Gun control seems to be a permanent fixture of the American authoritarian left. Despite some significant gains on the side of freedom in the last fifteen years, the forces that want to disarm and subjugate peaceful Americans have not given up. On the contrary, they have redoubled their attack on our rights from different directions, so that today we face increasingly hostile and tyrannical state action against any sort of dissidence. We must be prepared to oppose these forces every step of the way, therefore the topics of civilian arms, self-defense, and self-reliance are more important than ever. Historical perspective is valuable, but accurate evaluation of the current landscape and clear and realistic recommendations are absolutely vital.
To start with a bit of historical perspective, the basic history of the right to keep and bear arms in America is not complicated, despite attempts at framing by the authoritarians. The people of colonial America carried arms virtually without restrictions before the States were United by the Constitution, as described by Thomas Jefferson in his August 1785 letter to Peter Carr, in which he recommended Carr to “Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.” The ownership of large weapons, including cannons and warships to mount them, was an unquestioned right of the people. The Bill of Rights was written with these preexisting rights specifically in mind. The Second Amendment protects a right of the people, and this was abundantly clear at the Founding. The purpose of civilian arms was not merely hunting, but included self-defense, and in the light of the recent Revolutionary War, that right self-evidently included opposition to tyrants.
Of course, as the Federal Government grew entrenched, it became clear that the revolutionary spirit that won us freedom from Britain’s yoke was waning and would soon be disavowed. America, a country built on violent revolution against the state, became the host of a Federal Government that quickly and hypocritically used organized armed forces to crush any significant dissent, for example, the Whiskey Rebellion. Most members of the new central government, many of whom had themselves taken up arms against the British, quickly lost their enthusiasm for revolution.
Since then, there has been a long and well-organized effort by would-be tyrants and their intellectual vanguard to disarm the American people, and to make whatever arms we retained as irrelevant as possible. These efforts have proceeded along several different paths, with varying levels of success. Two paths stand out as most significant. The first has been legal–the gradual reduction of the legal rights of citizens to bear arms, both by restricting the arms available and making the available arms more difficult to obtain free from state permission or surveillance. At the same time, the arms available to the state’s standing armies have only increased in effectiveness, to the point that the gap between state and civilian arms seems insurmountable, and is often argued as such by the authoritarians. The second path has been the careful perversion of language in such a way as to increase support for civilian disarmament. The plain meanings of words and phrases have been slowly and deliberately warped to support their position.
To start with an example from the legal direction, a shining example of how the legal system has been turned against civilian arms is the case United States v. Miller, decided by the Supreme Court in 1939. Miller, the defendant, was dead when the case was argued and no defense was presented. The Court stated that since no information was presented (by the nonexistent defense) that a sawed-off shotgun had a legitimate militia purpose, there was no infringement in the regulation of such an arm. This decision turned the Second Amendment on its head–stating that only arms with a militia purpose are protected, while conveniently no evidence for militia use was provided. The notion that a sawed-off shotgun had no militia purpose was absolute nonsense, considering that they had been used to great effect in the trenches of World War One. Worse yet, future legal efforts turned this case itself on its head, and the currently-popular saying is that “weapons of war have no place on our streets,” despite the fact that the Miller decision singles these out as specifically protected by the Second Amendment. The opponents of civilian arms are more than happy to ignore this inconsistency.
Other legal attempts to subvert the right to keep and bear arms include: Quibbling over what level of scrutiny a gun law must satisfy; the issuance of permits to exercise a basic human right and the rules, exceptions, and bureaucracy behind these permits; government surveillance requirements surrounding civilian arms; and often vague and inconsistent regulations surrounding people who manufacture or sell arms to civilian markets. None of these stands up to a plain reading of the Second Amendment or a basic historical understanding of the right to keep and bear arms.
Along the second major path to disarmament, there has been a major push to obscure and redefine terms to promote civilian disarmament, often in cooperation with other efforts to strangle liberty. The flourishing of the fascist New Deal and the vast expansion of “regulation” of commerce have lent support to the effort to redefine “well-regulated” in the Second Amendment from “efficiently operating” to “thoroughly controlled by government,” in addition to changing the reading of the first clause of the Second Amendment into a restriction, rather than a clarification. The fact that the second clause refers to a “right of the people”–specifically of the people–is frequently ignored. The term “assault weapon,” is a bastardization of “assault rifle.” “Assault rifle” refers to a compact select-fire rifle using a medium-caliber round–it has a specific technical meaning. “Assault weapon,” on the other hand, emphasizes vague cosmetic features, rather than any specific functional characteristic, and the confusion of uninformed people around these similar-sounding terms is a powerful source of support for disarmament. Even more hypocritically, contra Miller, “Military-style” weapons are now routinely described as unsuitable for civilian ownership.
The perversion of the English language has gotten worse recently, not coincidentally as legal restrictions on civilian arms have seen significant pushback. It is now the case that suppressor parts, or parts that might go into a suppressor someday, are treated as suppressors by the government. “Fast semi-auto” is now legally equivalent to “fully automatic.” And a piece of aluminum or plastic that is not a lower receiver, is currently in danger of being treated legally as such. These attacks on language have incredible rhetorical value and require no action by the state to promote, which makes them extremely valuable to those who would disarm us.
This brings us to our current situation. Despite significant legal victories, there are places in the United States where the right to keep and bear arms is severely limited, and therefore the rights of those people to self-defense is, as well. Federal gun control is significant and oppressive. Today’s politicians and bureaucrats live in safe enclaves, protected from the consequences of their actions by men armed with guns unavailable to the general public. The military, despite some shining examples, are regularly used as tools by tyrants. The police in many cities ignore violence against regular citizens and businesses and clamp down hard on any who attempt to defend themselves, their families, or their property against increasingly brazen and organized criminals.
If any armed resistance to state edicts occurs, we must come to terms with the fact that the police and military will generally follow orders. Someone will create a justification for their oppression and violence, whether such justification bears any resemblance to reality or not. If a false flag is staged, the vast majority of the people will not know it until long after the fact. And the fact is that the Nuremberg trials happened well after the collapse of Nazi Germany, and the same will be true of future American tyrants if they aren’t stopped.
The courts have their occasional bouts of usefulness, but we must not depend upon them in the long term. Victories in the Supreme Court over the last 14 years, starting with Heller, are not a reason for complacency. For one, the most vile anti-self-defense states will have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, every step of the way–if we manage to do so. New York’s state government and New York City’s government in particular are already defying the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen, and there does not seem to be any significant effort to stop them. Imagine if multiple references were needed to start a website or distribute a pamphlet. These terrible laws, passed by sadistic lawmakers, need to be fought over and over again, often with uncertain results. The forces for tyranny use every trick in the book, from jurisdictional games, to strategic control of bottleneck courts, to anything else they can make stick. Considering their current efforts, it seems likely that eventually even the Supreme Court, and with it, legal precedent for the interpretation of the Constitution will fall into the pit of these progressive language traps.
The question for all freedom-loving people is, “What to do?” Here I have several pieces of advice. First: argumentation. For every gun-grabbing would-be tyrant, there are several people on the fence, and strong argumentation will encourage these fence-sitters to favor legal self-defense, or at least remain neutral. Solid logical, legal, and rhetorical arguments in favor of civilian arms are crucial. We must all become familiar with the best arguments in favor of civilian arms. Mockery of gun controllers and the very idea of gun control has its place as well, including memes and cultural content. The self-contradictory aspects of opposition to self-defense are extremely useful. For instance, even ignoring any notion of natural rights, it is unrealistic to expect a person to submit to arbitrary execution, bondage, slavery, etc. Yet this is exactly what civilian disarmament is a step toward. Further, if the state has any hope to a veneer of legitimacy, it must show that it protects its citizens, rather than treating them as chattel. No person should be expected to see as legitimate any organization that is dedicated to his subjugation.
Another useful argument is the notion that putting the genie back into the bottle is impossible. The production of firearms requires no more than basic chemistry, metallurgy, and machining. The new frontier of 3D printing is another clear step in this direction, and as it advances further, it gains even more usefulness. In order to effectively prevent the production of arms, the production and transfer of blueprints and mechanical drawings must be controlled by the state. The same is true of chemicals with mundane uses and rudimentary machine tools.
The amount of control necessary to keep arms out of the hands of the people is extreme, and it will be applied to the people who advocate for civilian disarmament as much as anyone else. Many of them have not thought this through. For example, enforcers will not know beforehand which civilians are disarmed and which are not, leading to a strong incentive to treat all civilians as lethal dangers. The controls on information and materials will require the enactment of a perpetual police state, including warrantless searches, infiltration, covert surveillance, checkpoints, and more. The pictures that we can draw for them can be incredibly bleak, and justifiably so.
We must always remember that they will use feigned fear as a bludgeon at every opportunity. This is despite the fact that most of their proclaimed fears are mere play-acting. Fear elicits sympathy among the fence-sitters, and encourages people to make decisions in ignorance. A common example is the gun controller who claims he would be fearful near an armed person, while being completely ignorant of the popularity of concealed carry in his area. Gun controllers often claim a bizarre fear of violence, when violence against them is exceedingly rare, yet their policies require massive amounts of violence to be visited upon everyone else.
A good example of this feigned fear comes from an experience I had while working with Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC) in Texas while I was in graduate school. We attended a meeting with members of the state legislature in which both sides were able to speak about the proposed legislation to allow concealed carry on college campuses in the state. Something that will always stay with me is how so many of those opposed to the legislation stood up in front of us and called us unstable, vigilantes, violent, and worse. They proclaimed that they would be afraid to give a bad grade to a student for fear of reprisal. And yet they said all of those things about us in the same room where many of us were lawfully armed with our concealed firearms. Carry in the state Capitol was already legal, you see.
Despite their claims, our best tool against them is not fear. Rather, it is closer to a feeling of hopelessness. The kind of bleak police state scenario I described a moment ago (/above) is a useful example. However, the more specific and realistic we can make these scenarios, the better. A concrete example will be helpful. Imagine a city where only one in a thousand of the people remain armed, with weapons cached in obscure locations and used against the forces of oppression at opportune times. That means there might be a thousand armed guerrillas in a small city of one million. Imagine further that ten thousand people are willing to provide material support and a hundred thousand silently support them. The state would be forced to see the entire populace as an enemy. The obedient would have no protection from these enforcers. There would be no economic freedom, and large-scale loss of civil rights. State authorities wouldn’t be able to bomb the city, and there would be no point in bombing the empty spaces outside cities, where small roving bands would focus on preventing food and consumer goods from entering. Remember that the United States military couldn’t hold or win over Afghanistan in twenty years’ and several trillion dollars’ worth of effort–how long would today’s supporters of tyranny stand by the state in such a situation?
The scenarios we can envision might be enough to stop the forces of civilian disarmament in their tracks. However, failing that, all freedom-loving people should prepare for the worst. The gathering of weapons, especially in hard-to-trace manners, should proceed as rapidly as legally possible. But the knowledge of how to produce and maintain arms is nearly as important as the weapons themselves. Mechanical drawings and knowledge of metallurgy and machining techniques are vital. Memorization of a few crucial dimensions, for instance, the positions and dimensions of the pins that connect the upper and lower of an AR-15, make it impossible for the state to achieve civilian disarmament for any extended period of time and in anything but a relatively small area.
Operational security is another, often underappreciated element of the fight. There are those of us who have already declared our position publicly, and we will likely be under direct and close scrutiny should the state decide to clamp down. However, many have not widely publicized their position on the topic, and hold arms that are plausibly deniable to the state. I will call this group “the private wing,” while the group that has declared its position will be “the public wing.” Each person who is in the private wing today must decide whether he will remain there, because that will determine how he prepares, and because once a person goes public, he cannot go back. Both groups are important, because even if the public wing is disarmed, that doesn’t mean we are silent. We may be able to provide useful information and guidance to the private wing. In the worst case scenario, the attack of the state on publicly armed citizens will serve as a signal to the private wing.
With this in mind, all of those who oppose civilian disarmament should continue preparing as loudly (for the public wing) or quietly (for the private wing) as possible. Not only is it important to maintain a high level of proficiency with one’s own arms, general familiarity, including use and maintenance of other types of arms is also important, since we may not have the luxury to choose what weapons we use to resist disarmament efforts. Conceptual knowledge and muscle memory both have their places. Other basic preparations are also to our advantage, from bug-out bags to careful networking with known and trusted supporters.
The final step of preparation I will discuss here is specifically mental preparation. We must be prepared to give up the descriptor of “law-abiding,” and perhaps even “peaceful,” because it may not be our choice. Already, the state and federal legal systems are seriously stacked against us. We all live under the constant threat of prosecution by politically-motivated individuals who use vague and broad laws as cudgels. As the iron fist of tyranny tightens, we can expect this to worsen, though it will do so for everyone outside of a small elite, not just us. The odds of a large-scale organized rebellion against tyrannical government are low, and the chances are that civilian disarmament will be done slowly, methodically, and in one area at a time. We must all decide where the line is for ourselves and remember that there is no honor in following laws that are dictated by a dishonorable state.
In conclusion, the state of civilian armament is extremely precarious. The forces trying to disarm the American public have been nibbling away at our human rights for nearly a century. Their offensive proceeds along several lines, and where we have made some significant legal advances in the last decade or so, the perversion of language may circumvent our efforts unpredictably. Therefore, we must continue the fight against civilian disarmament on all lawful fronts, and prepare for the worst as well. Knowledge will become a rare and valuable asset if the forces of civilian disarmament ever get the upper hand, as much as actual arms and proficiency with their use. We must attempt to dissuade people from supporting civilian disarmament, but we must do so without causing them to lash out in fear. And, in the end, we must prepare for the eventuality that they get the upper hand, and be as ready as possible to defend ourselves from their aggression. Our lives, and those of our families, may depend upon it.