Time to take a stand for 2nd Amendment

Published 11:50 am Tuesday, December 3, 2019

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By Clark Bailey

The Loyalist

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

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Barack Obama famously said to congressional leadership (specifically Eric Cantor) in 2010 that elections have consequences. The good people of the Commonwealth of Virginia are now seeing this after the Virginia House of Delegates has flipped to Democrat control after the 2019 election.

Without wasting any time those who seek to curtail individual rights and liberty, tradition, and just plain common sense are rushing to implant sweeping anti-gun rights legislation. A link to the full text of the bill will be posted below, but some of the sweeping changes are an expanded definition of so-called “assault rifles,” a limit of 10 rounds to any detachable magazine, and the making of any violation of the proposed act a felony punishable by no more than five years but no less than one year.

https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+SB16

While the constitutionality of such a draconian law will certainly be challenged. The optics and the desired effect of such legislation are chilling. This change of the law, like all other proposed changes of this nature are touted as crime reduction and safety measures. This never turns out to be the case as these laws only disarm law-abiding citizens and make them less likely to be able to defend themselves, their families, or their property.

Laws such as this disproportional affect rural and suburban Americanly Eric Cantor) in 2010 that elections have consequences. The good people of the Commonwealth of Virginia are now seeing this after the Virginia House of Delegates has flipped to Democrat control after the 2019 election. t normal citizens from being armed. All the while drug traffickers, human traffickers, gangs, and the “average” criminals are armed to the teeth. They are also well aware that the normal citizen is most likely not equipped to resist or fight back.

Rural Virginia, like much of the South and the West, probably has more firearms than it has persons. Also, and not by coincidence, they are also voted solidly Republican in this last election. The urban areas and the highly liberal suburbs of DC, which are filled with Yankee carpetbagger transplants, both voted overwhelmingly for Democrats and ironically have most of the crime in the state. This interestingly is a pattern all across the United States. In every state as well as in the country there are seemingly at least two nations in each state and this country is bitterly divided enough that there are effectively two countries.

Now the rural and urban divide is nothing new. It goes well beyond the formation of this country, the Civil War, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and perhaps is as old as recorded time. The gulf between the two and the bitterness of the divide though has grown exponentially over the past century and has greatly accelerated over the past twenty years.

In rural America we’ve often spoke disparagingly about city-slickers, or city folk. We’ve had our conceptions and at times misconceptions. Folk tales and moralist stories abound as well. In the 40 some years I’ve spent on this planet I’ve yet to see the veracity or hatred among country folk as I have from urbanites.

U.C. Berkley instructor Jackson Kernion recently Tweeted: “I unironically embrace the bashing of rural Americans. they, as a group, are bad people who have made bad life decisions. Some, I assume, are good people. But this nostalgia for some imagined pastoral way of life is stupid and we should shame people who aren’t pro-city.” Former New York City mayor, billionaire, and now presidential candidate; Michael Bloomberg has stated, “ that having a gun in your home is really dumb.”

Both of these men live in communities and environments that are heavily controlled and protected. U.C. Berkley, having a police force larger than the combined law enforcement in Harlan County, and Bloomberg, with private security with armed men protecting himself, his family and property. Bloomberg’s comments belittle hundreds of years of traditions of fathers teaching sons about firearms, teaching them to hunt and how to protect oneself and family. They malign those who wish to take the responsibility to defend themselves and their family. Coupled with the disdain from Kernion they strike at the heart and soul of the rural American.

History has shown how the populace can (and most often are) controlled when they are disarmed. From Jews led onto cattle cars, the Ukrainians starved to death in the Holodomor, millions of rural Chinese in Mao’s genocide, down to crime-ridden urban America in places like New Orleans, Chicago, Baltimore, etc…We see how helpless those forced to fend for themselves unarmed against the armed really are.

English common law, from which much of the foundations of the legal system and even our culture is derived, has long held defense of oneself and others a bedrock of civilization. Virginia’s new bill goes beyond even guns, and seeks to regulate martial arts and other types of self defense. Some would be tempted to call such proposals idiotic or ignorant, and they are, but I’m going to call them what they should really be referred to, and that is evil.

We are called to resist such evil, and we should and will. Harlan County conservatively has five times as many guns as it does people, and we have what is a relatively low crime rate. Our neighbors just across the mountain in Lee County, Virginia, are pretty much the same, and in preemptive action the good people of Lee County have passed a resolution declaring their county a sanctuary for the Second Amendment. It is something we should look to make happen here in Harlan. To do so would declare to those in Jefferson County and other depositories of liberalism that we will stand for our culture and our values and also stand with our friends and neighbors across the mountain.