RichM
Retired Army Veteran
This has been a VERY good thread! Not so much false bravado... and a lot of well-thought-out discussion! Kudos (and reps) to each of you!
I too have some real fears about our future... I was once part of the "reasonable restrictions" crowd, even once I became a Soldier. But I have realized that our government has extended its reach into EVERYTHING! It's using the "commerce clause" to regulate anything that it possibly can be tortured into controlling; it's twisting the Clean Waters Act into regulating even bogs and marshlands when those are clearly not "navigable waters"; and it's using its bullying power of the threat to withhold monies to control all other things that it can't torture those existing laws into regulating, such as threatening to withhold highway money to force states to a DUI standard of .08, or using Federal education money threats to force No Child Left Behind down our throats...
And we have allowed special interest groups to twist the arms of our politicians to allow such a convoluted mess of laws that no one even understands them! We applaud the ones that we like (to our shame), and decry the ones that we don't like, without ever realizing that they are both exhibitions of the same disease! Our Government has become an octapus... or the Medusa!
... So with all this in mind, we come to the 2A discussion... and we begin to realize that our backs are really against the wall... "First they came for the *****'s, but I wasn't *******, so I paid no mind. Then they came for the ....."
So, yes, my back is up against the wall, Molon Labe, and "from my cold, dead hands," and "not another inch," and all the rest of it. I'll stand with those who will stand with me.
"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor"
RichM
I too have some real fears about our future... I was once part of the "reasonable restrictions" crowd, even once I became a Soldier. But I have realized that our government has extended its reach into EVERYTHING! It's using the "commerce clause" to regulate anything that it possibly can be tortured into controlling; it's twisting the Clean Waters Act into regulating even bogs and marshlands when those are clearly not "navigable waters"; and it's using its bullying power of the threat to withhold monies to control all other things that it can't torture those existing laws into regulating, such as threatening to withhold highway money to force states to a DUI standard of .08, or using Federal education money threats to force No Child Left Behind down our throats...
And we have allowed special interest groups to twist the arms of our politicians to allow such a convoluted mess of laws that no one even understands them! We applaud the ones that we like (to our shame), and decry the ones that we don't like, without ever realizing that they are both exhibitions of the same disease! Our Government has become an octapus... or the Medusa!
... So with all this in mind, we come to the 2A discussion... and we begin to realize that our backs are really against the wall... "First they came for the *****'s, but I wasn't *******, so I paid no mind. Then they came for the ....."
So, yes, my back is up against the wall, Molon Labe, and "from my cold, dead hands," and "not another inch," and all the rest of it. I'll stand with those who will stand with me.
"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor"
RichM
Last edited: