Guns in the USA. By Danny Boes

Guns in the U.S.A.

NATIONAL SECURITY: Speaking from a military perspective, the most difficult thing in the world to do is to try to capture a city where there is someone with a gun in every structure. This style of warfare can be called "attrition". The campaign is very costly in all resources (time, food, fuel, ammunition, soldier's lives) and is avoided at all costs by those who wage war. After all, the object of war is to gain more resources than you lose, not to break even.

In war, just like business, for it to be sucessful, it must also be profitable. The point here is that a city can deter an invasion by simply having it's citizen population armed. A disarmed population is the first morsel of temptation necessary to get an aggressor nation calculating it's ability to take over the weaker, unarmed country. This deterrent to capture saves the lives of every citizen in the country. Some may think "We live in a modern society, the capturing of countries doesn't take place any more. That's just in the history books".

Well, wake up! The ever downsizing U.S. military does not have the ability to protect every square mile of the United States at the same time from invasion. It is absolutely required that the citizens of a country be armed so as to preserve the security of each state and thereby, insure domestic tranquility.

CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY: All communities in the U.S. are patrolled by some sort of police or sherriff department. The term for such agencies is "Law Enforcement". The purpose of law is to serve people. Service to the citizens is provided by insuring fairness to all who live in the community. To insure fairness, laws are written to outline fair conduct that is expected among all of the members of the community. (For example: the law says that you are not allowed to steal because it is not fair to the owner who has worked hard to purchase that which has been stolen.)

If someone breaks the law, it is the job of law enforcement to find the guilty party and bring the guilty party to justice. Hence the name "law enforcement". The presence of the law enforcement personnel in the community provides a deterrent to crime but not without limitations. The phrase that we are all familiar with from seeing TV shows is "To Serve & Protect". Protection is different than enforcing the law. Protection means that steps are taken to prevent something bad from happening. The enforcement of law requires something bad to happen first, THEN steps are taken to deal with the law having been broken. A hundred body guards to protect me is better than to have no protection from harm but 1000 police to find the bad guy after I've been hurt. If given the choice, I'd rather avoid getting hurt over being provided with the finest team of bad guy catchers.

Here is where it gets tricky. The law enforcement community is not required by law to provide you with protection. That's right. Nowhere in the constitution of the United States or in your local or state laws is it written that the police shall provide you with protection. If the government were required to provide you with protection, then anyone who has ever been the victim of a crime could sue the government for failing to provide protection. Furthermore, governments have immunity from legal action against them. People need protection from harm. In a way, almost the opposite is true. Most places in the United States have laws on the books that require you to assist or come to the aid of a police officer if you are directed to do so. Whose responsibility then, is it to protect the citizens? It's the citizen's responsibility to protect themselves. This being true, it is absolutely required that citizens have the means to protect themselves. Self preservation is the oldest law of nature and applies to both man and animal alike.

(It should also be noted that there is one police officer for every 35,000 citizens in this country. Do you really believe that the police have the ability to protect you, 100% of the time?)

The constitution of the United States (in the 2nd Amendment) does not grant the right of the people to keep and bear arms but rather, recognizes that mankind comes from his maker with this pre-existing right and says that no law of the land shall be written to infringe upon that right. Millions of people's lives are saved every year through the proper use of firearms as a tool of self protection. By comparison, an extremely few number of people are wrongly injured through the misuse of a firearm.

Some will say that because a very few number of people are hurt every year by the improper use of a firearm, that we should ban firearms and thereby effectively cause millions of people to die because they can't protect themselves. That way, we can all regress to a cave man style barbaric society that has only one law. Whoever has the biggest muscles is in charge. No voting, no government, just tyranny. No thanks! Armed people are citizens. Unarmed people are obediant little peasants who have no voice ( or vote) before their opressing king or dictator. Sure, why not? What makes you think that the government will listen to the wishes of an unarmed population? The voice of the people is backed up by the ownership of firearms the same way that paper money is backed up by gold sitting in the federal reserves.

SUMMARY: The founding fathers of the United States knew the lessons learned by all the governments of past history. In order for people of a country to live in freedom, they knew that there had to be certain elements in place for that to be possible. The list of these things were put on paper in the document called "The Bill of Rights". So important is the ownership of firearms by the citizen population in preserving freedom that it was listed at the very begining.

The First Amendment, (the freedom of speech) is possible only by the 2nd Amendment (the right of the people to keep and bear arms). Because these first listed rights are so important, as an extra measure to protect those rights, the 9th Amendment was written. The 9th Amendment says that is is unlawful to attempt to remove rights from someone. A person with a gun will be listened to sooner that one without.

Freedom isn't free. The price for freedom is that someone from each generation must rise up and be prepared to protect freedom through the use of force so that we may all live in a peaceful society. Armed citizens and freedom go hand in hand. One can not exist without the other. We as citizens of the United States of America must make our voice known and repeal the unconstitutional laws that have been written to deprive productive members of society of their ability to lawfully keep and bear arms.