Dear Friends,
It seems to me, a society that upholds the Right of the individual to keep and bare arms, is a more civilized, mature, prosperous and courteous one as well. On the other hand, a society that bars the individual from owning weapons, is one where the people are barbaric, hedonistic, impoverished and rude. This follows like wet after rain. There is not one example in history where this was not the case. Take the example of empire, where the citizens were armed and given a stake, that empire flourished, and when those Rights were taken away, that empire collapsed. This is because every nation, city state or empire that has ever been, or ever will be, are the people that make them up. Where the people are mature, civilized, and courteous they are also prosperous.
People who need to be mature, are mature, and people that don’t need to be… are not. One thing that forces maturity is consequence. The more immediate the stronger the effect. You saw this in older generations, where people had immediate consequences for laziness, hedonism, risk taking and being a lout… like starvation, disease for which there was no cure, mortal injury and watching your own children die. These things made people much more mature, at a much younger age than people today. The new progressive “role of government” is to help people avoid the negative consequences of bad behavior. Which obviously encourages bad behavior… a decivilizing effect. Maturity comes with responsibility… and owning a gun is nothing but responsibility.
Where most people are armed, everyone will be courteous. When dealing with someone who has the ability to harm you, no matter your position, you or I, heck, any sane person will naturally treat others with respect. Which is a civilizing factor. Courtesy is like grease to a mechanism. Put more grease on any mechanism, especially one that is dry, and the lowered friction will increase it’s efficiency. In this case the mechanism is the economy. Imagine for a moment, how much easier it would be to do business, if everyone you dealt with was courteous? How much easier it would be for them… if you were courteous too? The reduced interpersonal friction would greatly improve everyone’s standard of living as well as economic position.
The threat of retaliation for maltreatment, makes an armed people a powerful discouragement to psychopathic abuses of power. Which is why those who seek to abuse others are staunch supporters of “common sense gun laws.” If psychopathic abuses of power are taken away, people will have more liberty, and where people are also courteous and mature, the three together will add up to great prosperity. That prosperity and increase in our standard of living comes at a cost though… to those in power. It takes away from their power to abuse us without consequence, lowers their ability to take an ever increasing slice of the economic pie, and diminishes them to no better than the hoi polloi. Those who seek power over the rest of us, the “great men,” cannot abide an armed people.
Which shows us the faction that stands firmly against the people becoming more mature, courteous, civilized and prosperous… they are the heirs of Thrasymachus. Psychopaths who seek to exploit positions of power to abuse others without us being able to retaliate. To stop such equality of power… a psychopath will go to any length. That is why we have gun free zones, and they never miss a chance to exploit tragedy, to enhance their power to abuse us. They demand we give them our total trust even as they openly avow, by their disarming us, their distrust of us! No where and at no time have an armed people ever been rounded up and exterminated, no, that honor has and will always be reserved for the disarmed, helpless, starving, oppressed and politically disfavored.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
