Gun control is the big topic right now, and it seems that Democrats have a huge race on to prove who is more interested in the public safety.  Mario Cuomo is going to come out with the biggest and best gun laws ever, he says.  They’ll be super strict, he brags.  The strictest in the whole land!  Dianne Feinstein, of course, is trying to do whatever is necessary to take as many guns as possible, and Joe Biden is now flat out saying what anyone who understands the Constitution knows to be an incredible abuse of power–President Obama may sign an Executive Order banning some/certain/all guns (or at least making it incredibly difficult to own them).  None of this is really news, because Obama has always been against guns; well, except for very limited hunting use, and as Gov. Cuomo yelled today, “you don’t need ten bullets to shoot a deer!”  He’s apparently has never seen some people hunt, but I digress.

So is this where we are, at the beginning of a new, unarmed era, where the government has all the guns and the citizens are unarmed sheep?  The government, of course, claims that this is “safer,” because naturally if the government bans all guns, no one will shoot up schools and malls, right?  Certainly the fact that Sandy Hook was a gun-free zone stopped Adam Lanza…oh, right.  So, the gun-free zone sign at the Oregon mall stopped that shooter, though….oh.  No, actually a private citizen with a concealed weapon stopped that one.  Good thing he hadn’t noticed the gun-free zone sign or there would be a lot more dead.  We can argue the finer points of crime under gun control all day long.  Facts don’t lie–Chicago’s gun laws are a testament to what happens when you refuse to allow citizens the natural right to self-defense.

The problem here is not even that.  It is not crime or hunting or whether you think it’s “scary” to have teachers protecting your children with guns.  In fact, the longer we discuss all of this, the less we discuss the absolute core issue here.

The Second Amendment is meant to protect you from the exact people who are currently trying to take guns out of the hands of the populace.

It is that simple.  It is that cut and dry.  Ignore criminals for a moment.  If the government is the only ones with the guns, what does that make you?  It makes you powerless.  This country’s very existence was made possible because of guns.  The ability of citizens to rise up against their tyrannical government was predicated on firepower.  They didn’t simply dump some tea in the harbor and say “England, we decided we don’t like you,” and King George didn’t just reply with, “Righto then, good chaps.”  There was blood.  Explosions.  Rockets.  Guns, lots of them–held by patriots who had no other way to defend their natural rights and their own freedom.  Without those guns, they would have had no recourse.

So what happens when you have a group of people without guns, and a group of people with guns?  You have slavery.  What if blacks had access to firearms in 1855? Would they have been slaves?  I venture not.  No man (or woman) worth anything would willingly be a slave, especially if the means to defend his own personhood and freedom is within his grasp–even if the fight for said freedom cost the ultimate price.

It is currently thought by most Americans that politicians are sleazy, nasty people with no integrity, no thought for the common man, and no interest in furthering justice or liberty, only their own ends.  So why is it, then, that so many people suddenly think that politicians screaming that we should give up our guns are benevolent, honest, decent human beings?  They do not want your guns because they want you safe.  If your safety was actually their concern, they would support your right to use any means necessary to protect yourself and your family.  They do not want guns in the hands of citizens for one reason and one reason only: Guns equalize the unequal.  If you are a female who is 5’2″ and you are confronted on the street by a man who is 6’0″, do you have a physical chance against him?  Probably not…but if you have a loaded .45 in your hand, suddenly you are equal.  You are no longer a victim, you are an adversary–and no criminal wants an adversary.

If you own a gun, you have the means to stand up against an out of control government.  You have the means to stand up against the nightmare that the Founding Fathers knew would eventually come.  They saw it.  They knew it was probable because they understood the nature of man and the propensity to corruption.  They knew that the perfect system they created would not last forever, and sooner or later the citizens would be called upon to return to their roots, to remember what color the blood was that purchased their freedom.  For many citizens in this nation, that time is now.

This will not be the beginning of a new era, where we are reduced to helpless, defenseless sheep in the hands of a government that seeks only more and more control over its people.  If the government comes after the guns of Americans, it will be a return to the beginning–and the end result will be the same.