Some Words of wisdom from Terry Reitz in response to an article by Alan Caruba titled ’The Government can’t take our guns away’!
In the America you and I grew up in I would agree with you. Unfortunately, many of the assumptions, upon which we would make the statement ”not in America” are either no longer valid today or have changed significantly.

Five years ago I believed, with no doubt, that the American electorate could not possibly be stupid enough to elect the obamination. When the unthinkable actually happened I quickly woke up to the fact that I needed to reexamine many of my assumptions.

As a result of doing so, for the past two years, I have contended that the chance he would NOT be reelected was, at best, 50/50. If the conservative turnout, on Election Day, was not extremely high there would be no way that we would be able to overcome the massive amount of voter fraud that would occur. As we approached the last election it became apparent that, barring massive conservative turnout, we were in deep dodo – hence my essay The Second American Civil War.

The results of the last election only confirmed my concerns. Rounded off for simplicity of math, thirty percent of the electorate, through evil intent, greed, cowardice or stupidity, chose serfdom. Thirty percent stood against tyranny. Excepting those unable to vote, the remaining forty percent could not even be bothered to vote. Considering the obvious – to anyone with a working brain – importance of the last election, those numbers should cause any thinking American to lose sleep.

Alan’s statement that ”the act of trying to take our guns would be futile and, were it attempted, would result in an all-out insurrection” is accurate only in the case of a direct confiscation attempt, under current socio-political conditions. The error in his article is the assumption that direct confiscation would be the only way we could effectively lose our ability to defend ourselves.

A good example is the argument over the, so-called, ”assault” weapons and high capacity magazines. The principal contention, of the anti-second amendment crowd, is that there is no need, today, for citizens to possess weapons with magazine capacity ”suitable for combat”. As you and I know, from the very words of our Founders, the most important reason for ensuring our ability to keep and bear arms was to ensure that we could protect ourselves from those who always have been – and always be – the greatest threat to our freedom – our own government.

Understanding that stipulation, the possession of weapons, ”suitable for combat”, is absolutely necessary for us to, actually and realistically, be able to defend ourselves against our own government. Anything less would be, as one writer put it, ”shotguns against gunships”. As you can see, the acceptance of this distortion of the second amendment can effectively nullify the central intent of the amendment yet let our enemies claim that they have not ”violated” that amendment.

This leads to another ”assumption” that – to an unquantifiable extent – may be becoming more ”legend” than ”fact”. That assumption is that the ”military” would never allow a tyrannical regime to abrogate the Constitution. Historically, this is nothing but a fairy tale. All one has to do is to examine the historical record, concerning the rise to power of tyrannies such as the Nazi SS or the soviet KGB, to see this. If you were to do so, you would be extremely concerned with what the current regime is doing to/with our military today.

While I believe that our armed forces – for now – would refuse to allow a clearly overt assumption of dictatorial powers that is not how it has always been done, or would be attempted in America. As with all the other attacks on our freedoms today, it will be gradual and rationalized as ”necessary” for the ”good of the country”.

This is not just conjecture on my part. Senior members of the military today have noted that many of the younger service members do not accurately understand their oath of enlistment. More than one member of the military, when asked if they would actually use force against their own families, have avoided answering by saying that they would not be stationed where their families were but, rather, where they did not have any family members.

Historically, gaining control of any national military has not been a complicated process. To succeed all that is needed is two things – time and a citizenry that fails to prevent the process:

Step one: Begin questioning, and then attacking, the basic principles the target society is based on until the citizens begin to question their basic values system. This has already been accomplished, in America today.

Step two: Begin indoctrinating a generation of children. Teach them that everything that preceding generations believed in is, in fact, false – Accomplished.

Step Three: Begin replacing the military command structure with those loyal to the government, instead of the law. Intimidate those in the existing structure who fail to be ”politically correct” – accomplished (Fort hood was ”workplace crime”, not a ”terrorist event” and numerous warning signs were ignored due to such intimidation)

Step Four: As the newly indoctrinated youth come of military age use the, now corrupted, command structure to continue their indoctrination, particularly in the area of the importance of the ”State” over the ”citizen” – in progress now.

Step Five: Begin ”removing” any leftover ”holdouts”, from the old value system (any popular commanders that have been ”replaced” lately?) – in progress now.

Ongoing process: Disarm the citizenry by either confiscating their weapons, making ownership so onerous many will give up trying or only allowing weapons totally ineffective against the military.

In summary, I agree with you that a direct attempt to ”take” our firearms today would result in insurrection. My only point is that they do not have to do that to effectively disarm us. Once effectively disarmed it is only a matter of time before any resistance we could mount against a direct seizure of our weapons would be ineffective.

Many of us grew up believing that certain things could never happen in America because of certain, assumed, constants. The events of the last four years show clearly that our beliefs were wrong. From this we must reexamine many of our former assumptions, and adjust our tactics where necessary, or we are doomed to failure.