The World Still Needs Cowboys

This is the gun that I take with me everywhere I go:

S&W 642 w/ Simply Rugged/Crossbreed IWB

This is normal and rational, perfectly reasonable behavior.  Advocates of gun control will be quick to label me a delusional vigilante cowboy, but I am not the deluded one. The old west may have faded into history, but our world is still a wild place; 100 years of human development has done nothing to diminish the dangers we face every day. We have then a simple choice: To saddle up and face reality, or to bury our heads in the sands of false utopias based upon the denial of basic human nature.

Because there will always be monsters, gun control will always be inhumane. The well-intentioned delusions of anti-gunners would release declawed kittens into the wild. They would sacrifice innocents to the conceit of ideas, ideas which lead them to believe that they could fashion, as if by pure will, a new reality wherein all mankind is reborn into a being of pure ideology. Human nature, however, can never be tamed, it can never be homogenized into universal benevolence. To believe otherwise is vanity, the seduction of the god complex of social engineering. Because there will always be monsters, preventing innocents from possessing the means for self protection is cruel and twisted. Active self protection, however, is normal and natural.

Speaking plainly, advocates of gun control are so blinded by their ideology that they would force us to conform to it even at the cost of innocent lives. Take for example the foolhardy establishment of “Gun-Free Zones”. Here we see what happens when innocent people are forced to conform to reckless ideology. “Gun Free Zone” fantasies, by disarming the innocent, merely enable tragedies such as the Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and Norway massacres. In every case, law abiding citizens were barred the right to armed self-defense. In every case madmen wrought destruction, utterly unopposed. In these terrible events we see the cost of combining overly restrictive gun laws with cultures severely lacking in personal responsibility for self protection and the protection of innocents. Horrors such as these are the inevitable result of such ideological fascism. The evil wrought by those monsters was sadly compounded by the failure of those adults who were present to be adequately prepared to protect the innocents with whom they were charged.

It is left to us to assert our right to self defense and our duty to actively protect the innocent. Armed self defense is a basic human requirement, and it always will be. To deny us this right is to deny us our full humanity. It is to deny us the ability to preserve our own lives. As Lassiter told the tragically altruistic Jane Withersteen in the masterpiece by Zane Grey, “Riders of the Purple Sage”:

“Take, for instance, that idea of yours last night when you wanted my guns. It was good an’ beautiful, an’ showed your heart – but – why, Jane it was crazy. Mind I’m assumin’ that life to me is as sweet as to any other man. An’ to preserve that life is each man’s first an’ closest thought. Where would any man be on this border without guns? Where, especially, would Lassiter be? Well, I’d be under the sage with thousands of other men now livin’ an’ sure better men than me. Gun-packin’ in the West since the Civil War has growed into a kind of moral law. An’ out here on this border it’s the difference between a man an’ somethin’ not a man.”

The world still needs cowboys. It seems to me that a few “delusional vigilantes” might’ve done those kids in Norway a lot of good. But first we must change more than just the laws which presently bind our hands. Good people must be allowed and encouraged to take on the great responsibility of bearing arms. Each and every one of us needs to instill in themselves a culture of self defense and the protection of innocents. Each and every one of us has the potential, if properly armed, to stop a rampaging madman. We must endeavor to never cower before evil, but always to strike back at it. Rule number 6 of Gene Autry’s Cowboy Code states that a cowboy must always help people in distress. To that end, we should never allow ourselves to be outgunned.

Yippee Ki-Yay…!