Government is the Most Dangerous Mass Murderer

Yet another crazy has gone on a shooting spree in a gun free zone and there are immediately calls for gun control.  Yes, gun control has done wonders for Chicago, New York, and Washington DC.  Let's bring that same gun murder rate to the rest of the country.  The Second Amendment guarantees the right of the people to bear arms because the people have a right to defend themselves.  That right was denied to certain groups in the 20th century and it didn't turn out well.

In 1911, the Ottoman Empire banned guns.  A few years later, a million and a half Armenians were murdered.  The Soviet Union banned guns in 1929.  The following decade, millions of Ukrainian Kulaks were murdered through mass starvation.  Dissident Russians found themselves sent to Siberian gulags.  In 1938, Germany banned guns.  Shortly thereafter, millions of Jews were shipped off to death camps.  Where the Jews managed to have weapons, there were uprisings, the most famous of which was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.  China had banned guns in the 1930s, just in time for the Japanese invasion.  Oddly, the ban was still in effect after the war and during the rule of Mao Zedong.  Up to 50 million Chinese were killed during Mao's Cultural Revolution.  Cambodia instituted total gun control in 1956.  When Pol Pot seized power two decades later, he exterminated 2 million unarmed Cambodians, a quarter of the country's population.  Cuba, North Korea, and Iran do not allow private citizens to have guns.

 

This is not to say that gun control automatically leads to mass murder by the government.  Both the United Kingdom and Japan have very strict gun control but it is unlikely that a government will arise in either that would murder its citizens.  But if one did, the people would be helpless to resist.  And that is why we have the 2nd Amendment.  Yes, there are costs to such liberal gun laws.  These costs are only made worse by gun free zones.  The way to stop a bad guy with a gun is for a good guy with a gun to arrive on scene.  All those law-abiding citizens are necessarily disarmed while law is no impediment to the shooter.

 

Today's government might want to take your gun for what it views as good and rational reason.  It will do you no harm and in fact only have your best interest at heart.  However, tomorrow's government - perhaps 20 years from now - might look upon you as a nuisance that has no means to resist its will.