Why a Peaceful Society is an Armed Society

By Gerard Valentino

To hear the left scoff at the premise that an armed society is a polite society, you would think Americans are uncivilized barbarians just waiting for a chance to shoot each other. Such a backwards thought process isn’t limited to gun control, their distrust of average Americans is rampant in the left’s pantheon of ridiculous beliefs.

Their duplicitous ways are exposed most readily when it comes to guns since they claim to champion the poor and then disarm them in the face of common criminals, and they claim to champion individual freedom except for when it comes to self-defense involving guns. Finally, their absurd notion that if everyone has to carry a gun then it proves society is unsafe flies in the face of common sense. As more people are allowed to carry concealed guns the crime rate and accidental gun death rate still continue to fall.

Anti-gun schemers won’t let the facts get in the way of their quest to purge America of guns and instead deflect the debate to emotion based arguments when everyone notices that crime rates fall after the passage of concealed carry laws.

Gun owners, in contrast, take the responsibility of owning, and where legal, carrying a gun very seriously. That is the reason when concealed carry laws pass there isn’t a huge increase in rage crimes or spree killings with guns. There isn’t an emotion-based knee-jerk reaction by gun owners who get back the right to carry a gun for self defense as the left predicts.

Though the left scoffs at the idea that an armed society is a polite society, that doesn’t make it any less true – no matter how much the establishment media tries to claim otherwise.

Pro-gun advocates have long since stopped reminding people that blood isn’t running in the street since average people started carrying concealed guns. They also no longer point to the number of people who are alive today because they were carrying a gun, or the number of families who avoided tragedy because a family member went armed.

There is no reason to point out the obvious. Even Americans not keenly aware of the gun issue have long since realized that when each successive state passed a concealed carry law nothing changed. That is other than thousands of people being alive because they choose to go armed in their daily life.

Armed people take a greater interest in avoiding confrontation, they understand that the argument created when someone cuts them off in traffic doesn’t seem as important when the escalation of the fight would lead to the use of deadly force. The same is true when a person cuts in front of you in line at the bank, or even when they talk too loud in the theatre during a movie. Keeping the peace while armed is actually much easier than when unarmed because the everyday minutiae of life pales in comparison to the thought of taking another’s life.

In keeping with the leftist anti-gun talking points, we are supposed to believe that people who go through the licensing process, succumb to an invasion of privacy through a criminal background check and are exposed to having their name printed in the paper like a sex offender are incapable of using sound judgment when it comes to using a gun. There is a reason the left in America can’t understand how honest people could go through their life armed without abusing the power - it’s because liberals are incapable of having such power without wielding it to control other’s lives.

The thought that the American left fights for individual rights is patently false. If they did honestly believe the rights of all Americans should be protected they wouldn’t support confiscatory tax policies, quotas for hiring or the ultimate disarming of law abiding citizens. What the anti-gun left can’t help is projecting their morals on the American people. When the left does try imparting their own values onto honest law-abiding people it leaves them with more questions than answers.

They can’t understand how an armed citizen can walk away from a fight in order to keep from having it escalate out of control. Anti-gun schemers also don’t understand the self-reliant and self-assured know they are capable of acting properly if forced to defend their own life, or to stand down when it isn’t necessary.

What the anti-gun schemers can never understand is that responsible gun owners don’t need the government to protect them or to tell them that being polite and treating people with kindness is the right thing to do. The same people who support banning guns also don’t trust themselves not to discriminate based on the color of people’s skin, wouldn’t give money to those less fortunate unless forced to do so by the government, and look upon their fellow citizens with contempt.

Distrust of human nature is the hallmark of anti-gun leftist thinking. It follows they would believe that using the apparatus of government to disarm American will make us all safer. They know their own failings and project them on everyone, without realizing that their misguided beliefs represent a vocal and misguided minority in America.

Peaceful citizens can routinely go armed in public without ever considering the prospect of using their defensive gun unless they fear severe bodily harm or death. There is a clear understanding among the pro-gun community that owning and carrying a gun is an overwhelming responsibility.

The anti-gun left will never understand how that’s possible since they would abuse the right to bear arms by using their defensive gun to force their ideology on citizens whenever possible. That is the basic difference between the pro-gun community when compared to those who want to disarm Americans.

While it’s difficult to try and understand those who would disarm us it is vitally important to understand our enemy. In this case, the pro-gun community has two easily identified, distinct and insurmountable advantages.

First, an honest trust of our fellow citizens and unwavering desire to allow them to go armed if they so choose. Second, the self-control to handle situations while armed that don’t require the use of deadly without devolving into mass chaos.

The same reasons explain the basic and truthful statement that an armed society is a polite society.

Gerard Valentino is the Buckeye Firearms Association Central Ohio Chair, writes for the ValentinoChronicle.com and teaches the Ohio Concealed Carry class through Center Mass LTD.