It’s Past Time To Get A Gun And Prepare For Self-Defense – The Federalist

Democrats rhetoric on guns doesnt match reality. The common sense gun control policies they say they want would just tinker around the edges of the problem of gun violence in general, and not stop mass shootings in particular. Even giving a generous benefit of the doubt to proposals such as an assault weapons ban and closing the gun show loophole, they would at best marginally reduce the number of mass shootings and their casualties.

For all of their rhetorical Sturm und Drang, such as accusations that Republicans have childrens blood on their hands, Democrats proposals would do little to nothing to stop, or even slow down, most mass murderers. Thus, unless they are stupid or faking their moral outrage, the lefts actual gun control agenda is much more radical than they usually claim.

They will use whatever outrage they can gin up to take what they can get now, then push for more. They are not, of course, the only political movement to employ this sort of incremental approach, but they are especially dishonest about it.

Charles Blow of the New York Times recently took the gun control movement to task for this duplicity, along the way admitting what we all know, which is that Democrat efforts to sound moderate on guns are lies. He acknowledges that what they (and he) want is a nonstop parade of laws, with new ones passed as they are deemed necessary, ad infinitum.

So yes, theyre coming for your guns. Fortunately, they will likely fail because Americans know we cannot trust the left to protect our families and communities.

Gun control is all about displacement. It seeks to scapegoat rural conservatives for the violence that is overwhelmingly a problem of Democratic-supporting urban areas. As Kevin Williamson recently observed:

The gun-control debate is first and foremost a culture-war issue for Democrats. There is a great deal of violent crime in the United States, and that crime is concentrated in big cities over which Democrats enjoy an effective monopoly of political power. The people who commit most of the murders in the United States and the people who most often die in those murders check a lot of Democratic-voter demographic boxes.

Gun control is also about blaming the disorder, violence, and nihilism of American life on guns, rather than on a corrupt culture. Having encouraged almost every policy and cultural change that has made America less virtuous and more violent, the left has no idea how to make America peaceful, other than piling more restrictions on guns. Violent crime thrives in Democratic-run cities, and the seeds of nihilistic terrorism perpetrated by mass shooters are most commonly cultivated in the soil of family and social decay.

It is the left that is letting violent criminals out on low, or no, bail. It is the left that excused and even cheered the riots of 2020. It is the left that refuses to secure our borders as lethal rivers of drugs flow into our communities. It is the left that rejoices in the destruction of the traditional family, even as family breakdown leads to more children being poor and abused, and as fatherless boys turn to crime.

It is the left that has torn down the moral wisdom of the ages, and is now trying to build a new morality out of half-baked race and gender theories rooted in third-hand Marxism. It is the left that is more interested in teaching children about gender than geometry.

The obvious political response to this deliberate cultural and social destruction is to vote Republican, warts and all. Parents and working families of all races are indeed fleeing the Democratic Party, which has been captured by leftist ideologues.

The next practical personal response to rising crime and cultural disintegration is to prepare to protect yourself, your family, and your community. The 2020 riots sold a lot of guns to normal people who realized their government might not protect them. And many gun owners decided to become dedicated to training for the same reason.

The obvious step after that is to organize. It is possible, even likely, that we are going to see continued increases in both general crime and targeted political violence. Democrats have shown themselves unwilling or unable to restrain crime in general, and the 2020 carnage showed that Democratic leaders will permit rioting left-wing paramilitary groups to destroy neighborhoods and rule cities at night. One need only compare the aggressive prosecutions of those involved in the Capitol riot to the lenient catch-and-release treatment of Antifa thugs to see how the left uses the power of the state to punish its enemies and reward its friends.

Furthermore, the response to the impending Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization decision has shown that Democrats are happy to sic mobs on their enemies, from Supreme Court justices to churches to crisis pregnancy centers. In response, conservatives should talk with friends and neighbors they can trust about how they might protect each other. Churches, I am sorry to have to say, need to step up their security plans. So do schools, crisis pregnancy centers, and other Christian ministries.

The more the left allows and encourages crime and social disintegration, the more the rest of us must prepare to defend ourselves, our families, and our communities.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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It's Past Time To Get A Gun And Prepare For Self-Defense - The Federalist