The Obama administration has greeted the response to president’s threat of an executive order to bypass Congress and implement gun control measures as reminiscent of dictators, as hysteria.
But such comparisons are not easy to dismiss. Lenin stated “One man with a gun can control 100 without one.” Stalin, his successor declared, “If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.” When the Kulaks refused, Stalin instituted his own “executive order,” and they were helpless as the state mowed them down.
But this disarming of the population was not exclusive to the Russians. Mao Tze Tung declared “All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party.” Fidel Castro sounds eerily like those Americans who state that automatic and semi-automatic weapons are of no use for hunting nor defending their home when he says,”Guns, for what?” in response to the populace’s resistance to his gun control policies.
For those who think it hysterical to even dare to compare these sentiments with liberals, they should consider what has been said. Dianne Feinstein, stated in 1995, years before Newton: “If I could have banned them all – ‘Mr. and Mrs. America turn in your guns’ – I would have!” Then-President Clinton, who would send armed federal troops into the unarmed home of those sheltering Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez, stated in 1993, “We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans.” Attorney General Janet Reno, who would send in black helicopters at the Koresh compound in Waco, Texas, subscribed to a step by step process (to be fair, something Stalin did not do) and was quite clear in her ultimate objective when she said, “Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal.”
Consider the much more honorable people on the other side of the debate. George Washington declared “that a free people should be armed.” Thomas Jefferson echoed this sentiment: “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” James Madison was quite prophetic when he said, “Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the people of other countries (italics mine), whose leaders are afraid to trust them with arms.”
For those who say that this was another period, when a citizen militia was needed, they should consider another facet of this era. In 17th century America, the British Army, under the Quartering Act, were allowed to camp in colonist’s homes. But weapons of both sides were on a relatively equal footing (muskets, knives, swords, etc). There were no helicopters, no tanks, no bazookas, no snipers on the side of the tyrants. Citizens could truly defend their home. Today the need for private arms is even greater, for potential consequences of governmental invasion of your home is even greater, and under the Patriot Act, you can be arrested and imprisoned without due process.
The Founding Fathers regarded the government as the employee of the people, while Communist dictators saw the individual as the property of the state. One group was concerned with civil liberties; the other regarded such bourgeois rights as impediments. And gun control was their first step.
Something to think about.
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