General News
Posted: 8-5-2010
Guns: A heartfelt plea
By Kristy Meekhof
Contributing Writer
I’ve put off writing about the situation where the guardsman was detained because someone else was frightened by him open carrying a handgun. It’s incredibly ominous and disheartening to read how often these incidents occur across the country… and to have it happen in Michigan… again. In Oceana County, where guns and strong individualism is our heritage, well it’s heartbreaking.
We describe the gentleman as a “guardsman” but you know what? It wouldn’t matter if he was a street cleaner, a house painter or an out-of-work jazz musician with holes in his pants, unshaven face and in desperate need of a hair cut. Open carry in Michigan is legal. If we were actually operating within the Constitution it would be illegal to make a law that restricts or even touches the Second Amendment in any way, but that’s another story. For now open (and concealed) carry is legal in Michigan.
Oh my friends, teach your children to understand that citizens with guns are a good thing. Government with guns and more power than the people is a very, very bad thing. We should all be packing!
Never believe the Second Amendment had anything to do with hunting. The Second Amendment is there because our country’s founders knew what it was like to live under the yoke of a too-powerful centralized government. If your government is afraid of you, the people, you live in a free Republic. If you are afraid of your government you live under tyranny. Are you afraid of your government?
Stop a moment and really think on that.
Our police are under attack as well. It’s obvious from these increasing incidents that they, along with the rest of us, are subtly being taught that rights of individual people are not as important as the smooth flow of society. “Just put away your God given right to protect yourself fella… you know, to make that guy over there comfortable.”
Or maybe it’s even more disturbing than that? Maybe anyone who carries a gun is now considered a trouble-maker? Or worse, a terrorist? I don’t know, but if it was just a guy exercising his God given right to protect himself (I’m sure he’d have protected me too if I needed it) why was he stopped?
Have we gone so far down the Socialist/Communist trail that we don’t realize that FREEDOMS and RIGHTS are individual not collective? Your rights are personal. They are yours, not the group’s. They are given by God, not the government. Because someone else is frightened or uncomfortable by your God given right to protect yourself, doesn’t mean your rights are canceled out.
I want to explain that I don’t believe our local police have any sinister designs. What I am saying is that I believe the centralized training of our police certainly does. If you’re a police officer please seriously question the “domestic terrorism” training you’re probably getting, where it originates, and how that may be affecting your view of gun folks. Are you subtly being taught it’s “us against them”? If you, and other officers, allow “us against them” teachings to seep into your belief system, not just my kids, but your kids, will grow up under this draconian state; where someone else, with a badge, will see your kid as a threat for no other reason than, “us against them,” and your kid is “them.” Working within the Constitution and taking our rights back starts at street level.
Unless I’m way off, this is a horrible set up that we’ve all fallen into. We’re taught to be suspicious; suspecting, watching, and reporting each other almost constantly. We need to trust, protect and count on one another, not the government for petesake!
The second is our last and final protection against an oppressive, tyrannical government. Don’t you see? It’s being whittled away by teaching us to fear and distrust one another! Teaching us to be afraid of guns in the hands of the people. Teaching us to only trust government. I’ve watched the news programs. I’ve seen the public school, “fear-guns-fear-people-they’re-all-out-to-hurt-you-only-government-can-be-trusted” programs. Control through fear and we’re falling for it! Stop being afraid of one another. Stop watching and reporting one another!
Every time a seemingly small incident like this happens and isn’t corrected it wears away at our heritage, accelerating our demise exponentially. Like an avalanche. America, as we knew it, is being attacked at every level. It’s coming fast and furious and impossible to fight on all fronts. Everything we hold dear is being stealthily or blatantly taken, and in many instances we’re giving it away! Our freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and of course the Second Amendment that guarantees the rest of them, are being aggressively and deliberately eroded.
Please let’s recognize what’s happening instead of believing the beautiful fairy tale that they feed us in the public arena… that we’re still free individuals; still have individual rights; and are still operating within the Constitution. We aren’t. Argue with me… but then please tell me why a gentleman in Oceana County, Mich. was reported on and stopped for exercising one of the basic rights of being human enumerated in our Constitution? Why?
“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.”-Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
It is infringed.
