'Guns and 2008: A Powerful Unifying Force Overlooked By The Candidates?'
By John Longenecker (08/12/08)
Here’s a new wrinkle: As the 2008 presidential candidates remain mute or just vague on prime 2008 liberty questions - especially in light of the recent Supreme Court decision that gun bans are unconstitutional - you’d think they’d comment as an important plank on their platform.
Are they missing a bet? You bet they are.
There are more than 300 million guns in the hands of some 80 million adults (I said adults) in America, and most of these adults believe that non-gun owners don’t have a clue as to what guns are really all about. The so-called Gun Culture is not even about guns, and most of what guns are all about… well, it isn’t even about guns! It’s like Fishing: it may not be at all obvious that catching a fish isn’t what fishing is all about.
Much of the deeper understanding of what guns are all about – and how it relates to the Presidential Candidates - usually begins only after one elects to buy a gun and comes into contact with that culture. To outsiders, it seems fascinating and bewildering, with a misapprehension or two. As laymen and some politicians associate guns with violence, there is more distance put between gun owner and non-gun owner when gun owners would very much like to reach out and bridge the gap.
[As one example, a new organization has sprouted up in Washington, D.C., and their website reminded me of a powerful truth most non-gun owners do not see when all the gun ban crowd sees is violence. CapitalGunOwners.org reminded me that guns are not about killing, guns are about staying alive. Please visit their brand new organization’s site. They show that Washington, D.C. in fact is not in favor of gun bans, not by a long shot.]
Here’s one enthusiast making the effort by bringing part of that gun culture to the layman, and it’s the very best part of the culture. It is also one of the very best parts of our United States Culture. It wouldn’t hurt if the Candidates picked up a little on this, either.
Guns in this country represent Independence, but it’s not enough to say that, merely a thesis. The more elaborate understanding is this: in a time when officials rate their public service scorecard in terms of how much constituents depend on them, many constituents desire to respectfully decline and not be mandated to go to these people for permission for this or that. It’s a resentful concept, this idea of depending on officials so. Officials then turn up the heat and compel dependency on them by the force of law, but they make a terrible mistake: in trying to be Dad (or Mom), they attempt the wrong goal: they act on the belief that their kindness and largess are welcome by all and that they can take your place and do a better job of parenting, health management, and even safety than you can. We know this. To insist, they freeze the constituent out of the process, which is to overtake and pass the so-called Nanny State and become a state of mandated dependency. Now you get how the word Independence takes on new meaning. We don’t want to have to surrender our liberty because some officials want to play Dad.
They are more than wrong. The truth is that when it comes to personal burdens, and the first burden is that you are responsible for your own personal safety, no one can take your place as the first line of defense. I say just how in my book Safe Streets, but at the root of it, no one can take your place in many things. The failure is in the very attempt!! Crime is one such example. Socialized Medicine is another. National ID and Electronic Surveillance is another. The issue in 2008 will be whether we want more of this or less. What if want less and they don’t listen?
Where the Presidential Candidates come in is in this opportunity to serve: respect for one another comes in recognition of how we carry our personal burdens and recognize it in one another. How we raise our kids, feed them, educate them, love them, and how deeply we understand life’s difficulties is an automatic bonding of each other to each other. Politicians seem to know nothing of this and cannot imagine our being able to do without them. When policy criticizes parenting, or your health decisions or objections to education content and substitutes itself to the exclusion of the constituent, it is no mistake of good intentions: it is a hungry, predatory, self-importance motive. This, of course, is most un-American.
Our way of life began the same way other cultures did: carry your own burdens or starve and die. Many countries still live this way. America has lost its way on this and forgotten the self-respect that comes from doing it for yourself for the most part and non-interference from bureaucrats. Kindness is great, but insistence is un-American.
In Guns and 2008, it’s not about guns; it’s about the first personal burdens and how we elect to carry them in our own self-respect and liberty, or whether we will elect to be carried by others. We know that lifting of burdens in so-called compassion cannot help but lift liberties and citizen authority with them.
And it is this which will be decided in 2008.
John Longenecker is Publisher of CONTRAST MEDIA PRESS at http://ContrastMediaPress.com/
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