Mall Ninja
Member
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2007
- Messages
- 31
Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.
On the other side of the coin, 2300 years ago, Aristotle said that you could tell how free a society was by looking at how many of its people were armed (remember, we're talking swords and pikes, not guns).
Why? Because only an armed people truly have the power to decide their own destiny. It's called sovereignty and self-determination.
If you think that our government has a tendency to grab ever more power for itself and deny ever more freedom to the people over time, imagine how much that process would be accelerated if the government had nothing to fear from "we the people."
I don't care how benign the motives might be – any government that denies people the right to arms ultimately devolves into little more than tyranny. To bastardize Jefferson, denial of the right to arms is tyranny's natural manure.
On the other side of the coin, 2300 years ago, Aristotle said that you could tell how free a society was by looking at how many of its people were armed (remember, we're talking swords and pikes, not guns).
Why? Because only an armed people truly have the power to decide their own destiny. It's called sovereignty and self-determination.
If you think that our government has a tendency to grab ever more power for itself and deny ever more freedom to the people over time, imagine how much that process would be accelerated if the government had nothing to fear from "we the people."
I don't care how benign the motives might be – any government that denies people the right to arms ultimately devolves into little more than tyranny. To bastardize Jefferson, denial of the right to arms is tyranny's natural manure.