Standing a Chance

Mike Vanderboegh talked about something a while back that bears a refresher on in light of two other stories that caught my attention in my daily content search. It's a theme advanced regularly by the left and the ignorant:

"Small gun groups don't stand a chance"

Communications are interrupted in less connected-to-the-grid parts of the world. Somebody needs to tell that to this guy.

Or to these folks.

There are some misinformed souls in the "gun community" who disparage the "Threepers" as wanting to start a civil war. They're also not above laying on the defeatist scorn.

I'm reminded of something I said in an article I wrote for GUNS & AMMO around 10 years back, titled "You Say You Want a Revolution?":

But that’s ok. As long as such uncertainty exists, the Second Amendment is doing its job. As long as government fears an armed populace, and based on all the idiot laws they’re trying to pass, they sure must, a powerful check on tyranny remains in place. After all, it is an evident truth that the strength of our nation can be measured by its freedom, and the Second Amendment is the key bellwether for this freedom. We can see in its erosion the breakdown of trust between government and the governed, and the attendant instability and conflict that is inevitable when this happens.

The seemingly paradoxical truth is, if you want to create a stable, peaceful and free society, where a Chechnya-style conflict becomes the unlikeliest of possibilities, you must guarantee that the whole people can arm themselves to the teeth. For only by making the cost of infringing our rights too high can we make those who would abridge them afraid to act. Just as, at the individual level, a criminal avoids a potential victim who may be armed, so too does this work on a societal scale.

If none of us stand a chance, why would we take a chance on a stand?