falls. 

A friend successfully protected his fast food restaurant after a local LEO encouraged him to use his Tokarev, a Soviet-made military pistol that shoots rifle-like rounds that can pierce body armor, if necessary. Thankfully, the wannabe looters did not test my friend’s resolve or marksmanship.

While South Dakotans work with LEOs to protect themselves during crises, the mostly disarmed citizens of Massachusetts and New Jersey (they rank dead last and second last, respectively, in the RAND gun ownership study cited above) must die, capitulate, or hope local LEOs are on their side when the stinky stuff hits the fan.

So even if you don’t own a gun, you should support your neighbor’s right to own them, even military-type ones. (When the Second Amendment was ratified, people, businesses, and nonprofit corporations owned military weapons, including cannon.) People tend to behave much more civilly toward each other when they are de facto equals, and nothing equalizes an uneven playing field like grapeshot, a sniper, or a derringer. That is why the nation’s first serious gun laws were put in place after the Civil War by Democratic white supremacists to keep Republican freed slaves from being able to defend themselves from hooded cross burners. You know the ones.

Today, Americans generally deprecate violence (most have a lot to lose) but sometimes, in the course of human events, self-defense becomes necessary, even admirable. As I recently pointed out, however, what one party contends is self-defense another may consider an unwarranted breach of the peace. Look, for example, at the way that Trump supporters responded to the George Floyd protests compared to the overrunning of the Capitol. 

Intense or widespread violent protest proves one thing: current leadership is incompetent and should resign. I don’t mean just Trump, I mean any and all politicians implicated in failed lockdowns, police brutality, extended rioting and CHOP zones, or election irregularities (which definitely did occur though the extent is still disputed). After all, only politicians cause bad policies, so all politicians should be punished. (See what I did there?) Seriously, if failed politicians don’t exile themselves, others may do it for them, via recall in Gavin Newsom’s case, but perhaps more gruesomely in others, even if all guns magically disappeared tomorrow. Nay, especially if all guns magically disappeared tomorrow.

Winter Catharsis: Try Hanging Politicians In Effigy

NOTA BENE: Not long after this posted, Cuomo started backpedaling on lockdowns! I take no credit, though, as I think Trump's concession and the hatred that Bills fans showed him were enough to wake him up. News that vaccines were being trashed in New York didn't help either. Anywho ...

Maybe you once believed in lockdowns but have kept an open mind, looked at the available data and commentary, and concluded that even if lockdowns extend the lives of some of the vulnerable elderly they are killing too many young people and maiming too many small businesses to be allowed to continue. 

Or maybe you would not support lockdowns even during a Bubonic Plague or are sick of wearing a mask of dubious sterility every time you need to interact with another human being. Or maybe you figure that with asymptomatic spread less likely than a false positive Covid test (PCR or rapid), excess mortality not being terribly high and not easily parsed into Covid and lockdown deaths, and a large number of vaccination vials available but unused, the pandemic, if it ever was an event worthy of the name, is over. 

Whatever the reason, you are probably wondering what you can do to restore some semblance of 2019 in 2021.

I have urged people to sue, sue, sue but apparently few have taken that tack, perhaps because Americans believe that most judges are in cahoots with the political parties that sponsor them. I agree that the election of judges is not a good idea but suing the government would be difficult even with nonpartisan judges on the bench. 

The weight of the evidence is so far against masking and social distancing, however, that I think Private Deep Pockets could be brought to heel right quick by even the lowliest ambulance-chasing pettifogger. It’s discrimination to force the scientifically and statistically savvy to wear a formerly illegal piece of clothing into a store and the damages are the differences in price between the retailer’s everyday low prices and the next best alternative … for every item purchased since March in many locales. 

If the biggest risk for getting Covid-19 is being in a confined space for a long period of time, why did stores reduce hours and limit entry and exit points? Why do airlines schedule more flights than they can handle, virtually ensuring tarmac delays? The list goes on and on.

Go class action and some serious money, for the lawyers anyway, could be made while reminding corporations that if they concentrate solely on that which is seen (Covid-19 and Karens), that which is unseen (the costs of imposing malarkey social distancing policies on smart people when not forced to by local governments) might still nip them in the bottom, the bottom line that is.

You might also try rioting in the name of social justice, specifically on behalf of all those poor people (literally) killed by lockdowns, suffocated, as it were, by ineffective state policies. Rioting was really popular last summer and can still be comfortably done in the same general way in Hawaii and the southern states. Instead of Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police, though, riot in the name of All Deaths Matter (Whether Caused by Covid or Lockdowns) and Defund Fauci.

In colder climes, I suggest reviving the custom of hanging and burning politicians in effigy. To be clear, this entails no physical violence, just dressing up a dummy to look like another dummy, say one of those many politicians who have broken their own social distancing rules, hanging the dressed up dummy from a tree, and lighting its ass, or other convenient body part, on fire. A really big dummy made of slow burning materials, like old tires, can keep hundreds of protestors warm for hours even in northern Minnesota. Just keep the flames away from the ice fishing sheds, you betcha.

Burning effigies constituted high sport in early America, right up there with bear baiting. After bringing back his unpopular eponymous trade treaty from Britain, for instance, poor rich John Jay claimed that he was burned in effigy in so many places that he could have crossed the country at night by the light of the fires.

I don’t recommend some other early American protest tactics like tarring and feathering or pulling down houses. Even when done over the clothes instead of the naked body, tarring and feathering entails physical violence that could easily get out of hand and leave permanent scars. And most of the cost of a destroyed house will fall on the public, if a government building, or an insurer, if a private one. Plus, presumably, houses are better constructed now than in the eighteenth century and somebody might “accidentally” confuse pulling down with burning down, especially on a cold winter’s night.

A more modern way of protesting at low cost would be to join a flash mob. One protesting mask restrictions at a Target in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in September looks fun. I just turned fifty two so I have no idea how one goes about creating or joining such an event but it seems innocuous enough. Just remember to buy the costume for the dummy you intend to burn (safely of course) that night when there. 

This is all a bit cheeky, of course, but only because nonviolent alternatives are so few. Few people with much skin in the game dare to get arrested because that leads to fines, anal rape, and/or the inability to get a job, license, mortgage, etc. in the future. You might even get put on a list as a subversive whose taxes obviously stand in need of serious auditing. 

Some worry about the formation of re-education work camps but such camps are soooo, like, twentieth century, not really efficient at all in a modern knowledge economy. Best to allow the subversive, liberty-loving types to keep their jobs but to overpay their taxes out of a rational fear of invoking the horrible wrath of the IRS. Enslave people physically and you might attract unwanted attention, unless you enslave Chinese Muslims of course. Enslave people virtually and it’s all good, no matter what.

And why should the government invest in re-education camps when seemingly millions of Twitter trolls stand ready to do the work, just for the fun of it?

The root problem is that, except for one day every two, four, or six years (and even then with caveats), we apparently have no recourse against our leaders, even if they behave very badly. They are personally responsible for nothing and no court or police force will stop them from breaking the Constitution they swore an oath to uphold, so they do as they wish, when they wish, to whom they wish. Try to explain to others that the politicians’ policies are irrational and their social media minions now censor your message. 

But I would like to see Silicon Valley or New York State Troopers try to stop tens of thousands of New Yorkers from expressing their First Amendment rights by burning thousands of effigies of Governor Cuomo some night soon. Just don’t threaten to burn or hang the actual Cuomo, or anyone else, and don’t break any local ordinances and you should be able to enjoy a nice catharsis. And for goodness sake don't storm any capitol buildings! May I suggest Friday the 15th as the moon will then be a thin waxing crescent? 

And not to pressure any nationalists out there but did you hear what happened in France over New Year’s? A whole town held a rave while holding off cops for over a day. One world for that: EPIC! Did I mention they were French?

In any event, Google may turn its satellites away from the effigy spectacle but news of it will spread. Sure, some old clothes and ropes will be destroyed but it will be nothing compared to the lives destroyed by heedless, needless Covid lockdowns. And fear not being accused of snow-flakism, as effigy burning is not mere virtue signaling, it is anger signaling. Don’t buy a copy of Cuomo’s ridiculous book specifically for the event, but if one happens to be on hand, it would really round out his effigy’s policy clown costume. 

Finally, be sure to flash mob Facebook with your pics at midnight so we can all revel vicariously until The Fact Checkers pull them down on the pretext that New York Times staffers locked down in Manhattan claim nothing much really happened and that Cuomo is the best Duce ever.