“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.” Thomas Jefferson

The progressives are much more adept at the long game in politics compared to those of us from the liberty movement. A good example is government run healthcare (their word, it is actually health insurance). The Obama administration successfully passed the Affordable Care Act which put government in charge of health insurance by an expansion of Medicaid and by mandating to private insurers what a health insurance policy must cover. Even then progressives would say that the ACA was a stepping stone to universal healthcare. The mandates in the law forced premiums to increase exponentially which would then cause everyone to ask for universal healthcare which many of the democratic presidential candidates are now prescribing.

They also practice the same long game in respect to the 2nd amendment. For the past couple of decades they have called for “common sense” gun reforms such as universal background checks. The insinuation being that current law does not require background checks. I purchased a handgun last year, and yes, I had to pass a background check just like every other firearm purchaser.

Of course, they will not be satisfied with “common sense” gun reforms. Case in point is the presidential candidate Beto (reminiscent of other political leaders that went by one name like Stalin, Mao and Castro). During the last democratic debate, Beto proclaimed “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-59. Beto is for a mandatory buy back of all scary guns like ARs and AKs. Don’t let him fool you, he and all other the other progressives are really for complete revocation of the 2nd amendment. Also, is it really a buy back? I mean, you don’t buy your firearms from the federal government, you buy it from such private companies as Colt, Ruger and Smith and Wesson.

Another fallacy you will hear from the progressives is that you don’t need an AR-15 to kill a deer. That part is true enough, I’m told a 30-06 will do the job just fine but killing a deer was not what the founders were thinking when they penned the 2nd amendment. They had just defeated the tyrant King George and the might of the British empire. They knew that despite what safeguards they had written into the constitution and the inalienable rights that all men have endowed by their creator, one day in the future a tyrant may arise in the newly created United States of America. They were correct in that the present State which is involved in all facets of our lives would truly horrify them. They had the unique perspective that a government should fear its people and not the other way around. No doubt they would want the future people of the United States of America to be well armed.

One thing that must be addressed is the rash of mass shootings in the U.S. The republicans often cite mental health which definitely should be addressed. However, the red flag laws that the Trump administration is proposing are a little scary. Anytime the federal government can put a person on a list that voids their 2nd amendment rights is a little frightening. Such laws would be much better addressed at the state and local level. Also, mental health certainly does not account for all of the mass shootings that have occurred. One thing that is common in most of these shootings is that the shooter is most often a young male loner. With smart phones and social media substituting for interpersonal communication, maybe community would be a much more effective remedy than confiscation.