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Blunt Answer to a Rude Question
by L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

I received a message on Facebook last night, from an individual who explained that he is a European, and that, although he understands the desirability of a handgun for self-defense, he wanted to know why anyone would have a Bushmaster. He didn't know that that's a rude question, but he will when he's received my answer, which you see below.

The short answer to your impertinent question, "Why would anybody have a Bushmaster?" is this: "Because I want one, and my reasons,— on the assumption that I even have any—are none of your bloody business."

The long answer—which I offer out of simple courtesy, and not from any obligation on my part—is that some of us Americans can still remember that we are descended from the first people on the planet who ever told a King to go play with himself in traffic. Their idea was that government takes orders from us, and not the other way around.

Regrettably, it didn't quite work out that way.

Our ancestors intended for us, as is our absolute, unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right, to be as well armed—better armed, if possible—than the hired thugs of that government, in order to force them to behave themselves, like the humble, lowly, and abject servants they are egregiously overpaid to be.

That is the essence of our Revolution, the wellspring of everything decent and admirable that we became afterward, not just the richest, most powerful, and progressive civilization in history, but a place of refuge and respite, where—although it certainly didn't come without a long struggle—Jews and Muslims and blacks and Asians could be safe to live, consistent with their beliefs, and women received more respect and better treatment than in any culture the world has ever seen.

But sadly, somewhere along the line, a majority of us somehow lost sight of all that. Mostly, I think, it was on account of being steam- rollered into one stupid, futile, useless, phony war after another, cranked by crooked politicians to benefit financial criminals—most of them European, incidentally—who never understood, or even tried to understand, the true source of our prosperity, but who saw, and continue to see, America as nothing more than their personal piggy bank.

However something like a hundred million of us remain pretty well armed—for reasons people like you willfully refuse to comprehend. More of us are becoming so every day, in the face of the vicious demands of an uncredentialled errand boy and his orcish minions, who aches to be the King, tries to make up the law as he goes along, has arrogated himself to the position of judge, jury, and executioner, and built himself a private army (because the real army, mindful of their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, can't be relied on to help him seize absolute power), supplied it with thousands of guns and billions of rounds of ammunition, with the idea of making us back into the serfs—of his new nomenklatura—he imagines we were born to be.

Even if the man eventually succeeds in his evil ambitions, it will not be cheap or easy. You may be aware that I am a novelist. I am also a relatively old man, and basically an historian. Predicated on my understanding of history, and my experience with human nature, what I see ahead now (I predicted the collapse of the Soviet Empire, among other things) is that, one way or another, peaceably or otherwise, there is about to be what we Americans like to call an "attitude adjustment".

Make no mistake: my fondest wish is that the almost universal ownership of weapons like the Bushmaster (that's just a single brand of sport/utility rifle, by the way, not the name for a whole class of weapons, and there are many others) will be a sufficient word to the wise.

That's what the Founding Fathers intended.

My fondest wish is that, without firing a solitary shot, this murderous usurper will be taken in hand by the older, saner heads in his own party (if there are any), that he and his criminal gang will—entirely under due process of law—be arrested, tried, convicted, and punished (exactly as the Nazis were in Nuremberg in the 1940s) for attempting this coup d'etat of theirs against the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and that Americans can then restart creating the bright, wonderful future that we had planned for ourselves and our children.

That's my fondest wish.

But I have never believed that "wishing will make it so."

L. Neil Smith has written over 30 books and hundreds of columns and articles. He is the Publisher and Senior Columnist to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise, now in its 17th year online, and is associated with Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. His most recent works, available at Amazon.com and B&N.com, in both paper and e-book formats, are Ceres, Sweeter Than Wine, and Down With Power

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