Just a few days ago, the new mayor of New York City claimed he was going to replace individualism with the "warmth of collectivism." This made my blood boil. I understand that sometimes, we need to act as groups to do things that we, as individuals, don't have the means to do. We do this all the time and do it freely.
Collectivism is a different animal, though. It gives you no choice in the matter and, at its most benign, is still tyranny of the majority. It's rarely that benign, though.
Collectivism is inherently anti-gun. It's that way because if it weren't, then the individuals who are being pushed around by the majority would be able to fight back. Instead, they have to find firearms in order to lead any kind of revolt, and that's easier said than done after the guns are gone.
That's something the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms noted has reportedly happened in Iran via a press release sent on Tuesday.
Civil unrest in Iran has resulted in the arrest of “an unspecified number of people,” according to Reuters, some of whom were allegedly building homemade pistols, underscoring what the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms calls a classic example of oppressed people using their skills to fight back against a tyrannical regime.
Several people have reportedly been killed in the unrest, according to various news agencies, and Ayatollah Khamenei allegedly already has a plan to “flee the country” and seek refuge in Moscow if his security forces are unable to suppress the protests.
“The strife now reported in Iran has probably been inevitable,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb observed, “as that nation’s economy is in trouble, Iran’s nuclear development was smashed last year, and the Khamenei regime has essentially turned the country into a dictatorship. People who want to be free will always find ways to fight back, even if it means manufacturing their own guns to get the job done. We have seen this throughout history.
“Tyrannical governments invariably act to disarm their populations,” he said, “which enables them to maintain a chokehold on power. Thankfully, here in the U.S., we have the Second Amendment to prevent that.
“The alarming reports of people being killed,” Gottlieb continued, “by forces made up of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, police, the army and at least one militia group, underscore the dire situation. Under such circumstances, it is no wonder that pro-democracy Iranians fighting back against the Ayatollah’s goons would arm themselves any way possible, even with homemade guns.”
There have been reports of at least ten demonstrators being killed, and one human rights group said demonstrations have occurred in more than a hundred places in 22 of Iran’s 31 provinces. One report said some 30 people had been shot in a single incident. Under such circumstances, eventually people will fight back.
“Remember,” Gottlieb observed, “how our forefathers, many armed with rifles and pistols built by village gunsmiths, fought back against tyranny, against taxation without representation, and against the most powerful army and navy in the world 250 years ago. There is no Second Amendment in the Middle East, but there obviously is a will to be free. It’s the difference between individualism and what some people call ‘collectivism,’ which is another way of describing a dictatorship.”
The thing Gottlieb doesn't say here is that they don't start off being tyrannical, much of the time. They start off telling people precisely what they want to hear. In Iran, it was the idea that they were going to replace a corrupt monarch with a more benevolent theocracy. In Venezuela, it was that they were going to create a more fair and equitable socialist society.
Either way, they had to take the guns, which is generally billed as it is here, a means of protecting the collective from the harm inflicted upon it by a small handful of individuals. So, they take guns from others, promising to protect them, and then they proceed to become more and more tyrannical, only now, no one has the means to resist.
Thankfully, in a world with 3D printers, at least some people can figure out how to build guns. Unfortunately, that can create a digital trail that may lead an oppressive regime right to their door, unless they're supremely careful. It sounds like whatever method was used to create the guns talked about at the top of the presser doesn't seem to have been one that protected the makers well enough.
No one can honestly look at Iran and call it anything but tyrannical.
The same is true of Venezuela, where the people long wanted strongman Nicholas Maduro gone.
It's true of dozens of other places where the ruling authorities hold absolute power, with or without some veneer of popular support, and the people are powerless to do anything about it.
A gun-owning population will not be oppressed for very long. They might be convinced they're not oppressed for a while, if the water is heated up very slowly, but sooner or later, they'll realize what's going on and will fight back. But a "gun-owning population" isn't a population where only a select few can own guns, or when the guns must be stored in a certain place, and a lot of kinds of guns are restricted in the first place.
Oh no. It means gun rights need to be respected.
What's playing out in Iran isn't that much different than what our children or we may see play out in Europe somewhere down the line, as they've been disarmed and are now systematically being attacked by their own governments over memes.
The spirit of the oppressed, as mentioned above, is one that is yearning to be free.
It's a spirit I recognize and wish, with every fiber of my being, I could help arm and enable them to end their oppression.
Guns save lives.
Guns end tyrannies.
It's as simple as that.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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