While a nation wept, a president raged.
“When, in God’s name,” he seethed, “are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?”
In a moment of sorrow, it was an attack. On me, and on millions like me, across the country, who own firearms or believe in the right to do so.
It was a reminder that this is an election year, and politics never go away, and the agenda is always the agenda. And while a nation was dazed and broken, a senator dashed to the floor to make the speech he always makes and a president used the lines he always uses and we were reminded that there is never a reprieve.
So let me respond.
No matter the motivation or passion of the gun banners, their proposal is impossible. You cannot confiscate the millions of firearms in America. You cannot send the police to every closet to seize every grandfather’s shotgun, or to every purse to impound every mother’s handgun. It simply can’t be done. A coast-to-coast search, through every home and vehicle, would not get them all.
Certainly, you could ban their sale. Outlaw all the guns and ban all the bullets and intimidate the percentage of the population who obey the law into complying. But all you would have done is disarm the law abiding – which may be your objective.
Those who are willing to break the law – like every single person to commit a mass murder or violent assault – will not be disarmed. No matter what you do.
The predators will still be predators and the law will still be meaningless to them.
And criminal syndicates that are able to smuggle some three million pounds of cocaine into the United States each year – and larger amounts of both marijuana and fentanyl – will have no problem smuggling in enough black-market guns to arm the criminal takeover of American society.
You will disarm the good and empower the bad.
You already outlawed violence, and it is increasing dramatically. No honest person can believe that outlawing guns will lead to fewer guns or less bloodshed.
Outlawing guns will lead to more victims.
Because when the sheep can’t fight back, the wolves attack more ruthlessly.
And as a practical matter, in a decaying culture with ever more criminals and ever fewer values, the ability to fight back is not just a natural right, it is a moral responsibility. Mothers and fathers have an obligation and an instinct to protect their families – including against violence. And in the most dire of circumstances, the only effective tool against violence is violence.
The right to fight back cannot be abridged by the Democratic Party or the American government. No one can tell you that you can’t protect your family or yourself. And if the bad guy comes with a gun – as the evening news proves to you he might – you have the right to defend yourself with a gun, if you so choose.
That’s a freedom of choice the president and his party ignore – the choice to live, and the choice to fight to live. Every American has that right. And neither the president nor the senator nor their political party can take that away from you.
And the horror in Texas – like the horror in Buffalo and the horror in the subway and the horror on the streets of every American city – is not an argument against the right to keep and bear arms, it is a proof of the pressing need to keep and bear arms.
Because you never know when, where or how evil will attack.
But you need to be ready. Every day, in every way.
And that’s not paranoia, that’s reality. A reality spreading across the county in large part because of the policies and priorities of the president and his political party. If the law will not protect you, you must have the option of protecting yourself.
If the Democrats and the governments they control are going to side with the criminals, you are going to have to side with yourself.
And that includes having the right to arm yourself, if that is what you choose.
That makes you the gun lobby.
That makes you who the president was yelling at last night.
And that makes him wrong.