Today I was reading some of the email comments we get from our Second Amendment March website and I ran across a real doozy. I’ve taken the liberty of censoring the profanity.

F#%k You sent a message using the contact form at
http://www.secondamendmentmarch.com/contact.
 
“No one has said they’re going to take your guns away. Jesus Christ! I once
was a member of the NRA but then I realized you guys are a bunch of redneck
extremists who like growing mustaches and f#%king your daughters. I hope you
all get shot by swat teams during your pointless march. It’s people like you
who bring our country down, don’t get me wrong stand up for your rights but
in this case no one is taking them away. Peace out #sshole.”

My first response was to laugh, and then I thought a bit more and really started feeling sorry for the guy. This is a real person, and he probably isn’t joking. He really feels this hostile inside. Now isn’t that a scary thought? He was once a member of the NRA? I doubt it.

I would normally just ignore something like this, but this man, who calls himself “f#%k you” is raising the same point that thousands of others have been pointing out to me for over a year now. “No one has said they’re going to take your guns away.”

Question: Is that true?
Answer: No, it’s not.

One of the things I frequently tell the media is this, “It’s not just about protecting the freedom we already have, but also about getting back the freedom that we’ve already lost.” People like Mr. “f#%k you” are looking at freedom in all-or-nothing terms, but that just isn’t realistic. Freedom has never been binary, never been black or white; it has never been an all-or-nothing proposition. (This is a good time to remind the reader about the 20,000 gun laws we already have on the books.)

In reality, freedom is measured on a continuum, and the bar slides back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, depending on who screams the loudest and makes the most concerted and potent protest. Mr. “f#%k you” intuitively understands that if we continue to protest, like we are in the Second Amendment March, that we’ll regain more of our right to keep and bear arms. In a nut shell, that’s why he’s telling us to shut up and go lay down.

Here’s the truth:  The continuum has slid so far to the anti-gun side that people in Illinois, DC, California, Wisconsin, New York and many other places, become felons if they decide to carry a firearm to protect themselves and their families. Does that sound free to you?

I say it’s time to slide that bar back to the freedom side of the continuum while we still can. You’ve heard the saying “The squeaky wheel gets the grease”. Like so many other tried-and-true sayings, this one is true. If the wheel squeaks long enough and loud enough, then the maintenance team (our elected officials) will give us some grease just to shut us up.

And if they don’t, then we can fire them and hire new custodians of our liberty. If we stop protesting, then we get no grease, the wheels of freedom dry out and grind to a halt.

Mr. “F#%k you” wants us to shut up. He says no one is taking away our guns. Mr. Ff#%k you’s sense of freedom is as pale as a mime’s skin. Every time I drive to the Illinois border I lose my freedom. When I walk into a pistol-free zone, I lose my freedom. And on April 19th when I travel into Washington DC for the Second Amendment March, my liberty will be stripped away from me beside the banks of the Potomac River by the arrogant, elitist politicians whom we trusted to protect our liberty. We have been betrayed.

Let’s look at Mr. f#%k you’s statement in a different light. According to his logic, the civil rights leader and patriot Martin Luther King was an unreasonable rabble-rouser. After all, no one was trying to take away his freedom. He was no longer a slave. He was free to come and go as he pleased, and no person owned him as property. Sure, there were fountains he couldn’t drink out of, places he couldn’t sit on the bus, restaurants forbidden to him, and schools he couldn’t attend, but so what! What’s the big deal? He still had his freedom. No one was trying to enslave him!

Question:  Why didn’t Rosa Parks just shut up and move to the back of the bus!
Answer:  Because Rosa Parks knew that freedom wasn’t an all-or-nothing issue.

She could see that white people had more liberty than she did. She didn’t like it, and she knew it would never change unless she stood up and moved to the front of the bus.

Us gun owners can learn a lesson from the courage and the strength of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. On April 19th, in Washington DC, on the Washington Monument grounds, we are traveling unarmed into the belly of the beast. We go there armed only with our moral courage and resolve. On the outside I’ll be disarmed, but I’m here to remind you, that freedom is not measured in the caliber of my hardware, but rather in the courage and conviction of every man, woman and child who stands up to tyranny.

Freedom is a continuum. Join me on April 19th at the Second Amendment March and we’ll slide that bar back toward freedom.