- Joined
- Mar 16, 2009
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gun nuts
There are gun nuts, nascar nuts, soccer nuts, fly fishing nuts (there's a sport you can spend gazillions of dollars on that's about as practical as a tutu on a boar), golf nuts (ugh), football nuts (and I do mean nuts!), and so on. People get passionate about things they value.
I think it is more rational to be passionate about the right to keep and bear arms, than 95% of the things that most people go nuts over. It is a right that is vital to maintaining a free society, second only in importance to the 1st Amendment freedoms of speech/assembly/association/religion/press. It is a right that is statistically shown to aid in the protection of the innocent against the criminal. It is the difference between a citizen and a serf, historically.
Any cause, however worthy, has some proponents who maybe go a little overboard...in the case of football, lots of proponents who go WAY overboard. :mrgreen:
A silver tongue on the part of supporters is not an indicator of the value of a cause, nor is an excess of passion about it necessarily a contra-indication of value.
There are many of us who are quick to leap to the support or defense of the 2A in any sense where it is an issue, and perhaps sometimes we suffer from an excess of zeal...but this is because many of us firmly believe in the value of it. As Barry Goldwater said, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
Mao Tse Tung said "all political power grows from the barrel of a gun." I'd reverse that and say that so does Liberty, through the power of the armed citizenry: because an armed citizenry can only be pushed so far by their government.
So I hereby declare today to be Hug a Gun Nut Day, and tell them how much you appreciate the fact that their existence helps keep your government at least somewhat in check. :mrgreen: