Don't Believe In the Gun, Believe In the Citizen

Unsafe streets are unsafer almost entirely due to restrictions on the freedoms of the citizen to act in an emergency involving violence. Though states affirm the armed citizen, major cities refuse. All gun control interferes with the average reasonable person and it escalates crisis to the gain of the State. But some states do not want to preside over crises when they can preside over prosperity, “prosperity” meaning some of the greatest wealth: freedom. Everyone prospers under freedom better than under any other system. The word takes on new meaning under freedom.

I often receive letters for my position — the repeal of all gun laws. I answer every one of these. The idea is not to do without laws, but to erase all of the adversity gun control has caused and to start over. I am reasonably certain that America would write a few gun laws, but only a handful, having now lived with the disaster that is the political punishment of freedom. And punishing freedom is what gun control is about. Limiting one’s latitude to act in time of emergency aggravates adverse social conditions. This then cultivates an attitude of need or political remedy. The safeguard of freedom is undermined in mandates, such as gun control, and the crisis grows.

But not all public servants agree with this sort of governance. When it comes to the armed citizen, forty-eight states affirm their constituents’ right to carry a loaded sidearm, they don’t fight it or feel any mandate against it. Do these people like guns? No, not likely. What these people do like is propriety and integrity. In affirming the concept of the armed citizen throughout their state, these legislators do not believe in the gun, they believe in the citizen.

One letter I received suggested that more gun regulation will mean less violence and therefore there is no need for defensive guns to be carried. The person asserted that only police should have guns. I responded that the armed citizen can do things the police cannot do: be present at the scene of the crime. This will always be the case. Someone present who can act with the lawful latitude to act will likely make the difference between survival and the alternative. That someone is usually the target of the violence, a target who refuses to be a victim.

Why do a majority of states agree with the second amendment and affirming of the armed citizen? It is a difference in values and integrity. The health of the second amendment is the primary indicator of the overall health of the nation. You can forecast how officials will treat America by the way it treats gun owners. For instance, those forty-eight states respect their citizens by respecting their latitude in how they travel armed and safer when in the absence of police. Remember that an armed citizen carries a loaded sidearm because a policeman is too heavy. Remember that where the armed citizen is, so the law is also. These are your greatest allies of law enforcement, and this friendship irks the statists.

Gun control is not a matter of hating guns, it is a matter of hating your personal independence from them. Forty-eight states agree. Gun rights is not a matter of loving guns, either. It is a matter of believing in the citizen. When the public servants believe this way it is much more a case of shared values, and it is they who should be elected and re-elected.

In a country where the citizen is the Sovereign, legislative latitude for the armed citizen is a matter of integrity and of respecting the Sovereign. This is no surrender to the so-called “gun lobby”. It is a respect for the people they serve. The Sovereign is the one most properly armed (as they choose and where they choose).

When these legislators step up and affirm the armed citizen, they are likely to step up with integrity on many other things, such as spending, political correctness, courts, and perhaps even jobs. The very best expression of integrity would be, of course, no gun laws anymore, period. It may be very refreshing and healthful to see what else falls away as redundant and unwanted once people are respected again.

We ought to give it some thought before 2012. The streets will be safer only with a return to self-rule and smaller government.