Do you love your gun? Tell me why [More]No, Sandy Banks. I love my wife and children. I love my parents. I love my brothers and sisters.
I have guns but they are just tools, like the keyboard I am typing on, to help me protect something else that I love: My rights.
What did Mr. Pynchon say?
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.[Via Peter G]
UPDATE: John Longenecker has more to say.
Well I do "love" my guns. Here is my comment on her column -
ReplyDeleteCudos to the quote from Tolkein from another commentor, I was going to use it.
And, I'm glad Sandy that you don't think guns are "evil", at least you are starting from an open-minded position.
But, I do love my guns, for more than just what they protect (as Lord Faramir from Lord of the Rings said per the quote referenced above) because they are the proof that I live in a free society as a FREE MAN.
In ancient Rome when a slave was freed he was given arms (sword, spear, whatever - the "assault weapon" of the day).
And as our own SC has said (in Dredd Scott, prior to the Civil War) - a citizen has the "right to keep and carry arms wherever he goes (ergo, blacks were not citizens because they did not have that right).
So, as I wish to remain a free man, and not become a slave (as the poor people in Sarah Brady's "paradise" of the UK are) I will keep my arms.
Yes, even my scary looking "assault rifle". Don't try to take them away, I'll fight to the death to keep them because being a slave is worse than being dead.
Scott in Phx, AZ
There were some excellent responses posted. I am also a big fan of Tolkein's quote but my favorite response was from Terry (posted January 15, 2010 at 05:42 AM)
ReplyDeleteIt's more than one session at a range, Sandy Banks.
It's more than even a day afield.
It's more than plunking the ten-inch V-ring five times at a 1000 yard match.
It's more than the pleasure of having a tin can race with a buddy.
It's more than the smell, the delicious smell of Hoppes.
It's more than knocking down an incoming double on ducks and sending your dog, which you trained yourself, after them... and watching a perfect double retrieve.
It's more than the whiff of the semi-acrid, semi-sweet exhaust from my first shot with a .22 when you were a little kid.
It's more than taking a friend of mine on his last prairie dog hunt while he was dying of cancer... and how his solemn and sincere, "Thank you, Terry" as we drove home that day kept us both quiet for the rest of the ride home --me fighting back tears as I drove.
It's more than the precision and attention to detail in loading a couple of hundred rounds of your favorite ammunition for your favorite gun.
It's more than hearing and feeling the precision snick-snack of working an action just to check that it's safe... or just for the sake of feeling the smooth cycling of the metal parts.
It's more than the skill involved in shaving away just the right couple of thousandths of wood from the barrel channel of a soon-to-be-free-floated rifle.
It's more than admiring the engineering and manufacturing talent that went into building perhaps 50,000 firearms, or the five million M1 Garands that were turned out. All nearly perfectly alike, with parts than can usually interchange without noticing they're in a different machine. (Is there an allegory there, Sandy Banks?)
No, it's more than all that. More than the sum of its parts, Sandy Banks. And others can add more parts, their own favorite parts, Sandy Banks.
Terry, 230RN