It’s happened again: a massacre at a school, a shock of grief and horror and powerlessness in the face of evil, and a spasm of reaction on the part of hoplophobes, sheltered liberals, mainstream media, and Democrat opportunists (a Venn diagram with extensive overlap) to demonize gun-rights advocates and to call for government to “do something”. That “something” invariably involves, in some way or other, a wish to make guns, especially scary-looking ones, go away, no matter how irrational that is, how much it involves the abrogation of essential rights, how practically and politically impossible, and, ultimately, how ineffective such an attempt would be.
The one thing that could actually work: protect the schools. We protect our banks, celebrities, and politicians with guns. We protect our children with… signs.
I’ve written again and again about this. I’ve offered some excellent links for the reader, and will give you a few of them again at the end of this post. I also encourage you to look over our collected posts on the topic, here.
I’m not going to rehearse all of that now. But I will quote something I wrote back in October, after the Las Vegas massacre:
I am 61 years old. I grew up in a rural area of west-central New Jersey. When I was a boy, all the households around me had a gun or two. We boys used to stack up hay-bales and put targets on them (a charcoal briquette was a favorite choice) to shoot at with a .22. Schools and scout-troops often had rifle ranges; I myself got a marksmanship Merit Badge while at summer camp with the Boy Scouts. I don’t recall being aware of any gun laws at all; you could buy ammo at the general store. (Gun safety was a big deal, though, and kids were taught to handle firearms carefully and respectfully.)
This was the state of normal (non-urban, middle-class, predominantly white) American culture half a century ago. Guns were an unexceptional part of that bygone world, and were easily accessible to all of us (you could order pretty much any gun you liked through the mail, by sending cash in an envelope!). Somehow, though, we hardly ever murdered each other, and mass shootings were very, very rare.
Something has changed, obviously. And it isn’t access to guns.
To those on the Left, shrieking for the government to make the pain stop by exerting more control — you celebrities, politicians, editors, and yes, you goodthinkful liberals that I know personally here in New York, many of whom I have called friends — I’ll say this:
While you were, over the last half-century, systematically destroying, displacing, denouncing, and dismantling the historic American nation and its civil society — all moral norms, every basis of public commonality, all respect for our history and heritage, public expression of religion, the nuclear family, sexual restraint, and every natural structure and category and hierarchy that held civilization together and gave young people a framework within which to learn dignity and duty and gratitude and belonging and meaning and self-control — while you were doing all that, what did you think was going to happen? And now you want to “fix” the moral and social wreckage you’ve created by disarming us against your future predations upon our rights, our culture, and upon the society we still hope, against hope, to restore and preserve?
Go to hell. This sickness is your fault, not ours. You will not degrade us any longer. If you want our arms, come and take them.
Some links:
‣ Larry Correia’s outstanding essay covering all parts of the gun-control argument.
‣ Five Thirty Eight: Mass Shootings Are A Bad Way To Understand Gun Violence.
‣ “I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.”
52 Comments
We could always try dissolving the schools. Target-rich environments without any means to defend their populations will always attract predators. Switch to home-schooling or private-schooling as the standard model and the problem would likely diminish.
Granted, some parents wouldn’t bother to educate their children, but those kids aren’t likely to be getting good educations under the current system either, so no loss there.
Gosh, you’re younger than we are. But your memories are the same.
Here in Central Virginia that ethos still holds. Instead of hay bales (too useful for other things), we have bale-shaped hard foam rubber. Works equally well with bows, too…a right good number of people like the longer hunting season allowed by bows.
The woman who cuts our hair is a fine bow hunter.
Dymphna! How nice to see you here.
Please give my best to the Baron. I hope you both are well.
jabrwok, I like your idea. The era of the factory schools is over. We could give the $9,000 a year we spend on each public school student, to their families to home school, or private school, or have a neighborhood education co-op. The hulking brick edifices are the province of Luddites.
Malcolm, heckuva post. I doubt anyone could add anything to it. I’ve shared it on Facebook.
Hmmm
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2018/02/15/reality-check-gun-permit-background-checks/
“This sickness is your fault, not ours. You will not degrade us any longer. If you want our arms, come and take them.”
I agree and would add; “And when you come for the guns I won’t be home. I’ll be at your house burning it to the ground with everybody inside. You don’t get to watch this on TV. The war you start will be brought directly to YOU.”
Fred,
Are you proud of that comment?
I have no interest in burning alive anyone’s children, and neither should you.
I don’t want a civil war. I want to be left alone.
Let’s try some actual cultural resistance, for once, before we descend to homicidal madness.
Mr. Pollack I do believe that you have hit the point right on the head with a sledgehammer. Thank you sir.
What do all the school shootings have in common? Schools! Ban schools now! It’s for the childrunz!
Oh my God Malcolm, there has been over 50 years of “cultural resistance”, and to this point we have come. You better decide which side you’re gonna be on because fence sitters and appeasers like you will be in a world of hurt. I only want to be left alone but if the genocidal Democrats come for me I will be with Fred, you might want to Think long and hard about where you will be and who you will be supporting when that day comes.
Malcolm, You might not be interested in “homicidal madness” but it’s interested in you.
Fred and Kent are merely being realistic. Unfortunate, but true.
We are where we are and our enemies are not going to stop trying to destroy what’s left of this country
You can’t say, “Come and take them!” rhetorically.
What will you do when they take you up on it?
Your comment: “What will you do when they take you up on it”. Still a believer are you? DO you believe you can vote your way out of where we are at this very late point? I HAVE thought about it. In depth. Fact is my wife and our boys can do without me at this point. She shares the same reality as me. Our boys are getting close. More so every Day. Question is, What will YOU do? Maybe I already know.
Toward All taking degreed issue with Malcolm’s – and my take.
Federalist 46 as a starting point.
“Somebody” of course is gonna have to personally visit our abode[s] to “take our guns.” In my case – as I can only speak for myself – that visit would first be made by a local authority … Again in my case, that’d necessarily be somebody I went to at least, high-school with. Or attended, with the parents.
Very likely somebody I’ve visited with, gone to church with, maybe even drank a “few” beers with.
“Win a luxurious three day stay in a Five-Star no-expense meals and a personal visit with Rahm Emanuel”?
No thanks, reckon I’ll just stay sittin’ on my porch thank you very much. I mean, if I don’t accept your Chicago Hospitality you ain’t gonna send the 101st Airborne to come and fetch me anyway?
(The 101st’s personnel by the way – unless they’ve changed the UCMJ since last I looked – can refuse to follow what they recognize as an unlawful order.)
Just my opinion of course but, don’t y’all reckon a little “peaceful assembly” is in order?
Greetings from Arkansas by the way.
Commentators here are right about the need for real changes in American education. The public school was a laudable institution, especially during the 19th/first half of the 20th centuries, but it’s reached its sell-by date (or at least most individual schools have). The thing is though, you can’t wait for others to make the necessary innovations, for chances are you’ll be waiting forever. You have to do it yourself with like-minded friends: homeschooling (my Pomeranian grandmother had a classroom and a Catholic chapel on her family’s farm), getting your kid to Slyvan learning classes, setting up with others a private school with a classical curriculum, whatever.
An apposite verse from the beginning of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations: “From my great-grandfather,[I learned] not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.”
Unfortunately, Fred is right. “Civil” wars seldom are and the survivors become such by being uncivil.
Would I enjoy burning out a family because of their stance on my rights? I doubt it now, but war has a way of changing peoples’ consciences… and rarely for the better. Knowing this, I’d prefer not being put to the test.
I recently saw a video of the Vietnamese girl running naked down a road to escape her burning village. Her flesh was on fire from napalm and the ARVN soldiers walking behind her were laughing about something. If those soldiers are still alive they know what I’m writing about.
So those who are piling on Malcolm, what do you suggest actually doing then that has a realistic chance of success? Be specific, and “eschew rancor” as Buckley would say.
I’ll go first Jason.
I posted a comment on an “e-pal’s” blog originating from the UK. I’ll paste it in here:
Mind y’all – I ain’t planting my guidon there.
Lots of tough talk.
Eager for civil war, are we? Getting excited about it? Keen to slough off that itchy veneer of decency and civility? Looking forward to showing everyone what badasses you are?
If so, you are fools.
If I must, will I fight? Yes. Will I open hostilities by murdering children in their beds, to show everyone how serious I am? Apparently some of you rather relish the idea. Do you expect me to admire you for it?
As for resistance: what we have had 50 years of is supine acquiescence as chaos and disorder have marched through our culture’s highest institutions. Our lips may have said “no”, but at every turn we have lain back willingly to be ravished.
Before we start burning children alive, might we try, just once, simply to say, with one voice and a will of iron, “This and no more”? (It would be unprecedented in my lifetime.)
Or does that take all the fun out of it for you? You can still have your blood and slaughter later, if necessary. I promise.
Malcom, what you may lack is an understanding of history. In civil wars, desperation takes hold of both sides to make their will the accepted norm. That desperation, shown usually by the weaker of the sides, shows up in more and more savage encounters. The Japanese showed it with their kamikaze attacks in WW2 (not a civil war, I know) and we one-upped them with nukes. The moslems went on killing sprees in non-combatant areas of Yugoslavia (a civil war), and the Christians one-upped them with genocidal massacres of their own. These things always turn into the lowest of the low. What sounds horrific now will be a regular occurrence tomorrow. All Fred was describing was the natural direction of war and civil war.
In three separate comments Jason.
The reason for separating is owing to Bluehost’s (Malcolm’s blog service) functionality.
https://audioboom.com/posts/6197937-civil-wars-a-history-in-ideas-by-david-armitage-part-1-of-3
https://audioboom.com/posts/6197940-civil-wars-a-history-in-ideas-by-david-armitage-part-2-of-3
https://audioboom.com/posts/6198096-civil-wars-a-history-in-ideas-by-david-armitage-part-3-of-3
Anonymous,
Thank you for the suggestion. I shall make it a point to try to learn a little about history, if that isn’t too ambitious for someone like me.
I do not, however, lack an understanding of the distinction between description and prescription. We may differ in this regard.
Jason, anyone,
Do you realize how many layers of law enforcement must fail or must stand aside to enable all of us to begin killing each other in a “civilian war”? Local law enforcement, state SBI units, Governors calling up the National Guard, or, as a last line, the State(s) National Guard being Federalized and dispatched with authority from Washington.
There can be skirmishes between groups of adversaries, but they won’t last long and only one side will possibly confront armed law enforcement…and it isn’t our side that has the tendency to do that. The Left has been known for that kind of activity and has taken casualties for their efforts. Our side doesn’t do that.
“The moslems went on killing sprees in non-combatant areas of Yugoslavia (a civil war), and the Christians one-upped them with genocidal massacres of their own.”
No, in this Yugoslav case, the Orthodox Serbs started the genocidal civil war with ethnic cleansing of both Catholic Croats and Moslem Bosniacs. The Croats and Bosniacs then responded with their own ethnic cleansing of Serbs.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Malcolm, I didn’t make that last remark you just responded to but only the first two (may be the usual bug).
Ill look at the links jk.
I could only imagine what the reaction would have been had this murderer – or the ones in Texas and Las Vegas – yelled Allah is Great as he massacred scores of innocents. We’d hear calls for new travel bans. Or if he was an illegal immigrant. We’d hear more calls for a wall. As it is, we get the thoughts-and-prayers routine.
The kid in Florida was pointed out to the authorities as a ticking time bomb. The cops told the woman that once he reaches eighteen, there was nothing they could do. The guy in Texas caused similar alarm, and the cops’ hands were similarly bound. Your tedious laundry list of right wing bogeymen did not enable the massacre. The massacre was enabled by gun fetishists whose hysteria about “gun grabbers” and gun confiscation has prevented law enforcement in gun-friendly states like Florida and Texas from doing anything.
The notion that calls for “government to make the pain stop by exerting more control” are misplaced is horseshit. When people like the shooters in Texas and Florida can get legally guns with no difficulty whatsoever, there is no control.
Other developed countries do not have materially different levels of mental illness, respect for heritage, sexual restraint, etc., than we do. None of them have homicide rates anywhere approaching ours.
The US has 4.4% of the world’s population, and nearly half of the world’s non-military guns. It is not those who are “shrieking” who have blood on their hands. It is those who have gone to great lengths to prevent any meaningful barriers being created between the homicidal and one or several AR-15’s.
I apologize to you, Jason. I’ve changed the name on that comment to “Anonymous”.
I will try again tomorrow to get this fixed.
Peter,
As I am sure you already know, there is no possibility that we will agree.
Are you talking about homicide rates, which are mostly due to inner-city gang members shooting each other, or school shootings? If the latter, where were these school shootings in our youth, when guns were already everywhere, and gun laws hardly existed? Something has gone very badly wrong in our culture, and it wasn’t brought about by traditionally minded, conservative Americans. Meanwhile the most obvious, simple, effective thing we could do — protect the schools! — is something your side won’t even consider. They’d rather keep blaming inanimate objects, and raping the culture.
You are entitled to your opinion, though, even if it is tired and tendentious rubbish. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Meanwhile, I will say it again: if you want our arms, you’ll have to come and take them.
Peter I refer you to my comment of February 17, 2018 at 5:38 pm.
Just for you Peter, gratis:
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/16/florida-shooting-white-nationalists-415672
Do I have a hope in hell that’ll prompt yourself to adjust?
Nope.
The reaction would have been precisely the same as what you see in this post: to name the enemy culture that created such a monster, and to call all good people to fight against it.
Great post. Sorry I’m late to the comments section- I was out welding new forks on the tractor. Since I don’t see something I’ve been thinking about, I’ll throw my hat in:
Maybe they won’t “come and take them”- maybe they’ll put such a tight noose on your finances that you’ll volunteer. I’ll elaborate:
-the personal savings rate in this country has been NEGATIVE for years.
– a recent poll revealed that most folks wouldn’t survive a $400 emergency.
– credit card debt is at an all time high.
When i signed up for the parent program in Utah years ago, i found out that having firearms in the home makes you ineligible to be approved. what if they suddenly determined that owning a firearm meant you were unfit for employment? Or that you must purchase insurance? I mean, i never thought scotus would uphold the individual mandate.
I can’t believe how much money i make compared to 20 years ago, and yet I’m still just barely squeaking by.
I, for one, am working through a 10 year plan to become more financially independent- more self sufficient- less dependent on corporate America, the government, the school system, and anything else that could be twisted by society and used against me.
I’m building a log home with cash on hand- no mortgage. I have enough land i could possibly grow enough food to sustain my family (on my to do list). When complete, i won’t owe anybody for it. I’m not there yet, but I’m moving in the right direction.
I’m getting to know my neighbors- finding a lot of like minded folks. I’ve got a mental list of everyone that’s got my 6, and I’ve got theirs.
I’m sure many of you are doing the same. I’m just saying get out of debt so you never have to decide between giving up your rights or feeding your starving 6 year old daughter.
* edit: i signed up to be a FOSTER parent. Forgot the word “foster”. Sorry.
If someone is willing to put themselves at great risk of injury or death in order to kill people, there is no way on earth to prevent their, at least partial, success.
An honest look at recent history (Or even a Leftist’s limited imagination) shows that AR-15’s are not nearly as lethal as can be delivery trucks or gasoline, and they are, and will continue to be, everywhere.
This point alone should preclude us ever allowing the debate to even approach including the Second Amendment and our firearm-related civil right of self-defense.
Uhm Mudflap?
You noticed that link Malcolm provided at the end of this post with the attached name Larry Correia?
The guy, if I read correctly, is residing in your exact State Utah – Now admitting I don’t have a (personal experience) clue as to how y’alls Utah CCW qualified instructors [in my State Arkansas the permits are labelled CHCL] … but anyway, at least in my state; the licensed guys are all, pretty much, networked into the system.
You might’ve noticed Mudflap my suggestion to “make it local” as it can be?
Knowledgeable legitimate Friends & Associates can, oftentimes, offer roadmaps around speedbumps.
I’d like the shootings to stop but what I hear is that this is an acceptable price for our right to own automatic weapons.
Presented in that argument are alternative solutions – better parenting, less violence in music and movies, more guns, metal detectors, more cops, and lip service to mental health.
Why don’t those against any gun regulations, just state that they don’t have a solution (because they don’t) and that it’s an acceptable cost of protecting gun rights and leave it at that?
Be honest.
Oh I know, let’s have a spelling bee! Eager for a civil war? Absolutely not, if it comes it will be horrible beyond imagination, no one in their right mind wishes for that. Burning children alive? Bloodlust? Slaughter fellow humans? Hyperbolic much Malcolm? You jump to a lot of conclusions. It is humorous when someone’s skirt slips and exposes their righteous indignation and their moral superiority. Hypocrisy is a dog that cannot be leashed. You have said several times “if they want our arms, they will have to come and take them”. Using your logic I would berate you for “talking tough” and wanting to be a “badass”, or am I to assume that you will “reason” with them and then meekly turn over your only means of defending your home and family from godless heathens?
Jim,
The solution has been in front of us the entire time (and has been rejected out of hand by those on the anti-gun side): arm the teachers. Allow those with the proper mindset to carry the means to defend the lives of our children. The coach in Florida this past week had the mindset, but we failed him and the students by not allowing him the means to defend them (and himself). Anything less is a half measure.
Whenever this solution is proposed, the anti-gun/fascist side reject it. It appears that they would prefer to use our children to further their ultimate goal.
http://www.nwahomepage.com/news/knwa/firing-up-states-first-enhanced-carry-training/979555500
“The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
Sir Robert Peel
Kent,
I’m sorry you don’t like my prose style. Thank you for giving me this example to aspire to.
But your charge that I’ve let slip the dogs of hypocrisy cuts me to the quick. Can you really imagine nothing between trembling surrender and the manly virtue of “burning someone’s house to the ground with everyone inside”? Between relinquishing our arms at the request of Jimmy Kimmel and dying alone in a standoff on my doorstep against the combined might of my local SWAT team and the four branches of the United States Military?
Think a little. Expand your imagination. Use your noodle. What would be involved in “come and take them” — i.e., mass confiscation of firearms — in the United States of America? What would have to happen before such a thing might be attempted? How would it be done? What would the response of the people be? Who would actually do the taking? How would such a thing progress? How might the people resist?
These are all interesting and important questions. Not as exciting to think about, perhaps, as the prospect of committing arson and murder for a glorious cause, but worth some reflection nevertheless.
One thing the “talkers” and sheep fail to take into account when they challenge 2A supporters on their resolve once things get zesty is the fact that we have been in many wars for a very long time. There are already hundreds of thousands of vets who have taken human life in battle…and most of us are very serious about 2A rights as most have seen what happens when civilian populations are deprived of the right to defend themselves and their families against tyranny.
If anyone thinks that the local Barney Fifes and Weekend Warriors will maintain order once confiscation starts they are very mistaken. We will not sit idly by and wait our turn with the rest of the sheeple.
We don’t have to talk big or pose…we’ve already crossed that line and will do so again if it means defending our rights and protecting our families and property against dictators. There will be no noncombatants if our children are threatened. Ignore our resolve at your peril.
Alpha Mike Foxtrot
Gulf War I, GWOT, OAF
JD,
This is one thing that is too often forgotten: that if it should come to choosing sides, it isn’t going to be the mild-mannered, law-abiding gun owner standing alone against the confiscatory forces of the government. Those very forces are made overwhelmingly of men such as yourself, whose first allegiance will be to their families, their countrymen, and the defense of their inalienable rights.
Without this understanding — that there are scores of millions of sturdy Americans who, as the Founders intended, will stand together if the worst should come to pass — “come and take them” is just empty bluster.
Thank you for visiting, for your comment, and for your service.
It is pretty easy isn’t it Mr. Doe to discern among the contingents?
Good comment. Thanks.
Echo Alpha Six Bravo w/6 Expeds (USN)
Malcolm, I remember when I realized that my neighbors, my countrymen, the guy 2 cubes over at work were going to force me to kill them to remain free. I kinda freaked. You seem to be taking it rather well. I was way more angry than you sound.
Here’s the rest of the story. I wrote this about foreign wars but it applies. I know better, all moral questions having been settled I am at peace with what must be done to ensure our grand children’s liberty. I will take no quarter when they come for the guns. I pray they never do.
“Fighting a war is an immoral act. The only moral way to fight a war is to win. Losing a war because you won’t fight to win is immoral, it’s war for the sake of war. ALL MORAL DECISIONS must be made at the outset. The decision must be made that the only solution before a holy and just God is to win. This requires, of course (are you listening John McCain and Lindsey Graham?), an actual credible threat. Then, there are no more morality questions, it’s kill or be killed. This question of “how do we fight them?” is now settled. Now you go about to kill them. You turn your entire nation and all of it’s resources to the rightly natural task of survival and you kill the enemy. Then you kill them more. You destroy their property and drive them out before you and then you kill them some more and then kill them some more again until the ones left alive submit completely. And if you have to go Old Testament to ensure the perpetuation of your people, then you do it, all moral decisions having been settled prior to the start. You do this because it is the right thing to do for your people and for your nation.
Losing is the single most immoral thing a people could do. The Geneva conventions and the UN rules of engagement are designed to prevent a winner. They were created to ensure the perpetuation of the post WWII power structure. This is why we lose, it’s by design. And it’s unnatural and immoral.
Giving a man what amounts to an eighth grade education, a rifle, and an inch thick rule book of field morality riddles and then expecting him to win is WRONG, it’s unjust. It’s harmful to the man and to our nation. The blood of every soldier’s suicide is on the creator’s of this heinous crime. May this scam’s creators and perpetrators burn in hell forever.
Small wars, slow wars, fourth gen wars, slowly escalating wars, restrictive wars, wars on drugs, wars on poverty, wars on obesity, and the coming war on guns are all bogus. They are for monetary profit and consolidation of power.”
May the LORD be with you, sir.
Fred,
I’m glad you left this last comment. I find nothing in it to disagree with.
It is because war is all that you describe that I tend to caution commenters who seem eager to have one.
If war must come — and, if the only choice is war or surrender and dishonor, then come it must — all restraint must be cast off. Win or die.
I have studied and taught Chinese martial arts for over forty years. The rule is: don’t fight unless you must. But if you must, then you annihilate the enemy, as quickly and ruthlessly as possible, with whatever you have.
So: we agree, I think. And yes, I’m angry too. Make no mistake about that.
One more thing to add to this thread:
Our commenter Peter, “The one eyed man”, suggests, as we hear so often, that other countries have lower homicide rates than the U.S. (if they actually do) because they have fewer guns.
This is false. The fact of the matter is that larger numbers of firearms actually correlates with lower homicide rates, worldwide.
For some numbers, read this.
“What do all the school shootings have in common? Schools! Ban schools now! It’s for the childrunz!”
Thinking a bit more surgically, Gary North points out that 100% of school shootings have occurred in PUBLIC (state) schools, and 100% of the shooters were students, expelled students, or recent graduates. Food for thought.
https://www.garynorth.com/public/17737.cfm
Malcolm. No one on the Right wants violence. If they did, it would have already started.
Problem is the things Fred was talking about are unavoidable and the Left will gladly do them to you. They’ve already done violence em in the streets, against Representative Scalisi and in Las Vegas though I’ll let you argue against that without rancor.
The forces we are fighting turned the twentieth century into an abattoir murdering in the 100’s of millions without a qualm.
They are absolutely proven mass killers and once started up no more amenable to reason and decency than Ebola or the Terminator
They’ll gladly burn your house down with you and yours in it on grounds of Leftists which is their twisted faith
Truth is we’ve fought a losing culture war for five years and lost every battle except the war on guns and ironically turning Russia decent while losing our own nation.
We substituted a queen for a rook and are now in check if you’ll forgive a chess analogy
Now right now its not time for anything stupid but it is getting hard, getting good and getting organized but sooner or later it will be.
Now sure men who do what Fred suggest are monsters but when it life or death? So be it. Don’t want nothing, don’t start nothing