If there is one Holy Grail target that the political left obsesses over more that anything else, it is getting their hands on the 2^nd Amendment and molding it to their will or erasing it forever. The pursuit of American gun rights is paramount to them, beyond critical race theory, beyond gender politics, even beyond the abortion debate. The problem for them is that ever since the Obama era they have consistently hit a brick wall in terms of convincing the general public to give another inch of ground when it comes to gun control.

To be sure, there are many reasons for this that coincide. First, the credit crash of 2008 opened many people’s eyes to the possibility that the economic systems we take for granted today could disappear tomorrow. Gun rights were no longer a matter of “tradition,” but a matter of necessity. If the system breaks down and emergency services are overwhelmed or disappear then the only person you can rely on to protect your family is you. Mortal realities always win over emotional and reactionary demands. In other words, the benefits of individual self protection greatly outweigh any potential risks of criminality or abuse.

Second, the advent of the covid mandates, lockdowns and the blatant attempts to implement vaccine passport tyranny upon half the population of this country yet again reinforced the idea that gun rights are more important than ever. Without the unified refusal to comply by conservatives and some moderate Americans, it is highly likely that our nation would be in the same situation as China is right now – A pointless cycle of lockdowns, authoritarian denial of basic services for people that refuse to submit to a highly experimental mRNA vaccine, and even worse supply chain disruptions and financial instability than we already have.

Make no mistake, the reason the US is mostly free from these draconian conditions today is because of the continued existence of the 2^nd Amendment and an armed citizenry. Without these things, there is no longer any obstacle to enforcing whatever unconstitutional provisions the establishment wants.

Third, with the advent of the BLM riots, inflationary pressures and rising crime rates, there has been a renewed interest in gun ownership in the US among normies. It’s not just a conservative trend, many democrats have suddenly taken an interest also. There is very little chance that increased gun restrictions are going to happen with the approval of the public. The only way it could even be attempted is through executive order, and many millions of Americans will simply say ‘no’, just as they did with the vaccine passports.

And, let’s be clear about what is really going on: The intention of political elites and the left is not “reasonable gun control.” Their purpose is indeed confiscation.

Incrementalism is the name of the game. Lets not forget what we saw with the covid passports – At first they claimed that there were no plans to institute anything like a vaccine passport system. They said this was “conspiracy theory.” Then, not more than a year later Biden tried to enforce proof of vaccination through executive order. Suddenly, it wasn’t conspiracy theory anymore.

The same strategy has been attempted with gun rights in the past, and they will try to do it again. As with every other Western nation that has restricted gun ownership down to almost nothing, they start with the “scary” semi-auto weapons and work their way down until you have nothing left. Or, until only people with considerable money have the ability to purchase a firearm (which is the case through most of Europe).

I suspect that leftists are not fully opposed to the idea of gun ownership as they often pretend to be. I think they would actually like to retain their own guns if possible, they just don’t want people like you and I to have them. Selective gun confiscation would be their ideal, which is the same exact strategy used by the Nazis, who selectively outlawed gun ownership for Jewish citizens and anyone politically opposed to the Third Reich but let all other Germans keep their weapons.

I would note that whenever gun crimes and mass murders are committed by people that are ideologically opposed to conservatives, the media and leftists often conveniently stop caring about taking action. They only seem to care when the crime can be associated with their political enemies.

We all know that leftists constantly argue that conservatives are inherently dangerous. It only takes one more step for them to claim that conservative thought is in itself a “mental illness” and that our guns should be taken by default. But let’s talk about REAL mental illness for a moment, shall we?

Let’s talk about recent active shooters like Payton Gendron with bizarre political and ideological beliefs that have nothing to do with conservative principles. Democrats like AOC and Chuck Schumer immediately tried to link Gendron, the Buffalo grocery store shooter, to conservatives and the Republican party. Yet, in only a few days time they were suddenly silent about the whole event and the media was oddly quiet. But why?

As it turns out, Gendron’s philosophies were entirely socialist, with tinges of fascism and communism within the same framework. In fact, Gendron stated on multiple occasions that he hated conservatives and identified himself as an “eco-fascist.” He also had a history of reports concerning his mental health and safety. The media’s focus on “replacement theory” was a clear distraction from the real issue at hand. Their assertion was that if you are critical of illegal immigration, then you are automatically a racist and share an ideological boat with people like Payton Gendron. But then, their narrative fell apart when it became obvious that Gendron was actually anti-conservative.

In the case of Salvador Ramos, details are still emerging about the Texas school shooter and his affiliations, but some information has been leaked despite the media’s quick move to control the narrative. For example, Ramos is not the white conservative monster the leftists need to fulfill their narrative requirements. Photos are also in circulation allegedly taken from his social media accounts which suggest he was transgendered and identified as “they/them.” I’ll stress here though that his social media accounts have been completely scrubbed and right now there is no way to confirm that this claim is true. Why his accounts were removed so quickly is not clear, but surely we will know more in the next couple of days.

Leftists are swiftly moving to refute any possibility that Ramos was transgendered; maybe they are right, maybe not. They were also very quick to deny that Darrell Brooks Jr., the mass killer that ran down a parade of people with his car in Waukesha, WI, was a supporter of BLM. But, as it turned out initial reports by internet sleuths were correct. Suddenly, leftists were fielding arguments that he was “pushed” to commit the crime by “institutional racism.”

If it turns out that Ramos did in fact identify as trans, then the media message will surely change once again. I have no doubt there will be a move to defend Ramos as a tragic figure, rather than a monster, and the blame will be placed on the state of Texas and their legislative actions to stop transgender policies from invading their public school system.

The point is, there is no connection between gun rights supporters or conservatives and gun crime as leftists often claim. I can find just as many if not more incidences of mass murder perpetrated by leftists.

The common thread between all of these killers and events is not guns or gun rights. Rather, it is blatant signs of mental illness and ideological zealotry. The media will not address this issue, and political puppets like Joe Biden will not address it either. Remember, the goal is gun confiscation, not public safety. If they actually cared about public safety then the mental illness connection would not be ignored.

It is also important to point out that such tragedies are not limited to the US as some gun grabbers would like you to believe. Numerous mass murder incidences have taken place in Europe and Asia despite strict gun control. Many people have forgotten the mass murder of French citizens in Paris in November of 2015 by Islamic militants with AK47s. Or, how about the mass killing of Spanish citizens by Muslim terrorists in Barcelona in 2017 using a moving truck?

Another factor which is almost always present during mass murder events is that most of them occur in gun free zones; places where carrying by law abiding citizens is denied or frowned upon. If we are going to address the issue of mass murder, we cannot ignore the commonalities of mental illness and gun free areas. The existence of guns in civilian hands is not the problem, if it were then mass murders would be a daily occurrence in every community in the country. However, this does not stop leftists from trying to exploit every tragedy as an opportunity to attack gun rights.

They don’t care about nuance or honest solutions, they just want guns out of the hands of people they don’t like. The establishment also wants guns out of public hands for obvious reasons; it makes it much easier to erode other parts of the constitution when the 2^nd Amendment is no longer a deterrent. Joe Biden argues that Americans “need to stand up to the gun lobby” in the wake of the Texas shooting, but the gun lobby has nothing to do with these events either. The biggest gun lobby in the US is the American people standing in defense of their freedoms, and they have committed no crime.

At bottom, no gun owner or gun rights advocate is to blame for what happened in New York or Texas this past week. We didn’t commit the crimes, but the assertion is that we should be punished anyway. Well, I’m not going to allow that, and millions of conservatives and liberty minded people are not going to allow it. The appeal for new gun control measures and confiscation is aimed at the political left, and it is designed to make them feel better about the reality of tragedy. It’s a false silver bullet solution (no pun intended). It doesn’t address the real causes of mass violence, it only makes us more vulnerable to it.

Frankly, I don’t care if leftists feel better, or feel like they accomplished something when they did not. I also know that increased gun control is exciting to many of them simply because it goes against the values of people they hate – i.e. conservatives. The fact is this: No matter what tragedy arises, our right to self defense overall is more important than appeasing the emotions of the moment. We won’t be giving up our guns. It’s not going to happen. They think we will capitulate given enough threats or enough pressure, and they are wrong. It will not end well for them.

Other solutions need to be explored because the path to a revision or erasure of the 2^nd Amendment, whether by legislation or by executive order, is nothing more than a path to civil war. It’s time to move on from the foolish notion that taking away guns from everyone (or just the people we disagree with politically) solves the underlying causes of mass murder. It doesn’t remove the motivation, nor does it even remove the means, it only sets the stage for a conflict that leftists will find impossible to win.

Image by klimkin from Pixabay. Article cross-posted from Alt-Market.