Push Comes to Shove, and Vice Versa

Ed Abbey once visited me at my office to talk about US immigration policy. Later, he wrote that everyone should be met at the border, given an old WWII rifle and a box of ammunition, and turned around, with the words "you know what to do with that, right?"

I'm as hard core a lefty as you will find, but the left has never understood that lack of guns and ammo by civilians is what so often generates refugee flows. 

People want to be free, but need the tools. Yes, the ballot box is our primary tool. But what if we did not have the ballot box or guns? What then?

Good lefties, such as myself, pride ourselves in living in a "reality based community" where "facts have a liberal bias" and where we not only use the Oxford comma, we generally know how to spell.

And yet, in the arena of guns, the left embraces a willful ignorance.  Here's a hint: if you don’t know the difference between caliber and gauge, stop talking and start Googling.

And if you are really interested in terrorism and/or refugee flows, start by reviewing the gun laws of Middle East dictatorships and occupying forces.

Saudi Arabia, for example, is the root of quite a lot of poison emanating from the heretic spin-off of Islam called Wahhabism.  Saudi Arabia is a theist-kingdom operated with great cruelty and corruption.  To keep it all going, guns are completely banned, even for hunting. You may own a weak and slow-to-load air pistol or spring-propelled gun for target practice, but nothing else unless you are the military.

And what about Israel, the other side of the coin?  Here we have an occupying power that denies guns to the occupied Muslim population, but specifically allows the occupiers to have guns, with a special dispensation for Jewish settlers. Any wonder the Arabs are reduced to slingshots and throwing rocks?

I loathe the violence and the gun-fondling and the porcupine quill-bristling that goes with it.  I believe in time-place-and-manner gun restrictions.  That said I also believe our Founders were not wrong when they put the Second Amendment right behind the First.

Related Posts:

• The Liberal Case for Gun Ownership