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Guest Article: To Arms!, by William Crosby Prentice
The title of this essay could be either a call to action, or a toast to weapons. Either way, the purpose is to discuss the decision of whether or not, and to what extent, a person should be armed. The author is biased in favor of being as heavily armed as is legal under any given circumstances, and has a hard time coming up with reasons for not being armed.
The Right of Self Defense
I would bet that nearly all of those that regularly visit SurvivalBlog will agree that a person has a natural right, independent of and senior to any legal system, to defend his life and property. This audience would also tend to agree that this right extends to defending others who are under an attack that could result in their loss of life or sustaining great bodily injury.
The perversion by government of the self-defense right, and the attempt by governments to create a monopoly on the use of force, is at the root of our problems with government. There are many governments, such as that of New Zealand, that do not recognize a right of self defense. The United Nations also has trouble with that concept. The assertion by governments of a monopoly on use of force and denying it to individuals, and the use of that force to coerce obedience, to seize property, and to take lives, is perhaps the greatest of all evils.
Denying that individuals have the right of self-defense is an amazing thing, but you hear “civilized” people make that argument all the time. Once you have been conditioned to think that the right to self defense is even debatable, you might find yourself also debating whether or not you should even consider arming yourself to do so. If you are worrying about whether or not you should or can arm yourself, then this essay is aimed at you.
Weapons
Humans have big brains, and are bipedal, so that they can maximize the use of “tools.” A review of the scientific literature makes it clear that “tools” is a PC alternative to the word “weapons.” Humans are hard-wired to use weapons, and being interested in perfecting that ability does not make you uncivilized, it makes you more human. Being disarmed makes you a slave rather than a citizen, a human beast of burden, who differs from a plow-horse only in that a human slave is also a “tax-payer.”
Many people have an innate abhorrence of weapons, and regard any act consistent with owning or using a weapon to be inexcusable. Weapons guru Jeff Cooper coined the term “hoplophobic” to describe them. The views of such people are ignored in this paper, because such irrational sentiments are of no interest to evolved humans who believe in individual freedom and personal responsibility. (Note: I am often seized by a perverse desire to see the onset of a TEOTWAWKI event because hoplophobes and their progeny will be among the first to succumb, greatly benefiting the species.)
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