On July 7, 2015, at a house party in Ottumwa, Iowa, it is reported that Hillary Clinton commented, “Let’s not be afraid of the gun lobby, which does not even really represent the majority of gun owners in America.”

Really? And what if they did? Would she have any different view?

In a June 17 CNN Town Hall meeting, it is reported that she said gun owners “terrorize the majority of people.”

Really? I just don’t think the majority of people are terrorized by gun owners. I submit to you that the people most afraid of and terrorized by the gun lobby and gun owners are specifically the politicians who want to strip you of your 2nd amendment rights, not the people at large.

The thought that criminals have firearms and will continue to have them in spite of laws prohibiting them from doing so is a terror to me. Of course, it is only the NRA and its ilk and their vast amounts of money that have me brainwashed into believing this, since I am easily duped because of my white Southern maleness. Guns do not make me safer, I am told. Well, maybe not, but guns sure make it less safe for criminals, as decided by some criminals themselves, who beat a hasty retreat when fired upon by armed, unwilling potential victims. I notice that in a substantial number of reported stories of armed intervention by victims against armed perpetrators of two or more, one perpetrator is frequently left on scene dead after having been abandoned by his accomplices, who fled for their lives once someone started shooting back. The accomplices who lived and fled are always being sought by the police, who never fail to know where the dead perpetrator is. I’ll take it as a given that criminals prefer unarmed victims as the fleeing accomplices seem to prove by being unwilling to continue their criminal activity when they see their comrade fall to the floor in a heap and are being shot at themselves. Forgive me, but I cannot seem to find any compassion for the criminal who is killed by his chosen victim. I may be able to summon some compassion for the results of the poor choices the criminal made, or some compassion for the neglect the criminal may have received at the hands of those responsible for his upbringing; compassion for the death of one who chose to participate in a deadly game is rather difficult. If you put someone in a deadly situation, you should not be surprised when they take it dead serious.

Some of the perpetrators who use guns to commit crimes are themselves victims of illegal drugs, like crack, crank, or heroin. It should be easy to stop the addictions that cause so many crimes by simply making those drugs illegal, then people would not be able to acquire them, possess them, or become addicted to them. Hmmmmm! How’s that working out?

Our Bill of Rights allows that certain rights are possessed by the people by virtue of the fact that they are citizens, or as the case may be, the courts have extended those rights to those who are on American soil whether they be citizens or not, which is certainly reasonable when considering due process. The Bill of Rights does not contemplate nor consider that the enumerated rights are gifts from government. It argues that the rights belong to the people and restricts the government from interfering with those rights.

In other places and in other times, being armed was limited to those of a certain class, or a certain political affiliation. The common man was not allowed to be armed, lest he become a problem for those who were allowed by government to be armed. Even governments and government sanctioned oppressors prefer those they are busy oppressing be unarmed. They may have all the authority of government behind them, but like the fleeing perpetrators previously mentioned, they prefer not being shot at, with or without effect. It is preferably easier to roundup the dissidents if they don’t fight back.

Knights on horseback, fully armored and armed with a lance, a shield, and a sword, were at one time as fully armed with modern weaponry as a man could be. The lordly class was allowed to go about armed in this manner; the commoners were not, arming themselves the best way they could with sickles, scythes, and pitchforks. I’m sure that somewhere in the distant past, commoners were only allowed to possess their sickles, scythes, and pitchforks in their fields of labor; possession in other areas was likely prohibited.

There were times past that prohibited the commoner from possessing the offensive weapon, the longbow. Of course, it could be used for hunting, but the commoner possessed no land upon which he could legally hunt. I wonder if the longbow were ever legal to possess while its more efficient descendant, the recurve bow, was ever illegal? That makes me wonder if the longbow and the recurve bow were ever legal to possess, while the crossbow was illegal? Or the compound bow? They are all more modern weapons, argued those who perhaps preferred that commoners not have modern weapons.

Matchlocks, flintlocks, and percussion muzzle-loading firearms and rifle-barreled firearms were modern at one time, as were breech-loaders, repeating-actions, needle-actions, pin-actions, bolt-actions, lever-actions, pump-actions, and revolvers. Auto-loading firearms with detachable magazines, both long guns and hand guns, became modern over a hundred years ago. They have lost a bit of modernness with the passing of a century. Is it reasonable that firearms designs two centuries old are permissible, but century-old “modern” firearms designs are not? What makes a modern weapon, I wonder? The world has always had modern weapons and obsolete weapons, though one killed with an obsolete weapon is pretty much as dead as if he had been assaulted with a modern weapon. Machetes and hammers make for efficient killing machines; the only difference between them and bows, cross-bows, and firearms is the distance at which they are effective and the speed with which they can be reloaded. I reckon the first small hominid who picked up a stick and used it to beat a larger, stronger hominid trying to take his food was well-armed and proud to be sporting an equalizer long before Samuel Colt reportedly made men equal.

I realize that I am not going to change any minds about something so politicized. I am thankful that I have an uninfringeable right to bear arms. I am thankful for groups who watch out for my constitutional rights and spend their time and other people’s money to lobby on my behalf, terrorizing politicians who would otherwise infringe upon my rights, your rights…our rights. Whether one chooses to exercise their right is a personal matter; using political power to revoke someone else’s right is not.

If the solution to every problem that mankind faces was to simply make the problem illegal, then we would have no problems. We would have already eliminated property crimes, violent crimes, fiscal crimes, fraud, shysters, crooks, greed, poverty, hunger, illiteracy, bigotry, prejudice, inequality, unhappiness, and discontent. We could make drought, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, mudslides, wildfires, and disease illegal, sparing millions. We could even make death illegal. Hmmmm! I see more than a little bit of futility here. You’ll pardon my momentary lapse into cynicism, please.

I sure am glad cynicism isn’t illegal. Dis-ingenuity, too. If cynicism and dis-ingenuity were illegal, Hillary and me could be in the same prison facility, though I daresay she’d be in a better, more amenable class of prison than me.

Oops. There’s that cynicism, again.

And dis-ingenuity is in the eye of the dis-ingenuator. One man’s dis-ingenuousness is another man’s measured, poll-regulated response, and the poll-regulators say that 2nd amendment deniers are right, at this time and in most places, to fear the gun lobby if they want to retain their office.

Another time? Another time and the people may want to yield their right to the government, though why the people would ever want to do so is beyond my comprehension. Things can change fast, as we have recently seen.

That does not mean they will change long.

©2015 Mississippi Chris Sharp