A
pretty, young, auburn-haired woman – mid-20s – drove down a lonely
country road somewhere in Oklahoma. Appearing in her rear-view mirror,
at the back windshield, were two menacing orbs of light floating amid
ashen dusk. The guttural roar of a souped-up big block shook the tiny
Volkswagen Rabbit as a van-load of inbred thugs lurched left and drew
alongside her. A ponytailed passenger taunted inaudibly and blew foul
kisses between crude hand gestures. He pointed for her to pull over as
the van repeatedly swerved dangerously close.
Inside
the car a man, asleep in the reclining passenger seat, was startled
awake by the commotion. He rose and darted his head about, calmly
assessing the situation. This only spurred the evil-bent
goons.
As
they ramped-up efforts to run the car off the road, the man reached in
the glove box, withdrew a military-grade, semi-automatic handgun – an
“assault weapon,” if you will – and, with intentionality and great
theatre, leaned across his young bride, pointing the gun out the open
bay and directly between dirt bag’s booze-flushed eyes.
Van
vanished amid a plume of gray smoke as wheels locked, tires screeched
and “assault vehicle” fishtailed – jerking to a halt with taillights
aglow skyward from the ditch.
Not
a shot was fired.
Back
at the couple’s rural farmhouse, two boys – boys who would not be orphaned
that night – played. We most likely played – my brother Pete and I – with
assault rifles fashioned from sticks. I always love to hear Dad retell the
story. He does it with an ornery, satisfied grin. “No one’s taking my
guns,” he’ll say.
This
might be a good time for me to add that no one’s taking my guns either.
Period. And if Dianne Feinstein
orders me from her lofty perch on the left-coast to retroactively register
them with some federal autocracy, I think I might just forget I even have
them. Tens of millions of law-abiding, God-fearing Americans just like me
and Dad, I suspect, feel the same way.
I
love guns. Grew up with ‘em.
As a former police officer with 12 years in the U.S. military, I know how
to use them, too – use them well. I plan to buy more – a bunch more. In
fact, who’s to say I don’t already have a veritable arsenal?
Point
is, tain’t Big Brother Barack’s nor
any other candy-keistered-liberal-cream-puff’s bloody
business whether I do or not.
See,
the left’s totalitarian brand of “gun control” has nothing to do with
controlling guns – or bad guys. Rather, it has everything to do with
controlling – disarming – the law-abiding masses. It’s not about
protecting the innocents. It’s about rendering the innocents
defenseless.
Clichés
become clichés for a reason, and the old cliché, “If guns are outlawed,
only outlaws will have guns,” rings as true today as it did whenever it
was that some homespun fellow coined it.
I
was disgusted – physically sickened, in fact – when Barack Obama,
president of these Divided States of America, shamelessly exploited the
Sandy Hook memorial service to lay the groundwork for his unconstitutional
gun-confiscation scheme. It was slimy to the extreme.
I
guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. That’s what liberals do. Every time
some evil nutjob – pumped full of
psychotropic drugs by NEA members who don’t want to deal with them –
shoots-up the place, the left’s collective mouth begins to
water.
“Now,
finally, now!” they say, rubbing together soft hands that have never felt
the surprising weight of a Sig Sauer 45. “This time we have the political
momentum for sweeping gun control. This time the American people will roll
over and let us trample the Second Amendment beneath jackbooted executive
order or congressional fiat.”
“Let
no good crisis go to waste,” right, Rahm?
Well,
not so fast, cupcake. As the U.S. Constitution guarantees – and as the
Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed – “the right of the people to keep
and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
It
ain’t, “should not be infringed,” or
“shall finally be infringed once ‘progressives’ have assumed total
dominance.”
No,
“shall not” means shall not.
There’s
only one way to take my guns, slick, and that’s through a constitutional
amendment – an amendment that will never happen – ever. Try it any other
way and we have a problem.
And
this whole “assault weapons ban” angle?
Sensationalist propaganda. I prefer
to call them “defense weapons.” Contrary to left-wing revisionist pabulum,
the Second Amendment’s not about squirrel hunting.
Notice
a trend here? What do Sandy Hook Elementary, Aurora Colorado’s Century 16
theatre and Columbine have in common? They’re all “gun free
zones.”
Places
you don’t see mass murder and mayhem? Well, there’s a reason bad guys
largely avoid shooting-up gun shows, ranges, households with signs that
say: “This home insured by Smith & Wesson” and Texas in general. It’s
because they know – even while thick-skulled liberals don’t – that, as
recently noted by the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, “The only thing that stops a bad
guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Oh,
that rather than “gun free zone,” Sandy Hook had a sign reading: “Staff
heavily armed and trained. Any attempts to harm those herein will be met
with deadly force.” Might some of those beautiful babies have still died
if the P.E. coach and four MP5-bearing teachers had ended the bloodshed
soon after it began? Perhaps. But how
many precious lives could have been saved?
No,
you won’t disarm me. You’re not going to neuter my household and tear away
my ability to defend my wife and precious babies like Dad did all those
years ago.
I
really, really hope this president and his authoritarian cohorts in
Congress will slow down, take a deep breath and realize that, right now,
they’re playing a very dangerous game of chicken. If they try what I think
they might, but hope they don’t, I fear this nation – already on the
precipice of widespread civil unrest and economic disaster – might finally
spiral into to utter chaos, into a second civil war.
But
then again, that may be exactly what they have in mind.
Jim Gorman
Clermont,
Georgia
U.S.A.