Town Hall, DC
Jan 29 2005

Packed, Stacked and Ready to Whack
Doug Giles (archive)

Our Constitution is currently under a greater threat than a teenaged
boy at a Michael Jackson sleepover. Yes, this rock solid
foundational document, a major cause of our country’s amazing
success, is undergoing some serious thrashing by judges, bureaucrats,
politicians, prosecutors and police. I don’t know about you … but I
do not like the fact that the very people who should uphold our
rights are stretching them thinner than Fiona Apple on a rack.

One of the basic human rights that constantly has to be defended is
the right to keep and bear arms. Why did the original founders of
this great American experiment toss this given, no-duh, entitlement
into the Constitution? Well … it wasn’t so that we would be
guaranteed that we could hunt squirrels and woodchucks without
serving time, as great as that is. It was for the purpose of
defending ourselves against perps when the cops are running a little
late, and for the purpose of protecting ourselves against the
government should the system go south.

What concerns me is how both the Federal and State governments,
driven by rabid lawmakers, continue to be such a pain in the derriere
with respect to the right to possess a firearm. In just a few short
years, our supposed Constitution-honoring government has made it
grueling to obtain, practically impossible to carry, and God help you
if you actually legitimately have to use … a gun.

Listen … Pollyanna … it’s a bad bad day and the potential beginning
of a serious nightmare when the government forbids you to buy, or
tries to take from you, your weapon.

This is one of the major lessons history screams at us.

For those of you who missed your world history classes because you
were taking transgender sensitivity training, let me highlight a few
ignoble moments in the world’s gun-ridding record.

Take Germany for example. Soon after WWI, the liberal powers thought
that relieving citizens of their rifles would restore peace in the
streets. The general populace bought this nonsense because at that
time there were no astute bloggers, Fox News, NRA or ClashRadio.com
to shoot down such a stupid idea. And for a while, no doubt, I’m
sure everyone felt warm and fuzzy.

The warm and fuzzy feelings, however, gave way to cold hard reality
when the Austrian Jerk Emeritus goose-stepped his way into power and
began to unfold his Mein Crap. This was relatively easy for Adolf to
do. Why was his big lie easy to sell? One major reason was that the
ones who were not buying his crack really couldn’t do squat about it
… because, you see … they had allowed the government to seize their
weapons just a few short years prior to The Dipstick’s ascent.

Sure, they could and did resist as much as possible, but when dealing
with a tyrant, sometimes the only way to communicate your displeasure
with his dementia is with the crack of gun fire. Unfortunately, the
dissenters were, by and large, weaponless. The only ones allowed to
own firearms were Hitler, his wizards and the ones who danced to his
tortuous tune.

And for those who need more examples of how a disarmed populace
stands more vulnerable than Ashlee Simpson before a Bose voice
processor … let’s see … what massive slaughter of unarmed citizens
should I use to hammer the point further home? How about how the
Turks systematically disarmed and then slaughtered, plus or minus,
one million Armenians back in the early 1900’s? Or the
`disarm-oppress-and kill’ campaigns executed by bad leaders upon the
innocent people of Cambodia, the Soviet Union, China, Sudan, Rwanda,
Uganda, Indonesia, Iran, and Iraq?

How’s that?

As Judge Andrew Napolitano points out in his book, Constitutional
Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws, nowhere
in the annals of world history do an unarmed people ever fare well.
Never has an act of genocide in the 20th century occurred where the
citizens were packing. I guarantee that if the Gestapo had been
strafed with 180 grain 30/06 lead, or pounded repeatedly at close
range with 00buck from 12 gauge riot gun … the numbers lost during
that crazy crew’s reign of terror would have been far, far less. But
the GP acquiesced in peacetime to the bad idea of giving up their
guns to quell violence, obviously never imagining that their
government would ever go bad. But it did. And once it did … the
unarmed citizens were slaughtered by the armed government. Judge
Kozinski framed it nicely: `Tyranny thrives best where the government
doesn’t fear the wrath of armed people.’

My ClashPoint is this: I’m sure some reflexively irate idealist is
thinking that that was then and this is now and there is no way such
atrocities will ever happen again, and that John Lennon’s vision for
the world will not just be imagined, but actualized.

That’s cool.

I’m ready for the lion to lay down with the lamb; however, in this
waiting period between now and when Xanadu actually manifests, I’m
not giving up my right to keep and bear arms while looking solely to
the government to cover my back. Our framers got it right: armed
people are free people. As much as I laud, appreciate, and look to
our Constitution-honoring soldiers and law enforcers to serve and
protect me and my house, I also know it is my right and my duty to be
packed, stacked and ready to whack just in case things get loopy.

Doug Giles’ provocative weekly one-hour radio program, ‘The Clash’,
has re-launched with several new features. Go to clashradio.com and
hit ‘listen live.’