If you’re looking for political commentary, this ain’t it. I’ve just been ruminating today. It started when I was jogging and working out….
See, I try to get out most days of the week and walk/jog a few miles, maybe do some stretching and calisthenics (nothing heavy; I’m an old guy). Part of the regular “workout route” is to jog out to the end of a fishing pier. It’s nice. Has a really nice view. But today it was really blowing (rain’s coming), and it was threatening to blow my broad-brimmed hat right off my head (doctor’s orders; keep the sun off my face, avoid skin cancers). So when I stopped at the end of the pier, I needed a place to put the hat so it wouldn’t blow into the bay (and I couldn’t jump off the pier to get it because doing that would drown my hearing aids…but that’s another story).
So I found a trash can and folded my hat into an empty cardboard box with no beer cans left in it. Did some stretches and stuff, then retrieved the hat. It was clean, you understand…but it…it smelled like…fish.
You know what it’s like jogging with a hat that smells like dead fish? Neither did I. Until this morning.
So…while I was jogging and my head smelled like dead fish, I got to thinking about Bill Whittle’s extraordinary speech on the Second Amendment where he talked about “predators and prey,” and how no one would begrudge a gazelle from using its hooves and horns to defend itself from a leopard who wanted to eat it. And about how sometimes certain kinds of prey don’t really have any defenses. Like sheep. They’re nice animals. Family oriented. Peaceful. They hang out, eat grass, grow wool, that sort of thing. They are essentially prey with no natural defenses. Wolves like to eat them too. (I mean, we like mutton, and leg-o’-lamb, right? So why not wolves?)
But the sheep are under the protection of us humans, so we provide them with defense. They’re called “sheepdogs.” Very cool creatures, sheepdogs. Excellent, in fact. They fight wolves, if necessary, and alert humans when predators are trying to eat their sheep.
Now let’s shift our view: How about humans? Are there “predators” among human beings? Ohhh…yeah. You bet. And are there “sheep,” who have little if any ability to use natural weapons to defend themselves? What about the elderly, the very young, women, the small, the sick, the weak? That, my friends, is why we human beings invented “weapons,” starting with slings, clubs, then spears and knives, and graduating to bows and arrows, lances, and eventually “guns.” And just as no one would say “it’s too dangerous” or “it’s unfair” for the gazelle to defend itself with its hooves and horns, no rational person would say the same thing about humans who want to keep and carry weapons with which to defend themselves, right? Right?
But wait, you say! Most human beings are like sheep (you say). And our sheepdogs are…the police! So no one really needs to have a gun to defend themselves! Well, not exactly. You see, the sheepdogs live with and sleep with the sheep. Can we arrange to have a police officer live with us in our homes and go around with us and sleep with us? (I guess arrangements could be made; female police officers could be assigned to sleep with females, and male police officers could be assigned to sleep with guys…or the other way around…or whatever). But no…for some reason I don’t think that analogy works. Besides, people AREN’T sheep, and they do have the right to live their lives as they see fit (also known as “pursuit of happiness”). It is also true that fighting, hurting, and possibly killing other people doesn’t come either naturally or easily to most people. It’s just not what most of us like to do (if we’re not union thugs, at least), and thus most of us don’t “train” for it.
But if people have the right not to be attacked, victimized, and possibly eaten by other human beings (who knows?), don’t they also have a natural right to protect themselves with the tools of self-defense we’ve invented for that purpose? I.e. “guns”? Like the gazelle with its hooves and horns, and the leopard on its tail? After all, “God made big, strong, nasty, violent people, and God made small, virtuous, weak, peaceable people…but Samuel Colt made them all equal.”
That’s the essential virtue of the right to keep and bear arms. It is not given to us by the Second Amendment, it is not bestowed by the Constitution. It is a natural right that every human being has. And it is inalienable.
One other thing too: There are those among us who do like to fight and hurt other people—or at least they don’t mind getting it on and mixing it up—but in day-to-day life they are restrained from such natural inclinations by something called “morality,” aka “a moral code.” These types of people do train in fighting techniques, and they do carry guns which they’re quite willing to use against human predators.
“Now stop right there!” you say. “Those are police.” No they aren’t. Police do help protect people, but that doesn’t say no one else can. Besides, police generally serve the government, and their job is enforcing its laws. The ready-to-fight humans who carry guns but are not police are actually like the shepherd’s sheepdogs. They are people who like to serve. They will, if called upon, defend and protect those among us who cannot defend themselves. This is not to say that people are “sheep.” It’s just that we humans don’t really have any natural weapons to defend ourselves, and we generally choose to live our lives peaceably. Kicking ass and taking names isn’t a favorite pastime for most of us, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. So…enter the human sheepdogs. Here’s a pretty good explanation about such people.
See?
This is what you get when you’re jogging and you start wool-gathering and ruminating about things. It’s all common sense, really. Takes a regressive Democrat to deny what’s simple and obvious.
And all while jogging with a hat that smelled like dead fish….
