Medium - Gun Rights Article
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dear gun rights advocates. Hey, congratulations. A concession speech toe all you really Americans out there By TIMOTHY Crater This audio experience was created for medium members. There comes a time to put aside petty partisan differences and extend a hand across the aisle to your fellow countrymen. Even though I am a progressive who has always supported stronger Seigner gun safety laws today offered my somber, somewhat grudging but heartfelt congratulations to gun rights advocates on what will always be remembered as a great day for the second and then men. This weekend's double header is only gratuitous confirmation of what was already a foregone conclusion. You have won the right to bear arms is evidently inalienable. No argument can persuade. You know slaughter can shame you into second guessing your convictions or giving up an inch of ground. The corpses in the aisles, the widowers and orphans, the prosthetics and colostomy bags, the sidewalk altars and pint sized caskets are all testaments to your victory. This is your country with one you wanted. This is an emotional time for all Americans, but for none so much as gun owners who shock and sorrow are tempered with very real fears and concerns for the future of gun rights in this country. So let me also offer my sympathies to the real victims of this tragedy, forgotten as always, in the mainstream media's model in focus on the faces of the dead, the grieving families that candlelight vigils, innocent, law abiding gun owners who will inevitably find their constitutional rights under assault once again do not be discouraged by this pre spate of bad PR. We all know there'll be a lot of scary, hysterical talk about new restrictions, waiting periods and background checks, bump stocks and silencers. But we also know it's just so much grandstanding for the cameras, and it will all blow over after a few days and soon be forgotten again. It is thanks to you, we have donated to the National Rifle Association and phone your representatives and stood firm time and time again in the face of liberals, cheap emotional appeals and attempts to politicize these unavoidable tragedies to push their socialist agenda. That Americans like this weekend shooters, whether you agree with their agendas or not, were free to buy firearms without intrusive government delays or barriers. The dead in El Paso and day in whether they were shopping for back to school backpacks or just out having beers and hoping to get laid on a Saturday night gave their lives so that you might continue to enjoy those freedoms. The real tragedy is that you weren't there on the scene in that WalMart or the Oregon district at the moment the shooting started with your gun on your person, as it is at all times, sober and vigilant as you are in every moment, ever ready for a sudden eruption of violence, You would not have been stopped and questioned by police like the armed bystanders in El Paso or mistakenly killed like the Black Security guard shot by police after he subdued a shooter in a Chicago club last year. Because you just wouldn't have. You would not miss or shoot the wrong person or stand outside paralyzed with terror. You are prepared. You have imagined the scene so many times, rehearsed it over and over. You know just what you'd say in the aftermath. You declined to be interviewed by reporters. You don't want to be called a hero just for doing what anybody would have done in your place. your acts alone will speak for themselves. Not only will you have saved lives, you will have proved conclusively that guns can be used for good and that all the lives lost have been worth it. But we know that random shootings are not the greatest danger you're prepared to face on our behalf. If, God forbid, the day should ever come the day that you have long planned and stockpiled for when citizens must take up arms against their own elected government. Unless assume in this scenario that you're siding with the opposition to the authorities instead of cheering on the police in crushing citizen uprisings from your couch. Because they're not some urban mob rioters or looters or hippies or anarchists but ordinary Americans, people just like you on that dark day, it will inevitably fall to you who bear the terrible responsibility of citizenship, who remember that freedom always comes at a cost to protect the rest of the bleeding liberal sheep. You who in the end will stand alone with your handguns, rifles and shotguns against the rubber bullets and tear gas, automatic weapons and grenade launchers, Abrams tanks, Predator drones, Hellfire missiles and stealth bombers smallpox and tactical nuclear weapons of the federal government. On that day, at last, we will all finally understand and thank you. Not that thanks is what you've ever wanted. But more than our gratitude or admiration, you have our compassion because although you put up a cool front, we understand that beneath your tough competence in frontier machismo, the obvious pride you take in your knowledge of calibers engages, recoiled and trigger discipline that you are afraid you bought your guns because you were frightened of home invasions, muggings, mass shootings or the coming race war, collapse of civilization or the end times. There is, after all, much in the world for a rational man to fear, and we understand that some people are simply constituted differently than others. Some of us are able to live with the knowledge of the contingency and fragility of life without letting it dictate our lives or to former personalities without putting others in danger. But other people need reassurances, props, totems like a child's night later security blanket. It's nobody's fault, and sometimes the strong must make sacrifices for the week, and so the rest of us must live in fear. So that you don't have to. For now, there is nothing to do but hold fast in the face of this latest media frenzy by more ammunition and, of course, offer your thoughts and prayers to the bereaved. But you can best honor those most recent martyrs to your cause by going out and celebrating your right to bear arms today, whether it's by killing a ground hog, blowing cans off a fence post, shooting up a speed limit sign or just firing exuberantly into the air, exercise your constitutional freedoms in the name of those who died to protect them. Remember those brave heroes laid down their lives and their Children's lives so that you could continue to practice or sacred patriotic hobby. So enjoy your guns. Cherish your freedom, but most of all, be proud.