Over at The High Road there've been a couple of posts over the last while asking "What is the point/what is the act that sets you off?", as in at what point would you tell the government rep that shows up at your door to go to hell?
I'm thinking about that because it hit me at the range yesterday. I was putting away the .30-30. It's an old Model 94, with damaged bluing on the right front and bottom front of the receiver. My parents gave it to me when I was 14. In the years since I've fired something on the order of a richeous buttload of ammo through it. I once tried out one of the side-mount scope setups, I fiddled with things to the irritation of my dad("It works fine now!") but it's always been mine. After all that, now it sits with the original rear sight removed and a filler block taking up the dovetail, a Williams aperture sight on the receiver and the front bead replaced with a post. When putting the post on, I tapped on the bead base and the whole sight came off; it seems there was a touch of solder at the very front and the very back and nothing in between, God knows why it didn't pop off while shooting at some point. So clean and tin and drag the torch in the house and resolder it... My son fired it a lot, starting when he was so light he had to put the rear beanbag between the butt and his shoulder, and had to move it back so he could reach far enough ahead to cycle the action all the way.
And it hit me as I looked at it; if someone came for it, I'd fight. Politician or some poor bastard in uniform, I'd fight. If the clowns in D.C. or the state capitol and their minions decided that peasants like me could not be trusted with such a thing and came to take it, that's it. The anger that washed over me at the thought was fearsome. There's a big difference between theoretical discussion of something and something grabbing you by the guts and saying "THIS IS IT".
This is not the only thing that would by the line for me; it's the thing that, in most recent history, has brought home to me that there is a line that cannot be crossed without violence. That is a fearsome thought; it makes hormones flow and emotions spike. And it should. It's like the rage I felt against the murdering shits that attacked us on 9/11 and have been murdering people around the world before and since. It's the fury at being told by some slimy politician- all too often grown up in wealth and privilege and never having had their hands dirty in work- that you don't know what's best for you, and "us smart people, those deserving of authority, will take care of the thinking for you. It's looking at what happened to some kid and thinking "If someone touched my kid that way, their only two choices would be prison or grave", and meaning every damn word.
This is a nation of laws, and yet we keep seeing politicians being and using people who think the laws don't apply to them; who think that the Constitution is something to be stretched and cut and folded and chopped to fit what they've decided is appropriate for the current world("After all, can't let that outmoded thinking get in the way of progressive ideas, now can we?"). I truly believe that the reason some people want the citazen disarmed is not because of crime concerns, it's because they fear trying to push some of their crap through if people have an actual way to draw a line and say "No. Step over this line and the Restoration War starts."
It's not a pleasant line of thought, and putting some of this down scares me a bit. Hell, it scares me a lot. But it's something that has to be looked at and dealt with.
And trying not to think about it won't work.
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