Come and take it
The battle of Gonzales Oct. 12, 1835, signaled the start of the Texas Revolution. While it was a small skirmish with the Mexican Army, it did signal to Santa Anna that the Texians were prepared to go to war rather than surrender the lone cannon that Santa Anna demanded they give up. The Texians symbolized their defiance with a simple white banner depicting a cannon and the prominent words “Come And Take It.”
Gun control is a political football that is especially sensitive to Texans since that day in Gonzales. It evokes spirited debates and discussions. It fuels fundraising for political action camps on both sides of the issue. Liberals want to disarm Americans completely; moderates look for “compromise,” limiting gun ownership to certain types of weapons and ammunition.
In a democratic society, compromise is a desirable position for most issues. Neither side gets everything it wants, but we find a consensus that satisfies the majority. One exception, however, is gun control.
Gun control in America is both futile and undesirable. The statistics of gun ownership is not exact, but there are upward to 400 million firearms in the country. This means there are more firearms than people. And Texas leads the nation in gun ownership; there are a million or more requests for background checks for guns purchased in Texas each year alone. Confiscation of guns, therefore, is a non-starter. There is no logistical way to go house to house rounding up every firearm in the country. There isn’t enough manpower and, at least in Texas; I am not aware of any law enforcement willing to disarm the populace even if manpower was not an issue.
And so the left resorts to “compromise” of sorts. Limit the number of guns sold, limit the type of guns sold, limit the amount and type of ammunition, define where you can carry firearms. But what about Gonzales? The defiance of the Texians was the reaction to the same premise. Santa Anna desired to disarm the citizens of their cannon; not only reducing their firepower and ability to defend themselves from Comanches but also reducing their ability to rise against his tyranny.
This is where compromise loses any critical substance concerning gun control. The Second Amendment to the Constitution was never intended to protect gun ownership for hunting or target sports. The Second Amendment is to ensure that the populace is armed for their protection, whether it be from criminal gangs, foreign invasions or to keep an overreaching government at bay. There is a reason foreign invasion on the homeland has not occurred. Even if a military has superior weapons, 400 million personal firearms in the hands of citizens goes a long way to discourage that. By nature, criminals ignore the law and will have whatever firepower they can get their hands on. Criminal gangs and drug cartels already have fully automatic AK 47s, sniper rifles, explosives, etc. They are the criminals preying on the unarmed and weak. Why is the left obsessed with reducing the firepower of the law-abiding citizen?
Do not be deceived. The objective of the left is to disarm and disable the populace from resisting the force of government control. Just as Hitler, Stalin and all tyrants have done, they disarmed their citizens to obtain complete control over their subjects. And so the left uses emotion to persuade you to their side, citing all kinds of statistics of gun violence (by criminals, I might add). But then there is the hypocrisy - over half a million babies are aborted every year in the U.S. which is defended by liberals as a woman’s right to choose, yet John Q. Public should not be trusted with a gun! For all of you with the greatest intentions for a safer world, compromise only inhibits those of us who value and uphold the rule of law. Compromise will only reduce my ability to defend my house and persons. For whoever or whatever is breaking down my door, I want and need a bigger stick than he has. Don’t you? When it comes to gun control, I’m under that banner in Gonzales.