Civil war's a-brewin'

By J. Matt Barber

A pretty, young, auburn-haired woman – mid-20s – drove down a lonely country road somewhere in Oklahoma. Appearing in her rearview mirror, at the back windshield, were two menacing orbs of light floating amid ashen dusk. The guttural roar of a souped-up big block shook the tiny Volkswagen Rabbit as a van-load of inbred thugs lurched left and drew alongside her. A ponytailed passenger taunted inaudibly and blew foul kisses between crude hand gestures. He pointed for her to pull over as the van repeatedly swerved dangerously close.

Inside the car a man, asleep in the reclining passenger seat, was startled awake by the commotion. He rose and darted his head about, calmly assessing the situation. This only spurred the evil-bent goons. As they ramped-up efforts to run the car off the road, the man reached in the glove box, withdrew a military-grade, semi-automatic handgun – an "assault weapon," if you will – and, with intentionality and great theatre, leaned across his young bride, pointing the gun out the open bay and directly between dirt bag's booze-flushed eyes.

Van vanished amid a plume of gray smoke as wheels locked, tires screeched and "assault vehicle" fishtailed – jerking to a halt with taillights aglow skyward from the ditch.

Not a shot was fired.

Back at the couple's rural farmhouse, two boys – boys who would not be orphaned that night – played. We most likely played – my brother Pete and I – with assault rifles fashioned from sticks. I always love to hear Dad retell the story. He does it with an ornery, satisfied grin. "No one's taking my guns," he'll say.

This might be a good time for me to add that no one's taking my guns either. Period. And if Dianne Feinstein orders me from her lofty perch on the left-coast to retroactively register them with some federal autocracy, I think I might just forget I even have them. Tens of millions of law-abiding, God-fearing Americans just like me and Dad, I suspect, feel the same way.

I love guns. Grew up with 'em. As a former police officer with 12 years in the U.S. military, I know how to use them, too – use them well. I plan to buy more – a bunch more. In fact, who's to say I don't already have a veritable arsenal?

Point is, tain't Big Brother Barack's nor any other candy-keistered-liberal-cream-puff's bloody business whether I do or not.

See, the left's totalitarian brand of "gun control" has nothing to do with controlling guns – or bad guys. Rather, it has everything to do with controlling – disarming – the law-abiding masses. It's not about protecting the innocents. It's about rendering the innocents defenseless.

Clichés become clichés for a reason, and the old cliché, "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns," rings as true today as it did whenever it was that some homespun fellow coined it.

I was disgusted – physically sickened, in fact – when Barack Obama, president of these Divided States of America, shamelessly exploited the Sandy Hook memorial service to lay the groundwork for his unconstitutional gun-confiscation scheme. It was slimy to the extreme.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. That's what liberals do. Every time some evil nutjob – pumped full of psychotropic drugs by NEA members who don't want to deal with them – shoots-up the place, the left's collective mouth begins to water.

"Now, finally, now!" they say, rubbing together soft hands that have never felt the surprising weight of a Sig Sauer 45. "This time we have the political momentum for sweeping gun control. This time the American people will roll over and let us trample the Second Amendment beneath jackbooted executive order or congressional fiat."

"Let no good crisis go to waste," right, Rahm?

Well, not so fast, cupcake. As the U.S. Constitution guarantees – and as the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed – "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

It ain't, "should not be infringed," or "shall finally be infringed once 'progressives' have assumed total dominance."

No, "shall not" means shall not.

There's only one way to take my guns, slick, and that's through a constitutional amendment – an amendment that will never happen – ever. Try it any other way and we have a problem.

And this whole "assault weapons ban" angle? Sensationalist propaganda. I prefer to call them "defense weapons." Contrary to left-wing revisionist pabulum, the Second Amendment's not about squirrel hunting.

Notice a trend here? What do Sandy Hook Elementary, Aurora Colorado's Century 16 theatre and Columbine have in common? They're all "gun free zones."

Places you don't see mass murder and mayhem? Well, there's a reason bad guys largely avoid shooting-up gun shows, ranges, households with signs that say: "This home insured by Smith & Wesson" and Texas in general. It's because they know – even while thick-skulled liberals don't – that, as recently noted by the NRA's Wayne LaPierre, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Oh, that rather than "gun free zone," Sandy Hook had a sign reading: "Staff heavily armed and trained. Any attempts to harm those herein will be met with deadly force." Might some of those beautiful babies have still died if the P.E. coach and four MP5-bearing teachers had ended the bloodshed soon after it began? Perhaps. But how many precious lives could have been saved?

No, you won't disarm me. You're not going to neuter my household and tear away my ability to defend my wife and precious babies like Dad did all those years ago.

I really, really hope this president and his authoritarian cohorts in Congress will slow down, take a deep breath and realize that, right now, they're playing a very dangerous game of chicken. If they try what I think they might, but hope they don't, I fear this nation – already on the precipice of widespread civil unrest and economic disaster – might finally spiral into to utter chaos, into a second civil war.

But then again, that may be exactly what they have in mind.

© J. Matt Barber