Take a deep breath… it’s going to be okay

(Guns Save Life) – The news has come fast and furious these last few days and if you listen to the mainstream media, you would think the Armageddon is upon us.

A couple of U.S. Senators who were formerly fair-weather pro-gun senators have come out saying it’s time for action on guns, stores stopping the sales of America’s favorite rifle, mainstream TV cancelling gun-related shows, politicians trying to make hay with gun bans and a constant drumbeat of doom and gloom aggressively fed and watered by gun grabbers who were formerly on the ropes.

The tragic deaths of those children and adults at the school in Connecticut hurt us all, as if we’d taken a punch in the gut. What happened to those innocent children, struck down by an evil man-child on powerful psychotropic medications, is a nightmare none of us should have to endure.

The adults lost, some selflessly shielding the children in their care with their own bodies, were good people. Some were tempered with tremendous courage and bravery under fire.

It is our very nature as Americans to work to figure out what happened to prevent something like this from happening again.

People bring their own biases to that analysis. Some blame the tool used, in this case a firearm, ignoring that greater public massacres have taken place with other tools used for evil. Others blame make-believe protection afforded by meaningless signage proclaiming the area “gun free”. Some blame the side-effects of the mood-altering medication, while some seem to believe that having Aspberger Syndrome means the an individual is a soul-less time bomb. Video games, parenting, teasing in school, loss of a prized pet or whether his daddy spanked him as a child may all be components of the evil in the mind of the perpetrator.

None of us needs a PhD to know and understand the killer was an utterly and completely evil man, devoid of decency, compassion or love.

For many in America though, guns are an easy target to blame.

Many people don’t understand how guns work and what they are or are not capable of.

Many people fear guns – often because they know nothing about them or they only read about them being used in the commission of crime.

Just as people blamed witches for misfortune in the Medieval times (into the 1700s in fact), so today do some people blame guns for misfortune.

“If we only banned those handguns,” some say. They ignore the fact that criminals don’t obey laws.

“If guns were banned, we wouldn’t have all these murders!” They ignore history. Weapons were banned for the common man during the Medieval times, yet how many people were slaughtered? The women, the young, the old, the sick and infirm were all subject to the whims of the strongest males around. Governments were tyrannical and while some were benevolent, most were not.

Today, even after last Friday’s events, most Americans still support the right to keep and bear arms. Most support the right of Americans to use and own America’s favorite rifle to protect and defend families and for recreational sport. An overwhelming number of Americans recognize the right to own handguns for personal defense – defense against monsters just like this one in Connecticut.

A great many Americans are voting with their wallets, in fact, buying up guns and ammunition like they are going out of style.

While some stores have practiced appeasement to anti-gun charlatans, most gun sellers have had near-record sales in the last few days, depleting their inventory rapidly. Store shelves are literally being sold bare.

While some public figures seek to curry favor with those advocating gun bans and restrictions, there are plenty others calling for calm, and urging real, pro-self-defense measures to combat this mass public shooting violence.

Emotions are high right now. It’s part of the coping process for grief.

We all briefly denied such a terrible thing could happen when we first heard of it last Friday.

Then came the anger. We were angry at the murderer. Some folks are angry at the tools he used to commit the atrocity. They vented that anger in different ways. Some called for the murder of NRA members and their supporters in social media. Others called us and offered a piece of their mind. Obviously NRA members didn’t commit this horrible tragedy, nor did we facilitate it in any way. But that’s how some people coped with their grief.

Bargaining is the next step for Americans and has already begun. This is where some people, in their time of grief, will offer well-meaning proposals to limit civil rights with regard to guns, magazines, etc. Again, it’s part of coping. “If we can just to X, this won’t have to happen again,” they believe.

Thankfully for freedom, legislators are on Christmas break until the first or second week of January in most places. Think of this as the “cooling off” period.

A week from now, or maybe two at most, the depression stage will have set in. This is when the final stage of the healing process begins. Sure, it’s depressing that these innocents were killed by an evil man, but folks will recognize that evil people are out there. Sure, senseless violence is sad. They will eventually accept that while it’s sad, it’s part of life.

You can’t get rid of lunatics any more than you can purge the world of cockroaches, flies or mosquitoes.

Emotions that are inflamed today will calm tomorrow with the passage of time. Attitudes will return to a normal, something very akin to where we were at in the days before Sandy Hook was burned into our psyches. Tomorrow’s headlines will replace Connecticut in conversations and newsprint.

Sure, the Brady people, and the ICHV people will try to fan the flames and remain relevant while dancing in the drying blood of innocent victims, but in the end, two or three months from now, they’ll be back to their same old tricks of obfuscating the truth and demagoguing the issue of guns. Their shrill voices, few and far between, will rely on crass and craven stunts to capture the media’s attention as their financial resources continue to wither.

Overall, unlike the Brady Campaign, we’re in good shape.

We’re coming off two favorable landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions and a third Appellate Court case here in Illinois striking down Illinois’ prohibition on right-to-carry.

We’ve got pro-gun majorities in both the Illinois House and particularly the Senate.

Federally, we’ve got a majority in the House and Senate. A slew of Democrats in the U.S. Senate are up for re-election in 2014 and many of them are highly vulnerable (Al Franken, for instance). Those who were marginally pro-gun in the past can be reminded of their vulnerability if they get squishy on us.

Some companies that have practiced appeasement are already feeling the wrath of gun owners.

A software company has walked back a proposal – with profuse apologies – to have a one-day gun sales moratorium by federally licensed gun dealers using their software later in January.

Cheaper Than Dirt is walking back some ridiculous price increases, but retains their moratorium on mail-order gun sales. We’ll see how long that lasts – or how long they last. Their social media “likes” are plummeting like a lead balloon as gun owners and now former customers react.

As gun owners, we have to be patient and be calm as we gently push back against the idiocy coming out of the mouths of folks like Obama, Bloomberg and others of their ilk who would like nothing better than to pass gun bans and take our guns while they give guns to Mexican drug cartels and fighter jets to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The NRA will release their proposals at Friday’s press conference. Rest assured gun banners have sat up and taken notice. They’re running scared as the mama bear has awoken from her respectful time of silence following this national tragedy in Connecticut.

You can almost guess that one of the proposals will be to curtail the make-believe protection gun-free zones afford for innocent people and allow good guys the ability to carry for deterrence. Gun-free zones are indeed lunatic magnets and we need to do away with them. Every last public shooting since 1955 has occurred in a gun-free zone, save one.

The most important factor we as gun owners have in our favor is that our position is not fueled by emotions, but upon logic and reason.

So, in summary: take a deep breath and be calm and stand steadfast. Turn off the mainstream media and savor life. Get involved and become more active in the never-ending battle we have to recover our lost freedoms and civil rights. And don’t forget to live life.

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