Keeping the necessary evil in checkby Oleg Volk
Suppose they gave a war, and nobody came?
Why then, the war would come to you!
Bertol Brecht.
Just as individuals humans, organizations of humans vary considerably. The local stamp collectors' club has never warred on the neighboring folk music circle. Many countries have not committed genocidal incursions into the adjoining lands in several generations. However, as with individuals, enough organizations, including national governments, are threatening others at any moment in time to make it a matter of concern.
Traditionally, every country has had an army, a militia, a police force or a combination of those. However well-equipped these entities are for carrying out their missions, please note that no organization has your personal safety as their reason for existence.
Police exist to uphold the law. Although cops try to protect people from criminal predation, it is an incidental part of their job. Numerous court decisions have absolved police from liability for failure to protect individuals. Even with the best intentions, police officers are too few to be everywhere they are needed at once.
Protection of persons is the job of bodyguards. Unless you are rich enough to afford them, you may wish to learn how to be your own bodyguard. Considering that most people have learned to be their own chauffeurs, chefs and accountants, learning yet another skill won't be much different.
Another issue for consideration is that not all organizations live up to their intended missions. When a group of people, be they a law enforcement agency or an entire state, go rogue, people under their control are in great danger. No one, and certainly no group of people, can be trusted with a monopoly on force in the long run.
Historic precedents of this kind are depressingly numerous. We cannot open a history textbook and pick even a decade in which genocide and government oppression of civilians were absent. Where most people are defenseless, even small numbers of ill-meaning agents of a government or an organized criminal group have murdered thousands with impunity.
Even the pretexts for the imposition of strict gun control remain constant. The 1938 German weapons control law, which stripped Jews of all weapons, including sticks, was enacted as a response to "Jewish terrorist activities". The 1968 laws adopted in the United States were based closely on the 1938 German law and cited very similar reasons for the enactment.
Why would I mention gruesome historic details? If you look at the laws passed in the United States since 1934, a trend emerges. Ownership of many types of arms is either banned or severely restricted. Onerous taxes and registration rules cover everything related to them. Overall, it would see that the lessons history are ignored in the effort to disarm us. Or, if you prefer to give the lawmakers and the sheep supporting them more credit, the lessons of history are being applied in a very cynical manner.
What is happening is far removed from a "government plot" to enslave Americans. Rather individual agencies are trying to perpetuate their own existence and funding by either creating problems (such as Prohibition and the current War on Drugs) or by inventing them. At the same time, law enforcement as an organization is attempting to gain monopoly on protection of individual.
Notice that the legislation to disarm American citizens is happening against the background of armed raids against "suspected drug dealers." Continuing the practices perfected by the Inquisition, the so-called law-enforcement agencies are killing their victims outright or seizing their assets before trial. Obviously, such tactics work better where the law-abiding are disarmed. Just ask the SS chaps.
Historic evidence shows clearly what happens when government agencies are permitted to abuse defenseless individuals. We also know that mere ability to resist usually functions as an effective deterrence to gross abuses of human rights.
Of the many organizations keen on implementing gun control, the UN has been the most active. Like every other goverment or gang, the UN are after maintaining control and not ensuring safety of those they pretend to protect.
They have achieved some successes in disarming civilians, setting them up for genocide. For example, in 1995 the UN disarmed Bosnians of Srebrenica, promising them protection. The UN troops then withdrew, Srebrenica was overrun and over 8,000 now-disarmed people were murdered by the Serb army.
Other efforts originate in the United States. While the IRS branch of the Treasury Department is buying arms for its enforcers, the ATF branch of the same organization is harrassing lawful gun owners and manufacturers. Ostensibly a tax collection agency, the ATF has evolved into a terrorist organization dedicated to furthering gun control in America. They have dropped even the pretence of being tax collectors and have concentrated on the enforcement of convoluted, sometimes contradictory and, in all cases, un-Constitutional laws regulating even the most minute aspects of gun ownership.
Some people laugh and ask if I really think that a few small arms could have changed history. If the six million Jews who perished during WW2 had a rifle for every one of the half-million combatants they could field, would they still have ended up slaughtered so efficiently? If they had mortars and light machine guns typical of the contemporary infantry, would they have been murdered at all? Ownership of weapons makes genocides more difficult to commit...but it takes effective weapons to stop genocide entirely.
For some reason, one issue doesn't come up in the discussions of well-meaning people who wish to see lives saved by gun control. Since most murders are committed by governments or by organized groups which have official support, why isn't anyone trying to take away the machine guns and the tanks of the known violators of human rights, such as the Cuban government. Why is a law-abiding American with a rifle viewed as a bigger threat than a confirmed psychopath with access to more serious weapons and a history of using them against innocents?
http://www.a-human-right.com/RKBA/government.html.
