by Paul Gallant, Sherry Gallant, Alan J. Chwick, and Joanne D. Eisen
New York –-(Ammoland.com)- If you are reading this, most likely you’re a gun-owner.
And you already know that you are caught up in the battle to preserve this republic of ours, a battle between good and evil, between truth and lies.
If you’re a patriotic American, and treasure the blueprint for a free republic set out on paper by this country’s Founding Fathers, you know that your only choice is to take the tough road: to stand on the side of truth. It’s a tough road, because the odds are highly stacked against you by powerful forces aligned against the truth. But you have no real choice.
We —the authors of this article— have no doubts that we’re on the right side, and have been all along. None of us have ever seen or heard the truth from the weapon-prohibitionists.
Many American gun-owners are intimidated or confused about their ownership because of the widespread propaganda telling them that we firearm owners are deranged demons, liars, or at best, ignorant, because we refuse to accept ever-more restrictive gun laws. And many gun-owners are bullied into submission by the constant pounding we take from all sides.
It has always taken courage to stand up for the cause of liberty. But we have no doubt that our Founding Fathers were right about civilian weapons possession.
The truth gives us the power to fight the overwhelming lies told by the media. It gives us the power to resist attacks on our morality for being peaceable gun-owners, and a hardened determination to resist stronger restrictive firearm laws. Those laws will most surely jeopardize the safety of our families, and even the families of those who demand such laws.
A new poll, conducted earlier this year by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press revealed, some interesting findings, which should be of no surprise to those paying any attention to the truth. The report dealt with trust in the Federal government. “Majority Says the Federal Government Threatens Their Personal Rights”
The survey went on to state that “As Barack Obama begins his second term in office, trust in the federal government remains mired near a historic low, while frustration with government remains high. And for the first time, a majority of the public says that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms.”
But we Americans were forewarned of this over a century ago by Henry David Thoreau—a name that should be a household staple to all American patriots. Thoreau was, among other things, a 19th century philosopher and he didn’t mince words when it came to the evils of government and the role of civil disobedience.
Thoreau was very clear: “This American government…has not the vitality and force of a single living man… It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate….”
In fact, Thoreau stated, as many today believe:
That government is best which governs not at all….Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage….All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.
To bolster the case of the weapon-prohibitionists, politicians and the mainstream media try to sell their own brand of “truth” about American gun-owners and their firearms. But that “truth”—propagated by government-funded junk-science researchers who manipulate the truth with their sleight-of-hand statistics—is simply a gross perversion of the very word. It is history and the truth that bear out that we are on the side of right—for a safer world, despite all the lies to the contrary.
And more and more Americans are beginning to see through all the lies. According to a recent FBI report, more Americans are buying guns than ever before, on the heels of the recent Sandy Hook tragedy.
What does the mainstream media, here and abroad, have to offer as “truth” but photos of dead school children, intended —not to inform— but to fool the rest of us through the use of graphic and horrifying violent deaths? We have only the faceless photos of children who were successfully defended with the use of a firearm, and who went to school and returned home, safe and sound, to counter with.
The latter outnumber, by far, the former. But which group makes the headlines? And which is real the picture of truth?
Economist John R. Lott explains how the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center attempts to turn lies into truth, like Rumpelstiltskin turned straw into gold. Lott comments that “the gun control advocates inaccurately describe many shooting cases, choosing to ignore that the majority of incidents involve people properly defending themselves.” Lott complains that “even more bizarrely, they count legitimate self-defense cases as bad events even when no charges are filed or the permit holder is later exonerated.”
Those gun-owners who are influenced by media and government lies, and who agree that stricter firearm regulations should be passed, need us —the ones who know the truth— to provide them with the facts.
We need to teach Americans who live in fear of firearms that they have been fooled by unconscionable liars. We need to explain to our fellow citizens that if they change their vote at the ballot box because of fears and falsehoods, then they are surely voting away their own children’s self-interests and futures.
The enemies of liberty —both foreign and domestic— are gathering their strength for the next round of battles against us.
We should be doing the same. We need to strengthen our culture, our norm of private firearm ownership. Strength at home, strength abroad, strength for our children, strength for our homeland, strength in unity of purpose, strength in our belief that privately possessed firearms offer the safest possible society for all.
One of the most infamous Marxists gave us a truism that has held since before guns were even conceived of. For it was Mao Tse Tung who stated that “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” But he was only partly right, for he left out what the mainstream media and our own government would deny: that words like “peace” and “security” also come from the barrels of our guns.
Many of us who are reading this are already taking the time to teach fundamental American values and truths. For those gun-owners who are not, there’s no time to waste. You are more talented than you know, and you can accomplish more than you believe.
The attempt must be made at the grassroots level, bypassing a corrupt, jaundiced media that hides the truth behind the guarantees of its beloved First Amendment, all the while demonizing the Amendment in the Bill of Rights that follows it directly, and ultimately protects it.
It’s easier if you join or create a group. It’s easier if you take some NRA instructor courses on safe firearm-handling practices, because you build some gravitas for yourself and your group. If your spouse or your children will help, that, too, is a plus. Find your own niche. One of the authors of this article runs a course for youngsters at his local range, along with other volunteers.
Most Americans—and certainly most gun-owners—know about the “Boxes of Liberty,” i.e. the measures that can be drawn on by citizens to defend liberty. A Google search of “Boxes of Liberty” provides numbers ranging from 3 to 5. Some writers include the “soap-box” and the “mailbox.” But the other 3 Boxes of Liberty are the ones that most gun-owners are familiar with: the “ballot box,” the “jury box” (and with it, the prospect of jury nullification), and as a last resort, the “cartridge box.”
In an article entitled “Four Boxes,” published on May 7, 2013, and written by Frank Grochowski—a retired Navy Veteran of 25 years active duty service—the author poses the question: “Have we passed through the Soap Box, Ballot Box, and Jury box phases and are we now facing the prospect of resorting to the Cartridge Box?”
It’s a question many Americans are now taking very seriously in ever greater numbers.
But we believe that it is not yet the time to take such drastic measures. There is still much that we can do to forestall that option, because once the bullets begin to fly, there will be no turning back from the chaos that will surely result and engulf us all.
About the authors:
Dr. Paul Gallant and Dr. Joanne D. Eisen practice optometry and dentistry, respectively, on Long Island, NY, and have collaborated on firearm politics for the past 20 years. They have also collaborated with David B. Kopel since 2000, and are Senior Fellows at the Independence Institute, where Kopel is Research Director. Most recently, Gallant and Eisen have also written with Alan J. Chwick and Sherry Gallant.
Respective E-Mail addresses are: PaulGallant2A@verizon.net, Joa