Carving a Notch for Liberty

When if not today was the relationship between freedom, individual liberty, art, guns, and ammo, ever clearer than with the release of the Supreme Court’s opinion in District of Columbia vs. Heller, wherein the scholarly Justice Scalia blasted his way through the false and nonsensical arguments of those who would claim that a citizen has no right to protect himself, his home, his family, and his art, with a locked and loaded weapon of his choice (within reason). The Supremes blew through the facile suggestion that all rights are collective, and struck a hammer-to-firing-pin-precise blow for individualism (which is of course the first ingredient of art – ammo being the second). The brilliant court, hanging on by a 5-4 thread against the onslaught of those arguing the discredited philosophy of disarmament, recognized the right and the need for the individual to protect himself not only against criminals but against his own government!

Nothing in the opinion lifts restrictions on use or traffic in machine guns, sawed off shotguns, bazookas, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortars, flamethrowers, and other radical weapons, whether or not they are in fact helpful to release of one’s true artistic essence or just plain fun. But we digress. Whether it is paint or ink or electrons or flaming tracer bullets spewed from a semi-automatic rifle, we live once again in an America protected from the creeping spread of conformity, regulatory power grabs done in the name of political correctness, and the sale of bland pacifistic impotence and surrender disguised as hip enlightenment and cool disengagement.

To ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth.
This was the ancient law of youth.
Old times are past, old days are done;
But the Law holds true, oh little son.

– Charles T. Davis