LawDog
01-11-2019, 12:39 PM
is upon us.
Since about February of 2008, the gun community has been running around screaming that the sky is falling. On November 5thof that year, it was virtually certain that we were doomed. The Big Bad Black Man was going to take all of the guns. But he didn’t. Even after a bunch of first-grade kids were slaughtered by a wack-job with an AR-15, the left couldn’t manage to gather enough votes to enact anygun control measures at the federal level. In 2016, the Hilldebeast (who has killed more men than Gabe, even if not by her own hand) became the new boogeyman. Fortunately, we were saved from certain annihilation by the surprise victory of the Orange Man. And everyone rejoiced because the Orange Man (a New Yorker, previously registered as a Democrat, who had voiced support in the past for a ban on ‘assault weapons’) would surely save us from destruction. Now the gun community is slowly awakening to the fact that Orange Man may not in fact be Our Savior. The faces change, but what remains the same is a constant threat; a dire warning that the end is near.
Indeed, some new conspiracy to deprive us of our rights may at this moment be building steam within the Capitol. Spineless Republicans may be testing the winds within their purple constituencies, trying to decide how they need to vote in order to maintain their position of power and prestige. And I do not advise that we should tune out the political discord and retire to our farms. But it is possible to remain politically active without succumbing to a mindset of fear and failure.
Take a moment to honestly evaluate where we are today. How free are we? America is arguably the most regulated nation in history. Our administrative agencies are huge and omnipresent. You need a permit to do anything. There is a tax for everything. And yet I smile.
The gun community tends to believe that things were so much better in the past. Life was grand when Jefferson could write out letters of marque for Privateers to sail the seas and wage a private war upon our enemies. And the 19thCentury was indeed pretty good—as long as you were a rich white man. The modern gun owner seems to believe that gun control was a product of the 20thCentury. But it’s not.
In the Japanese feudal system, if any man outside of the Samurai caste was found in possession of weapons he would be executed. You were either born Samurai or not. The English feudal system wasn’t any better. Prior to the 13thCentury, serfs were all very explicitly property of the Crown. (Don’t be outraged, though. Modern history classes will teach you that slavery is only wrong when it is based on race.) One serf could not strike down another serf, even in self-defense, because it would deprive the Crown of that other serf’s labor. So knights and vassals enforced the law, and if any serf deigned to arm himself in an effort at self-help, he would be strung up from an oak.
History is replete with examples of commoners being disarmed, while a select class of worker bees are armed in order to defend the palaces. And while our Founding Fathers were burning the bright flame of freedom in America, many of the German immigrants who built this nation had to sneak out of the Fatherland under the cover of darkness in order to sail here. In Germany, they didn’t even have permission to leave, let alone to bear arms.
Today, we have all sorts of stupid-but-well-intended laws that we have to navigate in order to arm ourselves. We fill out ludicrous forms. If you live in a commie state, you may have to wait a week to take delivery of your purchase. There are signs everywhere which achieve nothing more than potentially penalizing the well-prepared. And yet I smile.
I own more guns than anyone in my family line ever could have imagined. My grandmother picked cotton. Her family barely registered the Great Depression, because they were already so poor that it made no difference to them. Today, if you totaled up all the guns owned among my brothers and cousins, we might literally have more than all of the privately held guns in China. I can carry a gun almost everywhere I go, and mostof that is legal.
Guns are cheaper than they have ever been. The next time someone shows you an old ad from Field&Stream for a surplus FAL, plug the number into an inflation calculator. You’ll see that even in the immediate post-war surplus boon, those beaten old surplus rifles cost more than a new version today. And I can now order or build a rifle to my own chosen specifications—the precise barrel length, my chosen muzzle device, furniture, sights, just about everything that I want.
Magazines are cheap. Ammunition is cheap. Everything costs less—adjusted for inflation—than it did at virtually any time in the past. I even see more shooting ranges than I did as a kid. Despite urban sprawl and the shrinkage of those vast rural lands, there are still plenty of places to go shoot a gun today.
There will always be someone pushing for some new prohibition, or trying to close down the local range. Jefferson accurately stated the price of freedom: eternal vigilance. But while we are fighting to keep what we’ve got, let’s not be dismayed. Things are actually pretty good. As we roll into SHOT 2019, try to push Pelosi and the Orange Man out of your mind for a moment, and just enjoy all of the awesome new toys that none of our great-grandparents ever could have imagined. People rarely recognize the Golden Age when they are within it. I hope that things get even better. Either way, I believe things are already better than they have ever been.
Since about February of 2008, the gun community has been running around screaming that the sky is falling. On November 5thof that year, it was virtually certain that we were doomed. The Big Bad Black Man was going to take all of the guns. But he didn’t. Even after a bunch of first-grade kids were slaughtered by a wack-job with an AR-15, the left couldn’t manage to gather enough votes to enact anygun control measures at the federal level. In 2016, the Hilldebeast (who has killed more men than Gabe, even if not by her own hand) became the new boogeyman. Fortunately, we were saved from certain annihilation by the surprise victory of the Orange Man. And everyone rejoiced because the Orange Man (a New Yorker, previously registered as a Democrat, who had voiced support in the past for a ban on ‘assault weapons’) would surely save us from destruction. Now the gun community is slowly awakening to the fact that Orange Man may not in fact be Our Savior. The faces change, but what remains the same is a constant threat; a dire warning that the end is near.
Indeed, some new conspiracy to deprive us of our rights may at this moment be building steam within the Capitol. Spineless Republicans may be testing the winds within their purple constituencies, trying to decide how they need to vote in order to maintain their position of power and prestige. And I do not advise that we should tune out the political discord and retire to our farms. But it is possible to remain politically active without succumbing to a mindset of fear and failure.
Take a moment to honestly evaluate where we are today. How free are we? America is arguably the most regulated nation in history. Our administrative agencies are huge and omnipresent. You need a permit to do anything. There is a tax for everything. And yet I smile.
The gun community tends to believe that things were so much better in the past. Life was grand when Jefferson could write out letters of marque for Privateers to sail the seas and wage a private war upon our enemies. And the 19thCentury was indeed pretty good—as long as you were a rich white man. The modern gun owner seems to believe that gun control was a product of the 20thCentury. But it’s not.
In the Japanese feudal system, if any man outside of the Samurai caste was found in possession of weapons he would be executed. You were either born Samurai or not. The English feudal system wasn’t any better. Prior to the 13thCentury, serfs were all very explicitly property of the Crown. (Don’t be outraged, though. Modern history classes will teach you that slavery is only wrong when it is based on race.) One serf could not strike down another serf, even in self-defense, because it would deprive the Crown of that other serf’s labor. So knights and vassals enforced the law, and if any serf deigned to arm himself in an effort at self-help, he would be strung up from an oak.
History is replete with examples of commoners being disarmed, while a select class of worker bees are armed in order to defend the palaces. And while our Founding Fathers were burning the bright flame of freedom in America, many of the German immigrants who built this nation had to sneak out of the Fatherland under the cover of darkness in order to sail here. In Germany, they didn’t even have permission to leave, let alone to bear arms.
Today, we have all sorts of stupid-but-well-intended laws that we have to navigate in order to arm ourselves. We fill out ludicrous forms. If you live in a commie state, you may have to wait a week to take delivery of your purchase. There are signs everywhere which achieve nothing more than potentially penalizing the well-prepared. And yet I smile.
I own more guns than anyone in my family line ever could have imagined. My grandmother picked cotton. Her family barely registered the Great Depression, because they were already so poor that it made no difference to them. Today, if you totaled up all the guns owned among my brothers and cousins, we might literally have more than all of the privately held guns in China. I can carry a gun almost everywhere I go, and mostof that is legal.
Guns are cheaper than they have ever been. The next time someone shows you an old ad from Field&Stream for a surplus FAL, plug the number into an inflation calculator. You’ll see that even in the immediate post-war surplus boon, those beaten old surplus rifles cost more than a new version today. And I can now order or build a rifle to my own chosen specifications—the precise barrel length, my chosen muzzle device, furniture, sights, just about everything that I want.
Magazines are cheap. Ammunition is cheap. Everything costs less—adjusted for inflation—than it did at virtually any time in the past. I even see more shooting ranges than I did as a kid. Despite urban sprawl and the shrinkage of those vast rural lands, there are still plenty of places to go shoot a gun today.
There will always be someone pushing for some new prohibition, or trying to close down the local range. Jefferson accurately stated the price of freedom: eternal vigilance. But while we are fighting to keep what we’ve got, let’s not be dismayed. Things are actually pretty good. As we roll into SHOT 2019, try to push Pelosi and the Orange Man out of your mind for a moment, and just enjoy all of the awesome new toys that none of our great-grandparents ever could have imagined. People rarely recognize the Golden Age when they are within it. I hope that things get even better. Either way, I believe things are already better than they have ever been.