By Justin Esthay
We've all been subjected to the assiduous media coverage. We've all been deluged with the incessantly misleading terminology from leftists. And, unfortunately, many in this country are far too credulous.
As I have long maintained, all it takes to refute the notion (which I have often heard from leftists) that "gun violence is worse than it's ever been," is a ten dollar bill. (Until 2020 anyway.) When's the last time a former Secretary of the Treasury was killed in a gun duel by the Vice President of the United States?
There are many factors surrounding the Socialist left's opposition to civilian gun ownership; a collage of stratagem and opportunism. They cannot all be addressed with brevity here, however, and therefore I shall limit my contribution to but a few of the most glaring.
• Stratagem
America was Founded on the principle that life was worth sacrificing to preserve liberty. That's not my opinion. It's a fact.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" - Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.Conversely in "modern" America, the sentiment conspicuously pushed by the Socialist left, is that it's worth sacrificing liberty to preserve life. This is, as in every other instance with the Socialist left's platform, an inversion of the Founding paradigm. And the anti-gun agenda is arguably one of the more flagrant examples of this betrayal of fundamentally "American" values.
The mellifluous lie that if we simply surrender our freedom to defend ourselves, that the state (e.g. the police) will protect us, is constantly peddled by the left. A lie which has been disturbingly effective on a hopelessly ignorant contingent of the populace. A contingent oblivious, or worse even indifferent, to the fact that more people have been murdered by their own state than perhaps any other entity in human history.
As much as any patriotic American respects their constables, the prudent American is also cognizant of the threat they would represent, if subsumed by a centralized national government. The police in Germany, for example, were promptly co-opted by the Third Reich.
"The Nazis took control and transformed the traditional police forces of the Weimar Republic into an instrument of state repression and, eventually, of genocide. The Nazi state fused the police with the SS and Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst; SD), two of the most radical and ideologically committed Nazi organizations." - Holocaust Encyclopedia.And anyone aware of this historical fact, will immediately recognize the significance of Al Sharpton's recent demand that the federal government assume control of local constabularies, as the very same brand of tyranny and blatant ultimate end goal of the American Socialist left.
The student of history, or the Christian faith, should also know murder at the hands of one's own state is hardly an isolated incident. Kim Jong Un's despotic government murders his own people as you read this. The German Nazis murdered their own people. The Russian Communists murdered their own people. King Herod murdered his own people trying to prevent the birth of Christ. Pharaoh murdered the Jews he ruled to prevent the birth of Moses. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
The American state also systematically murders the most defenseless of its own people, every day, by the thousands. (It's all but forgotten today that the Nazis started with the children too.) And now those on the left who've literally made a business out of killing the unarmed and helpless, merely because their lives are inconvenient, seek to disarm the rest of us (for which they routinely exhibit unmitigated contempt) as well. Yet far too few seem to reach the logical conclusion as to why.
The notion the state alone should be charged with the protection of the civilian population is profoundly and dangerously deluded. And anyone who subscribes to such merely vindicates Jefferson's assertion that the stupid and ignorant are fit only for serfdom.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was & never will be." - Thomas Jefferson, Jan 6, 1816.
• Opportunism
I've never been so eccentric as to believe shootings of the nature seen in San Bernardino are "staged" by the left. But they are something for which subversives eagerly wait, and upon which they promptly pounce to construe as exigencies, the solution to which is the implementation of Socialist policy in the United States.
Simply put, the Socialist left doesn't care about human life. They pretend to care about it when being perceived to do so will advance their agenda, and then outright support killing people when it doesn't. This support of whatever side of an issue benefits them at the time, is plainly illustrated by the fact that when someone dies in a shooting, life is precious and must be preserved. When a mother doesn't want her child life is redesignated a "punishment" (Obama's description) and deemed completely expendable.
One of the most flagrant instances of this duplicity I have ever personally witnessed, is when Barack Obama publicly lamented the deaths of the children who died at Sandy Hook. Because these children were shot, their lives were precious to the left. Had these same childrens' mothers simply not wanted them, however, this same man (along with all his ilk) would have celebrated their deaths as a triumph of liberty.
That anyone could take seriously the ostensible grieving of a man, who as an Illinois senator failed to vote against a bill banning the killing of born children, is astounding. But such is the Socialist constituency; it supports liars, crooks, and killers because it is likewise thronged with liars, crooks, and killers.
• The truth versus the rhetoric
That the severity of "mass shootings" is embellished, if not altogether illusory, is easily discerned by anyone bothering to make a modicum of effort into researching the facts. According to the CDC 11,208 firearm homicides occurred in 2013. (Roughly twice as many firearm fatalities were suicides. But that figure is never reported.) At first glance, to the ignorant, this likely seems a startling sum. But if one peruses further they see that 35,369 people died in automobile accidents.
Just this morning I heard a leftist (on the radio) decrying how many deaths occur to shootings "each day." Admittedly, math is not my forte, but let's take a deeper look. Shall we? The previously mentioned number of gun homicides divided across the span of a year is roughly 30 per day. The number of automobile fatalities occurring across the span of a year is roughly 96 per day.
If "preserving life" is the true basis for leftist opposition to private gun ownership, then where is the outrage regarding the loss of life in automobiles, and/or demand to ban privately owned automobiles based upon such? Banning the former is justified if, according to Obama, it "results in saving only one life." Naturally, by that criteria, so is banning privately owned automobiles. But they don't care about the deaths associated with privately owned automobiles. Most leftists simply write such deaths off as the necessary consequence of their existence and use.
Why the disparity in reasoning? Because no one's ever deposed a tyrannical state with privately owned automobiles. They have, however, done so with privately owned guns; this country exists as a direct result of civilian gun owners opposing an oppressive state by force. And civilian gun ownership serves as the biggest obstacle to imposing an oppressive state in the U.S. today.
(Some leftists actually do want to ban private automobile ownership, but for completely different reasons: "Environmentalism." Revealing that the stated justification for their position, on any issue, is always abject prevarication. The real basis for a leftist's support of or opposition to a thing, is predicated upon whether or not it augments or preserves the power of the state. If it does, they support it. If it does not, they oppose it. This is why you consistently see such causative inconsistencies amongst leftists for why they support or oppose a thing. Their position is almost invariably based upon what benefits the Socialist party at the time, as opposed to any transcendent or objectively derived ethos.)
We often hear the word "mass" in relation to shootings, as part and parcel of sensationalist rhetoric meant to induce, in the uninformed and facile, the belief that the loss of life occurring from firearms is far greater than it contextually is. You will by contrast generally never hear the word "mass" associated with automobile deaths. (Though, if automobiles suddenly became an obstacle to the establishment of a tyrannical state, you would almost immediately begin to hear such hyperbole.) When a bus in Texas caught fire in 2005, resulting in nearly twice as many deaths as those which occurred in San Bernardino, the word "mass" is not used once in reference to the fatalities by any news agency I found.
As few as 4 people (perhaps less) can be shot to death, and we will hear about the plague of "mass" shootings for days, weeks, and even months. 24 people all die together in an automobile, and it's given a mere tangential reference by comparison (if at all). A natural inquiry is born from this observation. Does the life on an elderly person on a bus mean so little? Because the obvious paradigm established by the left, and the complicit media, is that the lives of people killed by projectile weapons matter more, far more, than those who die in any other way. Get killed by a crazed shooter, and you will be posthumously memorialized for weeks on end by people who never knew your name before that day; because your death serves their agenda. Get bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat, or quietly succumb to cancer in your home, and all the same people so ostentatiously doleful at the passing of the former party, will never know the latter existed or care to an extent even remotely commensurate.
• The cost
Is the loss of life associated with civilian gun ownership warranted? As I have stated for many, many years, the answer is an emphatic and unequivocal yes. It was last year, it was this year, and it will be for more years than any of us will be alive.
According to British historian Norman Davies, Joseph Stalin killed approximately 50 million people over a period of 29 years. (Figures vary somewhat widely, but the sum is of ancillary importance. Stalin was an undisputed "mass" murderer, in the truest sense of the word, who killed millions.) Presuming such a figure (or any like it) is correct, it will always be worth sacrificing the 11,208 people which die to firearm homicides every year, to prevent a Stalin from rising to power in the United States.
It would take 4,461 years for the sum lost to gun homicide in 2013, to total the loss of life that resulted from a paltry 29 years of rule under a despot like Stalin. If you don't understand that is a more than an acceptable trade off, then you are simply estranged to all sense. We as a society already accept such trade offs in greater proportion for far less noble causes, e.g., vehicular transportation. In other words, if the freedom to drive to your favorite restaurant is worth sacrificing 36,000 lives a year, then a freedom which serves as a direct impediment to tyranny and mass genocide, is certainly worth trading 11,000 lives a year. And it always will be.
The Founders understood this. And my assertion is plainly in conformity with the "life is worth sacrificing to preserve liberty" paradigm, conveyed by Henry at the outset of this contribution; it was understood American liberty could only subsist under this pervading sentiment.
And so concludes this particular exposition upon Socialist subterfuge and imbecility.
I've never been so eccentric as to believe shootings of the nature seen in San Bernardino are "staged" by the left. But they are something for which subversives eagerly wait, and upon which they promptly pounce to construe as exigencies, the solution to which is the implementation of Socialist policy in the United States.
Simply put, the Socialist left doesn't care about human life. They pretend to care about it when being perceived to do so will advance their agenda, and then outright support killing people when it doesn't. This support of whatever side of an issue benefits them at the time, is plainly illustrated by the fact that when someone dies in a shooting, life is precious and must be preserved. When a mother doesn't want her child life is redesignated a "punishment" (Obama's description) and deemed completely expendable.
One of the most flagrant instances of this duplicity I have ever personally witnessed, is when Barack Obama publicly lamented the deaths of the children who died at Sandy Hook. Because these children were shot, their lives were precious to the left. Had these same childrens' mothers simply not wanted them, however, this same man (along with all his ilk) would have celebrated their deaths as a triumph of liberty.
That anyone could take seriously the ostensible grieving of a man, who as an Illinois senator failed to vote against a bill banning the killing of born children, is astounding. But such is the Socialist constituency; it supports liars, crooks, and killers because it is likewise thronged with liars, crooks, and killers.
• The truth versus the rhetoric
That the severity of "mass shootings" is embellished, if not altogether illusory, is easily discerned by anyone bothering to make a modicum of effort into researching the facts. According to the CDC 11,208 firearm homicides occurred in 2013. (Roughly twice as many firearm fatalities were suicides. But that figure is never reported.) At first glance, to the ignorant, this likely seems a startling sum. But if one peruses further they see that 35,369 people died in automobile accidents.
Just this morning I heard a leftist (on the radio) decrying how many deaths occur to shootings "each day." Admittedly, math is not my forte, but let's take a deeper look. Shall we? The previously mentioned number of gun homicides divided across the span of a year is roughly 30 per day. The number of automobile fatalities occurring across the span of a year is roughly 96 per day.
If "preserving life" is the true basis for leftist opposition to private gun ownership, then where is the outrage regarding the loss of life in automobiles, and/or demand to ban privately owned automobiles based upon such? Banning the former is justified if, according to Obama, it "results in saving only one life." Naturally, by that criteria, so is banning privately owned automobiles. But they don't care about the deaths associated with privately owned automobiles. Most leftists simply write such deaths off as the necessary consequence of their existence and use.
Why the disparity in reasoning? Because no one's ever deposed a tyrannical state with privately owned automobiles. They have, however, done so with privately owned guns; this country exists as a direct result of civilian gun owners opposing an oppressive state by force. And civilian gun ownership serves as the biggest obstacle to imposing an oppressive state in the U.S. today.
(Some leftists actually do want to ban private automobile ownership, but for completely different reasons: "Environmentalism." Revealing that the stated justification for their position, on any issue, is always abject prevarication. The real basis for a leftist's support of or opposition to a thing, is predicated upon whether or not it augments or preserves the power of the state. If it does, they support it. If it does not, they oppose it. This is why you consistently see such causative inconsistencies amongst leftists for why they support or oppose a thing. Their position is almost invariably based upon what benefits the Socialist party at the time, as opposed to any transcendent or objectively derived ethos.)
We often hear the word "mass" in relation to shootings, as part and parcel of sensationalist rhetoric meant to induce, in the uninformed and facile, the belief that the loss of life occurring from firearms is far greater than it contextually is. You will by contrast generally never hear the word "mass" associated with automobile deaths. (Though, if automobiles suddenly became an obstacle to the establishment of a tyrannical state, you would almost immediately begin to hear such hyperbole.) When a bus in Texas caught fire in 2005, resulting in nearly twice as many deaths as those which occurred in San Bernardino, the word "mass" is not used once in reference to the fatalities by any news agency I found.
As few as 4 people (perhaps less) can be shot to death, and we will hear about the plague of "mass" shootings for days, weeks, and even months. 24 people all die together in an automobile, and it's given a mere tangential reference by comparison (if at all). A natural inquiry is born from this observation. Does the life on an elderly person on a bus mean so little? Because the obvious paradigm established by the left, and the complicit media, is that the lives of people killed by projectile weapons matter more, far more, than those who die in any other way. Get killed by a crazed shooter, and you will be posthumously memorialized for weeks on end by people who never knew your name before that day; because your death serves their agenda. Get bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat, or quietly succumb to cancer in your home, and all the same people so ostentatiously doleful at the passing of the former party, will never know the latter existed or care to an extent even remotely commensurate.
• The cost
Is the loss of life associated with civilian gun ownership warranted? As I have stated for many, many years, the answer is an emphatic and unequivocal yes. It was last year, it was this year, and it will be for more years than any of us will be alive.
According to British historian Norman Davies, Joseph Stalin killed approximately 50 million people over a period of 29 years. (Figures vary somewhat widely, but the sum is of ancillary importance. Stalin was an undisputed "mass" murderer, in the truest sense of the word, who killed millions.) Presuming such a figure (or any like it) is correct, it will always be worth sacrificing the 11,208 people which die to firearm homicides every year, to prevent a Stalin from rising to power in the United States.
It would take 4,461 years for the sum lost to gun homicide in 2013, to total the loss of life that resulted from a paltry 29 years of rule under a despot like Stalin. If you don't understand that is a more than an acceptable trade off, then you are simply estranged to all sense. We as a society already accept such trade offs in greater proportion for far less noble causes, e.g., vehicular transportation. In other words, if the freedom to drive to your favorite restaurant is worth sacrificing 36,000 lives a year, then a freedom which serves as a direct impediment to tyranny and mass genocide, is certainly worth trading 11,000 lives a year. And it always will be.
The Founders understood this. And my assertion is plainly in conformity with the "life is worth sacrificing to preserve liberty" paradigm, conveyed by Henry at the outset of this contribution; it was understood American liberty could only subsist under this pervading sentiment.
And so concludes this particular exposition upon Socialist subterfuge and imbecility.
