Article by Kurt Schlichter in Townhall
Don’t Ban Assault Weapons – Make Them Mandatory!
I was gravely disappointed with Judge Robert Benitez’s California federal court ruling that the Golden State’s ban on “assault weapons” like AR-15s is unconstitutional. It manifestly is unconstitutional, but the judge’s ruling does not go far enough. He should have found that our Constitution requires every healthy, law-abiding adult citizen to have a real assault rifle like an M16 – or, because diversity is important, an M4 – to defend his community and his country from all enemies both foreign and domestic.
That’s my modest proposal du jour – make our peaceful and secure society’s free riders carry their own rucks for once. We need to stop outsourcing the dirty and dangerous work of protecting society to the LEOs and soldiers who make up maybe 5 percent of the population. The other 95 percent need to get with it. It is people with guns who built and maintain a society so peaceful and prosperous that ridiculous twits can babble about “privilege” and engage in similarly frivolous nonsense without a care in the world. You can’t in most places – you’re either too busy trying not to starve, or the local tough guy would squash you like a bug for running your fool mouth. Somebody has to defend the freedom of idiots to explore the outer limits of their own idiocy, and for too long only a small percentage of citizens have picked up a rifle to do it.
I say, “No more.” I say that freedom isn’t free and everyone needs to get out his, her or xir checkbook. Pick up a rifle and get citizening!
This is not a new idea. There was a time when every able-bodied adult male was in a militia. They packed heat to protect hearth n’ home, whether from the French, or the British, or the rampaging relatives of Elizabeth Warren. Today, the threat is criminals and aspiring tyrants – an armed citizenry, including males, females, and people claiming bizarre pseudo-genders, provides a potent deterrent to both crooks and dictators, and a means to defeat them if they get frisky.
What’s a solution to riots? Armed citizens.
What’s a solution to thugs? Armed citizens.
What’s a solution to people who want to use the power of government people with guns to silence you, prevent you from praying, and generally make you a serf? Armed citizens.
We don’t need to get rid of cops or troops. We just need to back them up, 5.56mm style.
Some scoff at the notion of citizens defending themselves, but many of them have the same vibe as the Vietnam “protestors” who stopped chanting “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh” the second the draft ended. They just don’t want to pull their weight.
In fact, an armed citizenry equipped with effective military grade weapons – no AR-15s here; we’re talking real assault weapons – can do a lot of useful things. Some putative male sap who you probably heard of from his leftist mewlings on social media once told me I was nuts for thinking our civilization might ever descend into savagery. I sure appreciate how he assumed that real men would keep his world stable for him as he typed his sissy screeds, but the fact is that society can come to a screeching halt in an instant. I was with the Army in the LA Riots – a real insurrection, as opposed to the mini-surrection the panty wetters are still whining about. And citizens regulated; there was nowhere safer than underneath the eavers of a building guarded by rooftop Koreans.
As for a bunch of citizens not being able to challenge “the military” (or, rather, the treacherous remanants of the military after the majority refuse to follow orders to kill fellow citizens at the order of some hypothetical tyrant), I direct you to Afghanistan. And Vietnam. And here, 250-ish years ago.
It’s wacky to think we might be threatened by a dictator? Us conservatives don’t need convincing, but you libs just spent four years telling us how Trump was practically Hitler. Was that all just bull-Schiff?
There are other salubrious effects of requiring every citizen to take personal responsibility for the protection of his family, his community, his state, and his Constitution. When every citizen owns a weapon, with the expectation that they will join together with other citizens in times of strife and chaos, that focuses their minds wonderfully. They are engaged, and cognizant that American citizenship is not a spectator sport. Because it shouldn’t be.
Outsourcing the tough stuff has made us weak and timid. Adults blubber that mean tweets have them literally shaking. Grown men wear masks while jogging. Grown women read Fifty Shades of Grey on purpose.
This unbefitting a great people, a warrior people.
We must demand of ourselves rigor and risk. We must demand that everyone step up. We must stop being a nation of sheep and one of, well, mostly not sheep. There will still be some sheep, but they should be shamed and scorned. Possessing your automatic weapon would be both a privilege and an obligation. We can exclude people who are physically, mentally, or emotionally unable to do it. We can bar felons. We can have conscientious objectors too, if they actually have a real religious objection as opposed to just not wanting to do their fair share. They can be medics and serve as citizens with honor. But otherwise, do your duty, fellow American.
Now, there’s an argument that the Constitution does not mandate that we all own an automatic rifle. It’s a bad argument. If we have learned nothing over the years we have endured liberal jurisprudence, it’s that the Constitution says whatever we want. No duty to have a M16? Look closer. It’s right there lurking in the penumbras and emanations next to the right to off your baby.
Where would the guns come from? Hey, we pay people not to work so we can pay for their rifles. Would they be trained? Yeah, basic rifle marksmanship should be a high school graduation requirement – it’ll do kids good to get some sun and to get away from commie teachers trying to blame them for slavery. But wouldn’t there be the danger of bad people doing bad things? Yeah. And? Everything has risks, including being an unarmed, passive wimp, which is very risky indeed. Besides, anyone thinking over playing horsey with his gat is going to have to factor in that everyone else has their own piece locked and loaded. As Robert Heinlein observed, an armed society is a polite society.
A lot of people will reject my modest proposal, most of them not because it’s a bad idea – it’s a great idea – but because they don’t want to have to do it. It’s hard when you have a weapon. You have to be responsible. You can’t be a knucklehead. And you might get in a situation where you could get hurt. But those aren’t bugs – they are features. Doing hard things makes for a hard people, a serious people, not a collection of perpetually offended weenies just waiting for the Chi Coms to turn us into a colony – or some leftist caudillo here at home turning us into Venezuela II.
Look, Judge Benitez deserves credit for his thorough and compelling defense of the right to keep and bear arms in the face of the lib-fascists’ determination to disarm and disenfranchise us. We just need to take the next step, and demand that every healthy, adult citizen step up.
