Reply #48: An essay I wrote a while back... [View All]

We are doctors, lawyers, professors, police officers, construction workers, engineers, small business owners, cashiers, ambulance drivers, etc…

We are from African, European, Asian, South American, Australian and Native American descent.

We are your neighbors, your teachers, your friends.


Yet, when we make the choice to exercise a Civil Right guaranteed to us by the Bill of Rights, we are deemed criminal. We are in your eyes the root cause of all of the evil in this nation. We committed no crimes, we do not hate, and we wish only to protect the lives and liberties of ourselves, our loved ones and our friends. Yet, we are labeled evil; we are accused of crimes that will never take place. We are accused of thought processes that we do not have. You don’t even know us, yet there is seemingly no end to how often you will accuse and berate us.


You claim it is for our children, you claim it is for the common good, you claim it is reasonable. I just cannot see it. You ask us to register our arms, but we know it is but a step to remove them from us. For that you label us paranoid, call us names, and deem us to be unreasonable. We are not so advanced in this world’s society that there can never be an oppressive government. “Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal.”- Janet Reno, US Attorney General.


Sure it starts with registration. “What good does it do to ban some guns?  All guns should be banned.”  -Howard Metzanbaum, US Senator. Then later the truth comes out as the Constitution and Bill of Rights are slowly but surely fed into the paper shredder. “I am one who believes that as a first step the U.S. should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols and revolvers ... no one should have a right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun.”- Prof. Dean Morris, Director of Law Enforcement Assistance Administration.


But these thoughts of ours you deem to be paranoid. Surely the government would stop there. Just cross good ole number 2 off and we will call it done. They won’t take away any other civil rights. You contradict yourself when you say we are a nation of good honest people. The exception to that statement of course is the gun owner. But our own elected leaders say that we are not a nation of good honest people… “If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.” And… “When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities.” Both quotes from Bill Clinton, Former President of the United States. I guess that we can cross of good ole number 4 while we are at it.


It would surely stop there you say. We should burn some of our rights at the altar of safety. We should desire to be safe, not free. Our leaders will protect us from ourselves. If they don’t we will petition them, peaceably. However, our leaders might not see it that way… “You can't say you love your country and hate your government.” Again, good ole Bill Clinton.


Perhaps I am over reacting; perhaps my point of view is wrong? Maybe the individual has no right to defend themselves from harm. As you say, we are the harm, we are the wrong. Maybe we deserve no freedom, no liberty and no justice. They are just ancient words on an ancient piece of paper that stand for nothing but an ancient, unrealistic philosophy. “I don't give a goddamn. I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way… Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It's just a goddamned piece of paper!” George W. Bush, Former President of the Unites States.