The Second Installment of The Carnival of Cordite is Up.

Over at Resistance is Futile. (Gullyborg needs to work on his layout – those quotes are so tiny they’re hard to read!)

The posts are all gun-oriented, and all good, but my pick of the week is Critical Mastiff‘s The Gun Thing. His essay charts his personal voyage to gun ownership and personal responsibility. This excerpt jumped out at me:

Possessing power means that first, you are capable in theory of confronting opposing power and defeating it. Second, it means that you now have the responsibility of deciding when to use force. This means grappling with the thorniest moral problems that we face, and making clear decisions on what is right and what is wrong. Third, because you have power, you have a reciprocal responsibility to use your power for the good of others. By carrying a weapon, you are accepting an obligation to protect those around you.

Not possessing power means that first, you are completely dependent on others for your own survival. Anything you do must be in concert with them, or else you become defenseless. Second, you need never seriously confront the problem of using force, because you personally will never need an answer. Crucial areas of your moral code will remain vague and theoretical, because nothing is making you draw clear lines in the sand. Finally, because you have no defense against force if used against you, you will do your best to banish force from your world entirely, except for those whose protection you rely upon.

This is something I think a lot of gun owners understand implicitly (though some do not), but never really think about or express. And it’s something that the gun-phobic do not understand at all, or if they do, they subconsciously reject it. I am reminded, once again, of the letter written by “Refugee” that expressed much the same sentiment:

When I actually bought [a gun] (to the horror and confusion of my friends and family), having it around the house, carrying it in my car, talking about it, showing it off, and of course shooting and maintaining it, taught me what I could not learn from books, magazines, classes, or even Usenet:

It taught me that freedom takes practice.

I thought I’d practiced. I’m as full of opinions as the next guy, and not shy about passing ’em out to anyone who’ll listen. I read banned books and underground comics. I’ve walked the picket lines and hung out with undesirables. A preacher’s kid, I pointedly don’t practice a religion. I’ve done stuff that Wasn’t Allowed.

But when I got a gun, I discovered it had all been safe, padded, wading-pool-with-floaties dabbling. After near on to fifty years, I finally started to grow up. If my Grands are any clue, I’ve still got twenty or thirty years to work on it, and get to be something like mature by the time I go senile.

It’s not just that rights are useless if they are not exercised, not even that rights must be used or be lost. It’s that exercising your rights, constantly, is what instructs you in how to be worthy of them.

Being armed goes far beyond simple self-protection against thugs or even tyrants — it’s an unequivocal and unmatched lesson that you are politically and morally sovereign; that you, and not the state, are responsible for your life and your fate. This absolute personal sovereignty is the founding stone of the Republic. “A well-regulated militia” (where the militia is “the whole people”) isn’t just “necessary to the security of a free state” because it provides a backup to (and defense against) the police and the army. More importantly, keeping and bearing arms trains sovereign citizens in the art of freedom, and accustoms us to our authority and duty.

Here’s to our efforts to expand the Nation of Riflemen so that more of our fellow citizens can learn the same lessons.

Because if we’re going to survive as a free people, a lot more of us need to.