Hey–Where Did My Freedom Go?

Backing for new gun-control laws is slipping as more time elapses following the Newtown, Conn., shootings in December, according to a new CBS News poll.

The survey of 1,181 adults, conducted March 20-24, shows that 47 percent of Americans think gun laws should be more strict, 11 percent say they should be loosened, and 39 percent say they should be left as they are.

The 47 percent who favor tougher laws represents a 10-point drop from the 57 percent who said the same thing in the days just after the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School left 20 children and six educators dead.

In a similar January poll, support for tougher gun laws was 54 percent and in February, the numbers fell to 53 percent, indicating a continuing drop.

(Source: CBSnews.com and Newsmax.com)

This development tells you less about support for gun control than about the willingness of Americans to be manipulated by emotions — and the determination of most politicians to exploit that willingness.

Few, if anyone, could escape having some kind of emotion after the Newtown, Conn. shooting last December. The very idea, to say nothing of the images, of little children under fire is too horrifying for almost anyone to contemplate.

The point is: Power-hungry politicians encouraged Americans, in the days and weeks following that shooting, to support new gun restrictions that apparently—based on this polling—many of those Americans never favored in the first place.

In other words, a vast majority of Americans—while still highly emotional—were ready to cancel the Second Amendment, on principle and by majority vote. At least, they were in December and January. In March and April ‘ not so much.

It’s easy to dismiss these findings by saying, ‘That’s human nature. When emotions die down, cooler heads prevail.’

That may be true with some things. But with basic, fundamental freedoms? Let’s say somebody goes on a shooting rampage tomorrow inspired by some book that the shooter recently read, or movie he watched. Imagine the next day that politicians come together and proclaim, ‘There ought to be a law,’ and begin to propose subtle or even overt restrictions on Internet postings, content of movies, or content of books deemed a ‘threat to the general welfare.’ Well, why not? The ‘general welfare’ is the rationalization for socializing medicine, telling banks to whom they must make loans, and how many bullets people may buy for their guns.

If this happened (and it may yet do so), I would hope that a majority of Americans would be out protesting in the streets, at the first threat of such a law. Given the early reaction to the Newtown Conn., shootings, I’m not so sure. And if you told me, ‘Well, a majority of Americans would favor restrictions on free speech in the early days and weeks after a crisis. But not thereafter,’ it’s not that much of a comfort. Once these politicians get started with chopping the concept of individual rights even further down than they already have, there’s no stopping them. Case in point: When Hillary Clinton’s plan for socialized medicine crashed and burned back in 1994, she and her supporters essentially said, ‘No worries. We’ll be back.’ And in 2010/2012, they got everything they wanted, and more.

Who’s to say it won’t be the same with gun laws? And whatever comes next after that?

My purpose here is not to foster hopelessness and helplessness; quite the opposite. I want to try and awaken people to the fact that the more you take your liberties for granted, the more they’re going to slowly disappear. Something that slowly disappears eventually vanishes.

Politicians are watching you closely. I don’t mean to suggest a conspiracy. They’re not smart enough for that, and even now there are still some checks and balances within our system of government. But it’s your emotions they seek to exploit. Like all abusers and predators, these elected officials are (in varying degrees) weak, narcissistic, driven by power. In order to feel good about themselves and whatever drives them to seek this unearned and exploitative power, they must strike you when you’re vulnerable. They must seize your rights away from you, and they know—especially in a place like America—it must be done with your superficial consent, through democratic vote whenever possible.

Most of them care little or nothing for principle. Most of them rely on the supposed wisdom of the mainstream universities and think tanks, many of which receive government research grants for their favors. The bulk of educators at the mainstream and Ivy League universities are overwhelmingly in support of gun control, socialized medicine, fascist controls on industry, or whatever comes next down the pike.

These polls almost always end up suggesting the same thing. About a third of Americans won’t be willingly sold into slavery. Another third will, perhaps out of ignorance, fear, ideology or even smug confidence that their own gang will be the ruling authorities, so what the heck.

Another third of Americans wobble in the middle. In the heat of emotion, they’re all for the next government control. Once the emotion subsidies, they lean back in the direction of freedom. It’s this middle group who reelected Obama and by so doing sent him—and his kind—a clear message that ‘it’s OK to push us around.’

The Obamas and his equivalents will not give up. That’s why only a principled response, reversing all the breaches in individual rights we’ve seen up to this point, is the only thing that’s ever going to work. People in the pro-freedom third must convince the wobbly third to start caring and wake up’before all liberties are gone, not just some of them.

 

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