On the Other Hand...
by Jim Davies
Gunfight on Capitol Hill
"And if they won't," said Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) with relish on national TV in a year or so ago, "we'll tax them out of existence!"
The genial Senator is said to like his liquor, and so do I. And liquor, of course, often has the effect of loosening the tongue; so Daniel Patrick may just possibly have been speaking a tad more forthrightly than his colleagues in D.C. might have preferred.
The context of his bloodcurdling threat was an interview concerning a new kind of bullet that has been invented. It's a savage piece of armament, designed to collapse on impact so way that it rips through flesh with a set of 5 or 6 metal fingers, bent over forwards like a fish hook. It would do substantially more damage than a simple 9 mm round, and is clearly meant to kill.
Apparently the government is quite happy to see its police forces buy this ammunition, but is most worried lest you and I might do the same. So there was some discussion on the program about whether the sale of these bullets could be banned, or whether manufacturers could be "persuaded" to sell them only to policemen, and at that point Sen. Moynihan vented his threat, quoted above. "Sieg Heil!" - one might respond, while hoisting a Stein.
Who Defends?
There's mighty little, in the Constitution, about what governmnent is FOR. There's a whole heap about how it is, in this country, to be kept divided and therefore weak, and a whole list of things it is not allowed to do, including (by Amendment 9) everything it's not been expressly authorized to do - which seems to be, very little indeed.
But in Article 1 Section 8, we do see a couple of purposes the Feds have: the government here exists to "provide for the common defence and general welfare" of the people. "General welfare" could be taken care of by one annual meeting lasting half a day, because it's the exact opposite of "particular" welfare, or the favoring of special interest groups at the general expense; which is what they labor at from morning until night, in the hope of winning re-election.
However, the "common defence" is what concerns us here. This great country's Founders recognized that the prime purpose of government is to defend the people. I believe it's best if it didn't even do that much, but for sure: if government has to exist at all, defense is its only legitimate function. So, how are they doing?
I've commented in this column before that the Feds have done a dreadful job nationally; by pursuing a "world's policeman" interventionist foreign policy they have exposed us to far more danger than they have deflected. But here, let's focus on their alleged protective services on the domestic front.
State and Local defense forces (police) have done VERY BADLY in protecting the people from attack (crime). For all this century crime rates have risen, albeit with a current, welcome pause. The police have become better and better equipped, with little by way of funding being witheld from them; yet We the People are in ever greater danger of violent criminal attack, often random.
Much of it stems from government-created squalor and its destruction of formerly stable family values in the Black communities, and any self-respecting cop will have a list of excuses ready to explain his failures; and of course in some cases they do do a fine job of detection and prosecution. But by and large, I submit that their failure is colossal. Who can deny the figures?
We are therefore left with the question: if we cannot rely upon the government to defend us, upon what defense can we rely?
Right to Life
The answer is, as it has been since the dawn of time, that we are 100% entitled to defend ourselves, in whatever ways we see fit. Each one of us has the right to live, and therefore each of us properly has the unfettered freedom to prevent someone removing that right. The right of self-defense is absolute.
It's an extremely unpleasant thought, which I certainly hope never materializes for me, but if one faces an attacker who appears likely to take away one's life, then it's perfectly moral and proper to suspend normal inhibitions and to go ahead and kill him. Naturally, in exercising such terrible judgment one must be ready to account for it. But if any should accuse one of killing in the absence of such deadly threat, a sufficient response would be that in the split second available, the appearance of the threat was real and credible.
Knowledge that most of us would react in such a way would itself be a powerful deterrant to all crime. Few crooks would willingly risk being shot by mistake.
But listen: "Now we must do much more" said President Clinton after signing the Brady Bill, referring to planned new restrictions on our right to own handguns. Instead of just reaching for a gun when faced with danger, we now have to hang around for five days!! - while our well-bodyguarded Leader threatens worse yet.
Now, in such an awesome face-off, it's a matter of kill or be killed. I imagine that the very last thing one would want to do would be to enrage the aggressor by merely wounding him. If the weapon at hand is a gun, then once the awful decision to use it is taken, the only safe action is to shoot to kill.
Accordingly, the wise course is to have ready for immediate use a weapon equipped with the deadliest ammunition on the market. Yet these government spokesmen openly boast that it will do its best to prevent us having either.
Having failed in its #1 duty to protect us, it seems resolved to stop us doing the job ourselves. So is it not high time to dispense with it altogether?