The Second Amendment – 7 Varieties of Gun Control Advocates
by Gus Cotey, Jr.

The right of decent private citizens to personally possess,
transport, and responsibly use arms without government
interference is the ultimate freedom and the main pillar
supporting all other liberties. Few cultures have allowed their
general population access to weapons, the tools of power, to
the same degree as the United States. Instead, most societies
have restricted the keeping and bearing of arms to a select few
power brokers and their agents, often resulting in oppression on
a grand scale. Despite a massive amount of historical evidence
to the contrary, there is a substantial body of Americans, many
occupying positions of influence, who contend that the
abrogation of the Second Amendment is the quickest path to
domestic tranquility.

Since this is as absurd as advocating blood-letting as a cure
for anemia, it would seem advisable to question the motives and
mentalities of the gun control advocates themselves.

In my observation, weapon prohibitionists can be broken down
into seven major categories. Even though their motives may vary
they all pose a mortal threat to liberty.

ELITISTS
Many of those in favor of oppressive firearms legislation are
are best classed as elitists. Elitists frequently identify with
a peer group based on wealth, power, rank, social status,
occupation, education, ethnic group, etc. and perceive
themselves and their peers as inherently superior to and
more responsible than the “common people”, thus more deserving
of certain rights. Since elitists practically consider those
outside their class or caste as members of another species, that
most anti-elitist list of laws, the Bill of Rights is viewed by
them as anathema. Naturally, the Second Amendment is their first
target as it serves as the supporting structure for other nine
Amendments.

AUTHORITARIANS
Another type of individual who favors the restriction of private
gun ownership is the authoritarian. Authoritarian personalities
are characterized by their belief in unquestioning obedience to
an authority figure or group and a disdain for individual
freedom of action, expression, and judgement. Those with
authoritarian personalities function well in symbiosis with
elitists occupying positions of power. Because authoritarians
repress their desires for autonomy they harbor a deep resentment
toward free and independent thinkers. Of course authoritarians
do not want firearms in the hands of the general population as
this constitutes a major obstacle to fulfilling their
pathological and obsessive desire to control people.

CRIMINALS
It goes without saying that career criminals would like to see
the public disarmed for obvious reasons. A well-armed population
makes crimes such as assault, robbery, and burglary hazardous
for the perpetrator and this is bad for “business.” Also, it
would seem that even non-violentor “white collar” criminals live
in constant fear of retribution from the public that they
financially bleed and would therefore prefer that the public be
disarmed. Evidence supporting this hypothesis can be gathered by
studying the Second Amendment voting records of those
legislators who have been convicted of willful misconduct.

THE FEARFUL
Cowards by definition are easily or excessively frightened by
things and situations that are recognized as dangerous,
difficult, or painful. It therefore stands to reason that the
mere thought of guns and the circumstances in which they are
employed causes them abnormal amounts of stress. Rather than
admit their weakness to themselves or others, some fearful types
jump on the anti-gun bandwagon and purport moral superiority
to those “barbaric”enough to employ lethal force against armed
assailants by claiming various humanitarian and pragmatic
motives for allowing evil to remain unchecked. In reality, many
of these individuals harbor an envy induced resentment toward
anyone with the means, skill, and will to successfully stand up
to criminal aggression.

The desire to assert oneself exists in nearly everyone, wimps
included, so cowards seek out tame enemies against whom they can
ply their pitiful brand of machismo. Instead of the sociopaths
who commit acts of wanton aggression with guns, guns themselves
and responsible gun owners are the main targets of their
attacks. After all, real criminals are dangerous, so cowards
prefer doing battle with inanimate objects that do not have a
will of their own and decent law-abiding people whose high level
of integrity and self discipline prevent them from physically
lashing out against mere verbal assailants, however obnoxious
they may be.

IDEOLOGICAL CHAMELIONS
Ideological chameleons follow the simple social strategy of
avoiding controversy and confrontation by espousing the beliefs
of the people in their immediate vicinity or advocating the
philosophy of those who scream the loudest in a debate. Quite a
few supposedly pro Second Amendment public officials have shown
themselves to be ideological chameleons when they supported
restrictions on the private possession of military style
semiautomatic rifles following recent atrocities in which such
firearms were employed. Like their reptilian namesake, people
who merely blend in with the ambient philosophical foliage seem
to have little insight into the moral and social ramifications
of their actions. Political and/or economic gain along with
avoidance of confrontation are their only goals.

SECURITY MONOPOLISTS
Security monopolists are those members and representatives of
public and private security providing concerns who want the
means of self protection out of private hands so that they can
command high fees for protecting the citizenry against the
rising tide of crime. These profiteers stand to lose a great
deal of capital if citizens can efficiently defend themselves.
To the security monopolist, each criminal who enters and exits
the revolving door of justice is a renewable source of revenue
providing jobs for police, social workers, victim counsellors,
judges, prison employees, security guards, burglar alarm
installers, locksmiths, and others employed by the security
monopolies or their satellite organizations. No wonder it is so
common for an honest citizen to be more ruthlessly hounded by
the authorities when he shoots a criminal in self defense than a
criminal who shoots honest citizens.

THE DISFUNCTIONAL UNWORLDLY
Just as a limb will weaken and atrophy if not used, so will
aspects of the mind fail to develop if nothing in one’s
environment exists to challenge them. People who have led
excessively sheltered lives tend to have a difficult time
understanding certain cause and effect relationships and
an even harder time appreciating just how cruel the world can
be. These dysfunctionally unworldly types are truly perplexed at
the very notion of firearms ownership with regard to defense. To
them, tyranny and crime are things that happen in other places
far removed from their “civilized” universe. Also, they do not
understand the value of private property and why some people
would fight for theirs since they never had to work hard to
acquire what they possess. While those suffering from
dysfunctional unworldliness are most often people who have been
born into considerable wealth, this condition is also common in
members of the clergy, academicians, practioners of the arts,
and others who have spent much of their lives cloistered in a
safe and pampering environment. While many of these people may
be quite talented and intelligent in some ways, their extreme
naivete’ makes them easy prey for the tyrants who use them for
the financial support and favorable advertisement of their
regimes. Needless to say, the anti-gun movement is well
represented and financed by the dysfunctionally unworldly.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and it behooves all
vigilant lovers of liberty to know and be able to recognize the
various types of arms prohibitionists and understand their
differing but equally dangerous motives. Acquiring knowledge of
one’s foes is the first step toward defeating them. We must
never forget that a threat to private firearms ownership is a
threat to all freedoms.
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It was once widely believed that life was a gift from God, that
to not defend that life when offered violence was to hold God’s
gift in contempt, to be a coward and to breach one’s duty to
one’s community. A sermon given in Philadelphia in 1747
unequivocally equated the failure to defend oneself with
suicide:

He that suffers his life to be taken from him by one that
hath no authority for that purpose, when he might preserve
it by defense, incurs the Guilt of self murder since God
hath enjoined him to seek the continuance of his life, and
Nature itself teaches every creature to defend itself.
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