St. Patrick's Day and the Second Amendment
Yesterday I went to my favorite pistol range with my folks and my brother. We shot my mother's .357 Magnum, my father's Taurus Judge(TM), my brother's Colt 1911 (which was a graduation gift from me), my 9mm, and we rented a Desert Eagle with a .44 Magnum barrel (that was pretty damn fun, and a pretty easy kick for a .44). Fun was had by all, but that's not why I'm writing this.
About halfway through our time at the range, a large group of guys came into Patrick's and started looking around. They proceeded to rent most of the guns in the rental case, and most of the lanes on the range. They came in, set up, and started chewing through ammo like popcorn. They shot 9mm, .45 ACP, .38 Special, and .44 Magnum. I want to reiterate: ammo like popcorn.
I started talking to some of the guys and came to find out they were a group of Irish Firefighters who were among the first foreign agencies to come to the United States to assist the clean-up after 9/11, and they had visited the US every year following. They had come to Savannah to shoot handguns at Patrick's because (and I am quoting), "We have rifles and shotguns, but we don't have handguns in Ireland at all." At all. AT. ALL.
Folks I'm telling you this story to put things in perspective. I have had the misfortune during my short time on this planet to listen to people try to prove that there would be no violence without guns, the same as there would be no war without Armies, and that we should look to other nations around the globe who have outlawed guns as an example to all of us... And yet a group of Firemen from one such country was willing to cross an ocean every year for eight years, after cleaning up a terrorist atrocity, something they see regularly on their own soil, just for the privilege of shooting a handgun for a few minutes.
I thought about this and I realized something: We (the United States) are still the envy of the free world, we are still the benchmark by which democracy and freedom is measured, and we are still the greatest social experiment in the history of mankind.
I also realized something else: Everything we consider a right is in fact a privilege. There is no guarantee that the "rights" you go to sleep with tonight will be the ones your wake up with tomorrow. "It's always been that way," is the mantra of the weak. "We've always done things that way," is the creed of the ignorant.
Always remember:
At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that news is not something that happens to other people. - Robert Heinlein
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. -John Stuart Mill
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. -George Orwell
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin
Folks, the worst thing in the world to a Soldier is the thought of fighting for a cause only to have it undermined from within. Everything you think of as a right is a privilege that can be lost if you stop paying attention. Protect your "rights."