GUNS AND EQUALITY

The gun has long been called an equalizer.  As in, “God made men, and Colonel Colt made them equal.”

My friends and colleagues at the Second Amendment Foundation have a new push for this theme: see it here. http://www.examiner.com/article/saf-launches-equal-gun-rights-campaign?cid=db_articles

The gun is a force multiplier. As has been noted in this blog more than once, it allows a handful of beleaguered black Americans to fend off larger numbers of Klansmen.

The gun allows the righteous few to hold their own against many who are doing violent wrong. Do a Google search for Elfego Baca. Wise modern gun experts from Don Kates to Tamara Keel have pointed out that if you want to know how warm and fuzzy it would be to have a world without guns, you have only to look back to the outlawry and oppression of the Middle Ages.

The gun allows the female of our species – generally smaller and lighter, and always with proportionately less upper body strength and less cultural predispositioning to using physical force – to defeat men attempting to rape her.  The modern feminist version of the Old West saying about Colonel Colt and equality is the popular tee-shirt slogan that says, “God made men and women equal…and Smith & Wesson keeps them that way.” I remember one of my graduates who confronted a burglar in her home. She drew her gun and snapped, “Don’t move!” He came at her. She shot him in one of his upper limbs. He came at her again.  She shot him dead with a bullet to center chest. The shooting was, of course, ruled justified. To this day, I shudder to think what this aggressor would have done to her if she hadn’t had her SIG-Sauer.

The gun allows the poor and powerless to protect themselves as well as the rich and powerful. It is axiomatic in our country that any citizen should be able to become President. A poor kid raised by his grandparents recently did so, and got re-elected.  He and his family are surrounded by Secret Service agents with high cartridge capacity firearms. Us ordinary po’ folks don’t have heavily armed security guards provided by taxpayer funding to guard us and our families like Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, or Michael Bloomberg.  How sad and ironic that the poor kid who grew up to be President doesn’t want your potential-future-President kids to be protected as his own potential-future-President children are.

Equality. Freedom. Guns.

Yes, they all do belong in the same sentence.

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