It's Time to Buy And Learn to Use a Gun if You Don't Have One Already
It Won't End With the Murder of Political Figures And Your Family is in Danger
Can we talk about reality for awhile? Is it okay for me say something that the other side won’t appreciate? I mean, I’m not afraid of being cancelled. Substack has made their commitment to Free Speech clear and it’s not like people who read a Stack called The Conservative Historian are likely to be offended by my taking the other side to task. But this one is likely to be a bit uncomfortable. That’s life in the big city, I suppose. Don’t claim you haven’t been warned.
The Right has, for at least the last few decades, been warning people to stockpile arms and ammunition in case of the rise of an oppressive government. We’ve been right to do so. The Founding Fathers fully intended the American people to be able to own the weapons of war. Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution empowers Congress “To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;” Letters of Marque and Reprisal were issued to owners of ships whose job it was to provide Privateers: People licensed to harass and seize the shipping of enemy nations in time of conflict.
Privateers were, of necessity, required to carry fully functional cannon. Yes, I said cannon. These were not men armed only with shotguns and hunting rifles. Both merchant ships and the privateers that preyed on them carried cannon. In the case of the merchant ships it was for self protection. Privateers carried their cannon for offensive purposes. While some merchants may have surrendered at the sight of a privateer, many would fight back. Having cannon in place was the only way to fight an enemy armed with cannon, whether one was a privateer or a merchant.
And if anyone ever told you that the Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought over muskets, they lied. The British were out that day searching for cannon own by the early Americans, who were technically still British subjects at the time. Per the National Park Service:
In 1775, British soldiers had been stationed in Boston to enforce the Coercive Acts imposed on Massachusetts by the British government in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party. Responding to this enforcement, Patriots smuggled the four bronze cannons from the town arsenal out of Boston, foiling British guards. They took these cannons to James Barrett's farm in Concord, Massachusetts for safekeeping as antagonisms continued.[3]
The British failed to find the cannons when they entered Concord on April 19, 1775. The four cannons became part of the artillery of the Continental army led by George Washington. Although the Continental army used these cannons against British forces throughout the Revolutionary War, there is no record of which battles they were in. During the war, two of the four cannons were lost.
So yes, cannon ownership was permitted at the time of the Founding Fathers and as a matter of fact George Washington, commander of the US Army during the American Revolution was also the President of the Constitutional Convention and knew that there were cannon in civilian hands.
It follows that refusing to acknowledge the rights of the people to keep and bear military arms is protected by the Constitution. As far as I can tell, the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934, which bans civilian ownership of machine guns, is already unconstitutional. It was passed at a time when the country was afraid of guys like Al Capone and their use of guns like the Browning Automatic Rifle (favored by Machine Gun Kelly) and the “Chicago Typewriter” better known to modern day firearms enthusiasts as the Thompson Machine Gun. Both were designed for use in World War I but weren’t fielded until World War II because they weren’t finished on time.
And so American patriots, those of us who love our country and not necessarily the government that runs it, have become somewhat inured to the thought that they might have to fight against their government. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating for open warfare against the government at this point. I’m just saying that what we’ve prepared ourselves mentally for a fight against Uncle Sam and his soldiers and that may not be what’s coming.
I’ve seen a particular report brought up by several other writers, but I was trained to be a historian. In this instance, that means that I was taught to view primary source documents in my exploration of history. In other words, go to the source. I did some work on the Manhattan Project for one of my classes. I ordered a couple of different copies of The Official Documents of the Manhattan Project on microfilm and viewed them at my university library. I did my Capstone Paper on the involvement of the Heer (the German army during the early to mid 1940s) in the Holocaust. I actually read translations of reports written in German and the transcripts of the Nuremberg Trials. Well, parts of them anyway. There are a LOT of books in that series and I only had a semester. A Capstone Paper is not a Doctoral Dissertation or even a Master’s Thesis. I didn’t have that kind of time, but I wasn’t expected to write as much either so I guess it cuts both ways.
All of that to say that I felt it necessary to look up the study myself and…
It’s just as bad as I had heard it was. I was kind of surprised. Our side can stretch the truth just as much as the other side does but, at least in this case, we didn’t. What I found was every bit as worrisome as I feared it would be. Per the National Contagion Research Institute:
Sorry, I couldn’t copy/paste it in text form and I didn’t want to risk typing something in wrong and changing its meaning.
It’s the part about “a growing probability of real-world escalation” that bothers me. See, here’s my problem:
The Romanov Family was assassinated as part of the Russian Revolution. What followed that was the death, by execution and forced starvation of literally millions of people, the vast majority citizens of the Soviet Union. It is true that these deaths were ordered by the government, but they were carried about by the average Soviet citizen. Just your normal, everyday Josef.
The largest mass murderer of the Twentieth Century was not Stalin, or Lenin. It wasn’t even Hitler. It was Mao Zedong. Mao launched the Cultural Revolution (an actual, physical fight combined with mid-Twentieth Century wokism) and then proceeded to use the people he brainwashed to murder millions more.
I could continue with names like Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot, but you get the idea. Political murder starts with political targets and then trickles down to the murder of anyone who gets in the way.
From another part of the NCRI report:
Over half of all persons who identified as Left of Center believe that it’s okay to assassinate both Donald Trump and Elon Musk, simply because the respondent doesn’t agree with political actions take by Musk and/or Trump. That’s scary.
But what’s even scarier is that these are the people who run around screaming “Bash the Fash” and “Punch a Nazi” and who seem to believe that anyone with political beliefs they disagree with is either fascist or a Nazi. They’re already threatening political violence.
My point here is this: It may not be necessary to go to war against some nameless, faceless soldier from five states away. The person you may end up facing down in your own front yard is the kid down the street who managed to get hold of his great-grandpappy’s goose gun. It might be your kid’s best friend, armed with a baseball bat or a Molotov cocktail. What I’m saying is that if and when the fighting starts, you’d better be ready. And you’d better be ready to face off with Joe Average from down the street, or maybe his little sister.
I guess I’ve gotten old enough now to hope that we can get things fixed without a war. I guess I’m still young enough to doubt that it will happen. Don’t take this as a call to go out and do something stupid. I’m calling for self defense here. You have no more right to go off killing liberals than they have to kill you. But be prepared for an attack to come from an unanticipated direction. And, heaven forbid, if it does do what you need to do. And don’t stop doing it until you and yours are safe again.
God bless you all, my friends. Stay safe and protected.