Easing into my 40s, I’m finally starting to understand the urgency of time, and the appeal of leaving a lasting legacy. What will I leave behind to my daughters, and my nieces and nephews? What can I do for my grandchildren before they’re even born, so that they have an opportunity for a life as blessed as mine has been? What is worth building, protecting, and passing on?
I, for one, cannot stand the thought of bowing my head for decades more, only to look back from the twilight of my life at my gathered children and grandchildren, knowing that I failed to act to protect their most precious liberty.
Then it struck me; do I love my children any less now, that I would not sacrifice all that I am for them at this moment, if that is what liberty demands?
Politicians in Illinois, New York, and Washington, DC are incapable of grasping the true meaning of that word, sacrifice.
To them, “sacrifice” is what someone else must give up in order for them to have their way. At best, “sacrifice” to them is having to delay their desires, of having to steal away what they would take from us in partial-measures, buried in massive bills that we have to pass to find out whats in them.
Word has come down in recent days that the President of the United States may attempt to gut the Second Amendment via an executive order, reclassifying popular self-loading firearms as Title II weapons the same as hand grenades, rocket launchers, and crew-served machine guns. In doing so, he would force you to register your firearms with the Federal government, pay a draconian tax for merely keeping what you already own, and shred your right to privacy, allowing the federal government into your home unannounced to “check up” on or confiscate your guns at any moment they see fit.
From NFA ’34, to GCA ’68, to FOPA ’86, and the ’94 Crime Bill, the federal government has chipped away at the rights of gun owners in the name of “public safety.” Tellingly, the safety they’ve sought to protect in each and every one of those laws has been their own, attempting to defang the people so that when the people finally realize they have been cornered by their would-be masters, they have nothing left with which to strike back in their own defense.
Not one step more. That is what I pledge to my children.
I will accept no executive orders that reclassifies the most common and popular sporting rifle in America into a de facto “machine gun” just because a narcissist son of a drunken communist claims it is his right to do so.
I will not accept a ban on any firearms, or magazines from a self-absorbed Congress or any other imagined superior.
I will not give up one more cartridge, one more inch, or one more right so that statists in either party can constrict our liberties yet again in the false claim of safety, a claim that only serves their desire for absolute power without consequence.
Captain John Parker was a veteran of the French and Indian War when he ordered his troops of the Lexington Militia—not Minutemen, mind you, but the normal regular militia—to muster on Lexington Green. Parker was dying of advanced tuberculosis; he’d be dead within six months. His orders to his men as he faced 700 approaching regulars with less than 70 men are recorded for posterity. “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”
I can chart the path forward for no other man, but I will contest to their last breaths the desires of petty tyrants and their co-conspirators if they cross this red line that determines that the soap box, ballot box, and jury box have failed, and that the cartridge box is our last resort.
I will go to my death if this time comes to pass, orphaning and widowing those I hold most dear. For that I am truly regretful, just as I regret the lives I must attempt to cut short so that my children will breathe free. I know that in my sights will be another mother’s son or daughter, likely with children of their own. But they will have made their choice of whom to serve, and I have made mine.
There is no desire for bloodshed in my heart, but if they want a war, let it begin here.
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