Given all of the conversation and buzz that my previous week’s article, “Who Should Not Carry A Gun,” generated, I thought it appropriate to address this week the topic of Who Should Carry A Gun to set the record straight.

A number of folks raised legitimate concerns about how my article could conceivably be used by card carrying and Machiavellian anti-gun rights people. 

Certainly gun banners could pervert my words and use them to achieve their own ends. After all, I am a clinical psychologist and a “gun guy.”

Therefore, I am a supposed “authority.” So, if I state that certain types of people with certain self-damning and other dangerous traits should not carry guns, then is it not a small step for gun phobic, gun hating, freedom hating, legal arbiters of people’s fates to start mandating dumb tests to identify people who fit those characteristics?

Would they not do this so that they can pass and enforce more laws to deprive such people, and the rest of us, of our inalienable rights? My answer is that yes this is possible. However, this has been happening since Prohibition, and it is still happening.

Fascism and control. Since the turn of the 19th century, the anti-gun rights Left has been concocting schemes to deprive people of their God given right to self defense and their attendant right to keep and bear arms. Their agenda is to run rough shod over our rights, and I am writing this week’s column to state unequivocally that their agenda is evil, illogical and destructive to freedom.

The anti-gun rights, pro-gun control Left tend to use tragedies, any tragedies involving firearms, as opportunities to promote their misdirected agenda. Fascists do the same except they typically manufacture tragedies to manipulate public sentiment. And they control the media. This sounds vaguely familiar.

Many anti-gunners are fascist. Fascism exists on both the Left and the Right, and fascists want to have all the control themselves. The only way they can accomplish this is to take away everyone else’s rights to self determination—to make everyone dependent on the “Nanny State.”

This evil agenda is facilitated by letting violent and dangerous criminals out of prison so that they can terrorize the disarmed Kool-Aid drinking law abiding citizens. As such, the disarmed public now must depend on the self serving police and politicians to protect them.

The irony is that the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that the police have no legal or Constitutional duty to protect individuals.

Let me set the record straight. Nowhere in last week’s column did I call for or suggest more government controls on gun ownership or on concealed or open carry. We have way too many already. We don’t need more. A good government trusts its citizens, and a bad government does not. This is because a bad government is not “of the people, by the people, or for the people”, but rather of itself, by itself, and for itself.

Hoplohobia

Hoplophobia, the irrational fear of weapons, including firearms, is rampant and on the rise. It is an as of yet unclassified mental disorder that has been avoided for political reasons by the powerful left wing liberal American Psychiatric Association—the keepers of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the DSM-IV. Many anti-gun rights, pro-gun control, gun banners tend to be hoplophobic. That is, they project their own mistrust and fear of their own anger onto most everyone else.

It is a small step for such a hoplophobe to conclude that because he or she cannot be trusted to not shoot everyone when he or she is angry, therefore, no one can be trusted. This real psychiatric disorder is a driving factor underlying many gun banners’ hatred of guns. I will address the mental disorder of hoplophobia in future columns. You can read more about “hoplophobia” on our online forum, www.DefensiveHandguns.com.

Many hoplophobes incorrectly attribute independent agency to guns as exemplified in their frequently used mantra, “guns kill people.”

However, that is not in line with reality because guns do not discharge by themselves! They discharge through human intervention. Therefore, it is more accurate to say that people kill people.

Dealing death

Evil people murder people to achieve their own ends. Some people also commit murder out of malice. Stupid people sometimes kill people as a result of ignorant, stupid or reckless behavior. Violent criminal felons are legally stripped of gun rights, but that does not stop them from packing illegally when they are working. This is one good reason among many why it is imperative that the rest of us retain our rights to keep and bear arms.
 Mandated training? We cannot pass laws prohibiting stupidity. However, even if we could, it would not prevent stupid people from behaving stupidly. Some states mandate training as a pre-requisite to apply for a license to carry firearms. However, in all the years I’ve been conducting such classes (see http://www.personaldefensesolutions.net/ccw/CCW01.html), I’ve seldom been able to correct stupidity and ignorance, and I’ve seldom seen violent criminals take our classes.

Nemo curat

The fact is that we are all on our own and we have always been all on our own. Nobody cares, or as stated in Latin, nemo curat. We can only depend upon ourselves and this is how it has always been. Self reliance equals survival. To think anything different is an illusion. The truth is that guns in the hands of law abiding citizens are a deterrent to violent criminals and parasitic and opportunistic predators. See www.DefensiveHandguns.com.

Recognize that as Ben Franklin said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”