The other day I was in a discussion with a left-leaning relative. Now if you have read my ramblings here you may be aware I don't think much of the left. I will for now avoid listing all their hypocrisies and devious ways because to be honest it gets boring recounting what is already obvious to anyone who can think, so let's move on. The important thing to know is this relative, apart from thinking socialism will one day magically solve all the problems it has failed to solve in the past, is a good person.
As fate would have it the young man works in advertising, and in fact some of his greatest successes have been to help persuade people to pay for things they enjoy. As we all have to pay for things we don't like, it comes as a refreshing change to cough up for something that gives pleasure. But hey, that's the evil of capitalism for you, right? Socialism would never approve of such a horror.
Anyway, the conversation moved round to guns, which may seem odd in a society that technically doesn't have them. Plenty of people in Britain do, and some of them are law-abiding citizens. But as I say, the impression is we in these islands ought not own a weapon that uses gunpowder to propel a small piece of metal.
Ought not perhaps, but a lot of people are armed and it isn't just in the major cities. A taxi-driver in a small town once told my wife he had found a gun on the back seat of his cab after fare paying passenger got out, which he turned in to the police.
My relative was shocked when I said I would own a gun if I could. Not you understand to leave on the back seat of taxis or even to shoot innocent people. But I would want it for a degree of self-protection on the basis of defending the people I love against someone breaking in to my home. I am not sure I could shoot someone but if push came to shove and it was an illiterate yob or me or my family at risk I admit that my feeling is the illiterate yob ought to be persuaded to go away. As wise words might not be enough to deter IY the gun would come in handy.
It wouldn't be a toy. The important thing would be to learn how to shoot accurately, how to clean and load the weapon, how to be responsible with it. My family would learn too how to use it and treat it with care. I may even feel a gun would be useful when various hordes are rampaging the streets looking for food and may think my family's food ought to be theirs, but that's a dark future yet to be visited on us.
My relative was adamant, in a nice way as he is a kind person at heart, that guns are bad and lead to evil. Apparently in the left-view guns equal terrible things, though it is okay for agents of the state to be well armed and have those with the correct line of thinking able to carry the sort of weapons that you can't have. He didn't believe entirely that as we gradually see more government power it means more guns, though only on one side but not the other. Yes, yes, I know... I hear the lefty whines that the bigger government is the more they are on our side, which of course is why they act in a superior fashion, make decisions based on whim and chatter and live separate lives to you and me.
But the age old fear of bullets or ballots raises its head again. You would have to ask would I have a gun to influence the ballot box? Not at all, because I no longer believe the ballot box brings good government. It brings people to power who want power at any price and allows them to make very good living for themselves while handing out orders to those who are denied. Me having a gun wouldn't change any of their selfish desires so I leave them to count the ballots as they wish and manipulate (or ignore) laws to allow voting fraud.
Oh yeah, that happens but hey, let's not talk about it too much.
A gun is not the embodiment of evil. Not in the way that controlling people to make them slave away and staying cowed while tossing them distractions (bread and circuses, anyone?) is evil on a grand scale. A gun is, in the end, a tool and like all tools it has to be maintained and treated with care. It isn't a political position, or a statement of 'manliness.'
If a dark future is visited on us, and it may be closer than we would like given the sort of decisions our elected leaders make so liberally, a gun would be a tool that may save a life I care about. Of course, I could just call up an agent of the state and ask, nicely, if they would mind coming round to save me and mine. But maybe the phones are out, the agents of the state have run away and are in hiding, or even if I ask they could respond: "We'd send someone over but they're probably in the baying mob outside because everyone is as equally hungry."
Using a handy tool to stay alive may well be no bad thing at all. But before you get excited and think I am bristling with weapons I have to say I obey the law as it is: I don't have a gun at all, other than a fake 1847 pepperbox pistol for when I dress up in my steampunk top hat and goggles and victorian walking cane. As the gun has no moving parts and solid barrels I don't have to clean it, so that's an advantage.
On the other hand I might get into taxi one day and find a gun on the back seat, dropped by some low-life or would-be terrorist. I really hope it's a fully loaded Glock, is all I can say.
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