Any rebuttals?

“The Gun Is Civilization”

Interesting take and one you don’t hear much. . . . . .

As the Supreme Court hears arguments for and against the Chicago , IL Gun Ban, I offer you another stellar example of a letter (written by a Marine) that places the proper perspective on what a gun means to a civilized society. This is an eloquent and profound letter…

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The Gun is Civilization

by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for an armed mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.

People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation… and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

By Maj. L. Caudill USM C (Ret.)

So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.

I’ve heard on the radio, several times now, an ad that says if you owe over $10,000 in credit card debt, that the “Government” has a method by which you can settle that debt for much less than you owe.
I don’t have a cent of credit card debt.
In fact, my wife and I don’t have any credit cards. We have debit cards, so everything is charged to our bank accounts immediately.
But, I’ve been thinking; if this debt reduction plan is legitimate … say, they let you pay say, 60% of what you owe … suppose my wife and I go on a buying binge and run up say, $10, 500 in credit card debt, and desperately resort to this debt reduction scheme, could we get out of debt by paying only $6,300 ???
Wow, perhaps Obamanomics aren’t so bad after all !!
If we can do this more than once, we might even buy things we could re-sell afterwards.
Might even be able to sell them for say, $7,000 or $8,000 …. do you suppose?
Hey, there is a possible “get rich quick” scheme looming up here!

Perhaps surprisingly, I am at least unsure that more F-22s at a third of a billion apiece should have been bought.
Now the F-35 is rising in cost to over $130 million each. That’s each !
Add to that that we have not lost an aircraft in an aerial battle since the Vietnam war, and that the fighter pilot is becoming something like the cowboy … an icon of a certain period in our history, but a fading folk hero.
Recent graduates of the fighter pilot schools are not going to our dwindling fleet of F-16s, but to the drone control rooms in Nevada.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to justify a large fleet of air combat vehicles, because there is no credible potential adversary out there.
Now, that does not mean that we do not need a robust military force; it means that if our adversaries are guys in ragged burnouses carrying AK-47s, there may be little for the billion dollar weapon systems to shoot at.
Yes, we need to keep our eye on China, and Iran is, indeed a credible threat, especially to our ally, Israel, but the probability of what was considered a classical threat… a thousand armored vehicles leading twenty thousand mobile infantry seems a fading possibility.
It may well be that the final armored battle in history was fought against Saddam’s Russian built tanks in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
New weapon systems are appearing, such as small, autonomous flying vehicles that attack anything that moves in swarms and are expendable, but cost in the five or ten thousand dollar range.
I think our real vulnerability may lie in our electronic systems, all of which can be rendered useless instantly by an electromagnetic pulse weapon.
Imagine that one detonates over Kansas, destroying everything up to a thousand miles from ground zero.
That’s everything electrical or electronic, including all vehicles, computers, bank records, communication devices, cash registers,etc., etc.
Within a couple of days all the people in that  geographic area would be out of food, immobile and totally helpless.
That’s the kind of warfare we will face in the near future.
Now, I am not convinced that Obama and his people are thinking like that.
I really believe they are rank amateurs and naive as Hell about all things military, and that the Admirals/Generals either cater to them or retire.
So the threat is two fold: The unbelievable naivete of the Obama-ites, and the willingness of many top military career officers to “accept the inevitable”.
The only thing that seems likely to reverse these trends is a real, rising Chinese threat .. and I do not think the younger generation of Chinese will have any interest in waging nuclear war against the USA.
Economic, and perhaps even electronic war? Perhaps, though I’m even skeptical about that.
They are far more likely to be enjoying their arrival at the top of the world’s economic heap.