Normally my blood pressure runs somewhere around 115/70; not too bad for an old man. However there are times I’d be willing to bet it runs upwards of 185/110; those times typically occurring when I see or hear things that piss me off. Some of my best commentaries have come out of such instances of being extremely angry, as they are pure emotion and my brain doesn’t bungle things up by thinking too much about what I’m saying.

There are times, however, that I become so angry that I find it hard to think at all. When that happens every sentence I type is a struggle, as I have to pause and try to calm my mind down enough long enough to form a simple sentence. Luckily I don’t get THAT angry very often, and when I do it wears off relatively quick…

I tell you all this because NOW happens to be one of those instances when I am extremely angry. This all happened because of something I read on Facebook posted by my friend Mike Gaddy, and I’ll get to it in a minute or two. I don’t blame Mike for this, but what he wrote set off a rapid train of thoughts in my head that led to me becoming pretty pissed off. Hopefully I’ll be able to put down into words the emotions and thoughts that are running through my head right now.

If I were to ask you what was mans most dangerous invention was, I’m sure I’d get a wide range of answers; including everything from guns to nuclear or biological weapons. Unfortunately, unless you answered government, you’d be wrong.

Oh, you don’t believe me. Well let’s see what the facts say. Did you know that nuclear weapons have only been used twice during wars, and both of those times they were used by the United States? So let’s look at the casualties inflicted by the bombs dropped upon the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

Some estimates put the death toll at Hiroshima at around 146,000 people and the death toll at Nagasaki at around 80,000. Although nuclear weapons have evolved in their yield; meaning their killing capacity, since those are the only two instances that they’ve been used those are the only statistics we have regarding how many have died due to their use. That’s a lot of people right, roughly a quarter million people killed by nuclear weapons. But I’m not done yet. Did you also know that in the Pacific Theater alone roughly 36 million people were killed during World War II? Don’t forget, that’s only in the Pacific Theater, those numbers don’t include those killed fighting the Nazis.

Seems like a lot more people died during war than in the instances when the U.S. used nuclear weapons during them. Technically the dropping of those two bombs could be included in the casualty statistics of that war, but if you were to subtract the quarter million killed by those two bombs, the number of people killed during that war would still dwarf them.

And who is it that starts wars? Does John Q. Citizen up and say, “Hey, I think it’s a good idea we just send our troops off to go fight Japan.” No, it is governments who order their people into war; whether it is for conquest, glory, or perceived grievances. So it is government that is responsible for all the death that occurs during war. Hell, look at the American Civil War, well over 500,000 people lost their lives during THAT conflict; simply because the GOVERNMENT wouldn’t let the South secede in peace; not to mention the utter destruction of the South that occurred during that war.

But those are wars Neal, sometimes they just happen; sometimes they are inevitable and people die during war. Okay, I’ll play devil’s advocate and agree with that; but what about instances when huge numbers of people have been killed by their own government that were not due to war?

Ever hear of Pol Pot? Pol Pot was the Prime Minister of Cambodia during the 70’s, and under his leadership he exterminated somewhere between 1.5 to 3 million people. At that time that was 1/4 of the entire population of Cambodia; and remember this was not war, it was genocide practiced by government because people were felt to be threats to, or enemies of the policies of their government.

What about Leopold II, ever hear of him? When he was the King of Belgium he engaged in a brutal campaign in the African Congo that led to the deaths of almost 10 million people. Almost 50% of the population of the Congo died while Leopold II ruled over them.

Then there was Josef Stalin, successor to Vladimir Lenin, whose death toll is anywhere from 3-60 million people; depending upon whose research you use. Again, many of those deaths were due to the simple fact that people disagreed with the policies of their government, or were deemed a threat by government.

I could go on, there are plenty more instances of government killing millions of its own people for a multitude of reasons. Hell, the Chinese killed roughly 300,000 of their own people in a man-made flood to break the hold held by rebels in the Kaifeng and Xuzhou regions of China in the 1600’s.

Yet people are so stupid and ignorant that they think guns in the hands of private citizens are the most dangerous thing in the world. You know what I think is the most dangerous thing in the world? Well you’re gonna hear it anyway. I think the most dangerous thing in the world is giving ignorant people the opportunity to vote.

That’s right I think ignorant people are far more dangerous than the guns owned by private citizens. Coming in a close second is guns in the hands of government. The reason I put that second is that people are responsible for the quality and character of their government; they vote for them after all. If people knew why government exist, knew the basic outline and powers given to their government, then they would vote for people who would only do what they were supposed to do. I don’t say what the Constitution allows them to do because I believe the Constitution is vague, intentionally so, so as to leave it up to those we elect to decide what lies within the powers delegated to them.

The fact is that we, (well I should say YOU, as I don’t vote), put those people into office; therefore you are ultimately responsible for the character of and actions taken by your government. If people weren’t such ignoramuses then maybe the quality and character of our elected officials might be a bit better.

There is something people seem to have forgotten, or perhaps they simply weren’t taught; that being something Thomas Paine said in his pamphlet Common Sense, “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”

So if government is already evil, doesn’t it make sense that we should vote for people who will do all that is humanly possible to keep government small, keep it from becoming even more evil? Oh, but that just makes too much sense, which is exactly why it will never happen. If there is one thing I’ve learned in 60 years of life it is that if something makes sense, the average person won’t do it.

But if people, either individually or collectively, won’t vote to keep government small; keep it from becoming more evil; keep it from infringing upon and violating our rights, don’t you think we ought to have some means at our disposal to resist, and fight back against government if it gets too far out of line; becomes too tyrannical and oppressive?

Oh but we do dear reader, we do. We have the right to keep and bear arms…while what remains of that right lasts that is. That’s right, the reason we have the right to keep and bear arms is not so that we can hunt deer; protect ourselves and our homes; or to go out and target shoot, it is so that we can raise a force sufficient to dethrone our government if it becomes too powerful and too oppressive.

Yet the American people, in their state of enlightened ignorance, want to see government pass what are known as Red Flag laws; laws that allow government to determine who can own guns based upon criteria that they get to establish; based upon perceived threats to society. I’m sure, with government’s record of efficiency and reliability that these Red Flag Laws won’t infringe upon the rights of people who’ve done nothing wrong. (That was sarcasm by the way). I mean after all, look at the No Fly Lists, and how effective they’ve been in only targeting suspected terrorists. Ooops, my bad, didn’t Teddy Kennedy end up being on a no fly list, and all this while he was a United States Senator? So I’m sure the government won’t screw this up either, or use it to infringe upon the rights of people it believes pose a threat to them.

How many times in history have we seen an unarmed society brutalized or killed by their government without the means of overthrowing those in power? My God, Patrick Henry warned about the dangers of this, and that was before they’d even heard of something as idiotic as Red Flag Laws. In 1788 Henry warned, “The Honorable Gentleman who presides, told us, that to prevent abuses in our Government, we will assemble in Convention, recall our delegated powers, and punish our servants for abusing the trust reposed in them. Oh, Sir, we should have fine times indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people. Your arms wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical; no longer democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all?“

Yet today, as limited as the right to keep and bear arms has become, Americanus Ignoramus is going to give government the power to establish criteria which can determine who can own guns; and if your name happens to fall on that list, they will send their goons to take your guns away; or kill you if you resist.

You say that won’t happen, government won’t kill anyone if they resist these Red Flag Laws? Well it already has happened. On November 5, 2018 the Maryland Police killed Gary J. Willis when he resisted law enforcement efforts to take his guns away. And it is this story that got me so angry. See, I told you I’d explain what made me so mad; it just took awhile.

Listen, I’m not saying that there aren’t some serious problems in this country, with one of them being these senseless killings that seem to be happening with increasing frequency. But taking the right of people to keep and bear arms away because they might be suspected of doing something wrong with them in the future is wrong…and an extremely dangerous attitude to take.

Just look at the numbers of people who have been killed by their government who were unable to fight back; the list of dictators is long and illustrious; Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Hussein, Pol Pot, and many many more have all gone down in history as mass murderers of their own people; people who could not fight back because they did not have the right to keep and bear arms.

And you want to throw that right away for the promise that it MIGHT stop these mass shootings and keep you and your family safe? I hear all this Think About the Children garbage and it makes me want to vomit blood. Think about the children indeed; how are they going to survive when mommy and daddy are hauled off to a concentration camp because of their political views or because they owned certain firearms the government deemed dangerous.

The truly sad thing about all this is that it is happening right now under the administration of Donald Trump, and his supporters are deathly silent on it. If it had been Hillary that was elected instead of Trump, they’d be outraged and screaming about how their rights were being violated by those damned Liberals, but since it is Trump it must be for our own good, so they remain silent.

Well Fuck Trump, and all those who support him!

Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, recently sent out a memorandum that is, to quote my friend Mike, taken right from the Heinrich Himmler-Nazi SS playbook. Hell, I’ll just quote the remainder of my friends post so you can read it for yourself:

Preventive Police Action in Nazi Germany, as of February 28, 1933.

The Nazis employed a comprehensive strategy to control all aspects of life under their regime. In tandem with a legislative agenda by which they unilaterally required or prohibited certain public and private behaviors, the Nazi leadership dramatically redefined the role of the police, giving them broad powers—independent of judicial review—to search, arrest, and incarcerate real or perceived state enemies and others they considered criminals.

The Kripo used a similar strategy called “preventive arrest” (Vorbeugungshaft) to seize any individuals determined to be a threat to public order. As the guidelines show, the Kripo was given limitless power for surveillance and was authorized to seize persons on the mere suspicion of criminal activity. As with those held by the Gestapo under protective custody, those held by the Kripo under preventive arrest had no right to appeal or access to a lawyer, and their arrests were not liable to judicial review. They were generally interned directly in a concentration camp for a period determined by the police alone. By the end of 1939, more than 12,000 preventive arrest prisoners were interned in concentration camps in Germany.

Please, please, don’t be so dumb as to use the old refrain IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE—IT’S HAPPENING NOW IN 17 STATES AND COMING SOON TO A FRONT DOOR NEAR YOU!

And now you know what got me so angry earlier.

The British tried to impose their version of a Red Flag Law; it happened at a little known place called Lexington and Concord; and those who resisted the efforts of their government to confiscate their guns are widely held in high esteem; being called great American Patriots. I wonder, what side of the fence will you be on when they come for our guns under these Red Flag Laws; will you be a patriot who resists them, or will you be a boot licker who takes the side of the jack booted thugs who are simply doing their job by enforcing the law?

Think about the children indeed; think about what kind of a country are you going to leave for them when they have no means to resist tyrants or tyranny…

November 7, 2019

~ The Author ~
Neal Ross, Student of history, politics, patriot and staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment. Send all comments to: bonsai@syix.com.

If you liked Neal’s latest column, maybe you’ll like his latest booklet: The Civil War: (The Truth You Have Not Been Told). Life continues to expand for this prolific writer and guardian of TRUE American history.