Weapons of War: What They Are and Why We Need Them
The new gun control buzzwords being used today by the left are getting more and more creative. They have to keep coming up with new jargon and slogans to keep up their fear-mongering campaign about how guns are bad and why we must ban them. Today, however, we will discuss one such term that is both ridiculous and true at the same time: "weapons of war."
The phrase is a relatively new one being used by the left, in fact, it's the new favorite of high-profile Democrats like President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. They both tweet about them quite frequently in their attempts to gaslight the owners of sensible firearms, but more importantly, they use them to gin up fear from people who are already ignorant of what these guns are. Their fear-mongering campaign is quite effective too.
So what exactly are weapons of war, and why are they so scary? Why do they pose such a threat to society that we must ban them entirely? Depending on who you talk to, weapons of war can mean a lot of things, but the most infuriating part of that is the Democrats can't define them because they know it will destroy their narrative. A weapon of war is just that, a weapon that is used in war; it's pretty simple. But the argument gets convoluted from there because that definition applies to most of all firearms past and present. Again I ask, what is a weapon of war?
Here's one bona fide weapon of war, an M1903 Springfield rifle. The rifle was the general issue rifle to all U.S. Soldiers and Marines during World War I and II, with total service in U.S. military usage until 1970. It is a five-round magazine-fed, bolt action rifle that is chambered in the 30-06 caliber cartridge. It isn't a semiautomatic rifle; it doesn't have a detachable magazine, doesn't have a pistol grip or a flash hider on the muzzle. But it is most assuredly a weapon of war that American forces have used in at least three separate conflicts. The rifle is legal to own, with no restrictions, and is used by countless Americans for hunting, recreational shooting, and even long-range competitive shooting matches. But they won't mention that because then it wouldn't be scary enough.
Another example of a gun used in war is the Mossberg M500A2 12 Gauge shotgun. This weapon is used by the Marines, Army, and other branches of the military for a wide range of missions. It is a pump-action shotgun that holds between six and nine rounds depending on the configuration. Even with a pistol grip attachment on the stock or forend of the firearm, it does not make it fire any faster or make it any more deadly than it already is. The one modification that this shotgun can have is what is known as a choke, which is inserted into the muzzle and can either reduce or increase the spread of the pellets when they exit the muzzle. Once again, this shotgun, and many like it, is used by millions of Americans for home defense, property protection, hunting, recreational shooting, and more. But again, the Democrats and gun control advocates cannot use that as an example of a weapon of war because it just isn't scary enough.
The weapons of war the Democrats want to ban are like the one I am using in the featured image of this story. It is an LWRC M6 SPR (Special Purpose Rifle), chambered in 5.56mm, and is a lightweight, air-cooled, gas-operated, magazine-fed, shoulder-fired semiautomatic rifle with a maximum effective range of approximately 800 yards. The round it fires is also about the same size as a .22 caliber bullet, one of the smallest sizes of bullets on the market. It can only be fired as fast as I can pull the trigger. It does not create a massive hole in one's body when shot, and it most certainly does not blow organs out of the body either. When President Biden famously claimed that about a 9mm bullet, it made gun owners laugh hysterically, but it made the gun-hating left run with this lie like it was gospel.
“The .22 caliber bullet will lodge in the lungs and we can get it out,” Biden claimed a doctor told him. “A 9 mm bullet blows the lung out of the body. The idea of a high caliber weapon, there is no rationale for it in terms of self-protection, hunting.”
Biden continued with a common lie that he tells to push restrictions on the Second Amendment: “The Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute. You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed,” Biden said. “I think things have gotten so bad that everybody is getting more rational about it.”
Let me set something straight right now; weapons of war are the exact thing the Founders were talking about when the Second Amendment was drafted. As I have attested to in previous articles, I look to our past and research what the Founders who built our cherished Republic wanted and their reasons for drafting such an important amendment to our Constitution. In his 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith, Thomas Jefferson stated:
What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.
Furthermore, Jefferson included a passage from Cesare Beccaria in his essay on crimes and punishments in his "Legal Commonplace Book." It reads:
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one.
Jefferson, along with his fellow Founding Fathers, knew that in the spirit of our God-given rights to bear arms and defend ourselves from tyranny, as free people, we needed to be able to own and even carry weapons that were used in war. To reinforce the need to be able to carry a firearm, one needs to look no further than the text of the Second Amendment.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and BEAR Arms, shall not be infringed.
Notice that it mentions keeping arms, as well as BEARING them. To bear arms means to carry, to possess upon one's person, to carry the weight of an object. In this case, it is the ability to bear, or carry, a firearm. It makes no mention of only being able to bear or carry a rifle, shotgun, or pistol. No, it defines arms as an all-encompassing term because there were many forms of arms during the period of time when the amendment was drafted. There were muskets, shotguns—known as blunderbusses—pistols, and even an early form of a machine gun called the Puckle Gun. Did the Founders realize the technological advances that would dictate what firearms became and will become in the future? I don't know the answer to that question; however, I do believe that they were not ignorant of the possibility that technological advances would lead to weapons that they couldn't even conceive of.
The Founding Fathers knew then what we know now: with too much power, a government can become tyrannical. They used history as their guide, having just barely finished their own Revolutionary War against the British Empire. An Empire that became too big and consumed with power that they felt they had to rebel against. One does not need to believe that the American government will become a tyrannical power to justify the need for the Second Amendment and being able to bear weapons of war. Rather we just need to believe that there is a possibility that it could happen, and we have the right to protect ourselves if that does occur.
So yes, Mr. President, I do need my AR and other weapons of war because I understand the risks of needing one and not having it, as well as having one and not needing it.
"SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED." Remember that.
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