Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Does it matter if you have a right if you don’t use it?

On the 3rd of August, 2019 it seems none of the customers at the Wal Mart at Cielo Vista were heeled. Now, many were Mexican residents (one of the dead was a German living in Juarez) who could not legally own weapons. Others were children or others not allowed to own or carry weapons in public. The fact is that there were several hundred customers and none were armed to fight back.

Many El Pasoans who actually have licenses to carry frequently don’t, and not simply because they are going into no gun zones. El Paso is (was) a safe city, we are just not that violent. Unless you count the Border patrol agent that got knifed to death in a fight off duty (the killer got off on self defense) or the guy who killed two brothers and one of their girl friends with a single shotgun blast when they got into a fight over a drug deal gone bad or…. But those were all people looking for trouble, many of us told ourselves. Maybe we were living in a fools’ paradise?

We have the right to carry, people just didn’t use it and no one was armed at Wal Mart at Cielo Vista.

More people who had the right to vote didn’t than voted for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Maybe you want Mr. Trump to enjoy four more years. Maybe you want a Democrat who wants to ban modern semiautomatic sporting rifles and other “scary” guns and strongly restrict your ownership of other firearms and trash your rights under the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 14th amendment to do so, all while imposing confiscatory taxes, imposing doomed socialized medicine, and imposing environmental policies that will impoverish us and ultimately fail.

You have the right to vote. If nothing else follow Heinlein’s advice:

“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

The vote may not be much of a weapon, but make no mistake, it is a weapon to slow down, if not prevent, the growth of tyranny.

No one took their gun. No one voted.