One of the more bizarre tactics employed by gun-control activists in the so-called gun rights debate was to coin the expression, "gun culture". Of course, there is no such thing as the "gun culture". They knew this, yet they made up the expression anyway with the hope of deceiving many gullible American citizens that something new and dangerous was now afoot. Typical of so many of the tactics used by the socialist Left, it is nothing less than an exercise of raw deceit.

There is nothing at all new about American citizens owning guns. Some 80 million citizens own well more than 150 million of them. Americans have privately owned firearms of all types and have regularly used them well before the founding of the nation. Likewise, there is nothing at all dangerous about Americans keeping and bearing arms. Quite to the contrary, actually. It is an armed populace that keeps our government in check by warding against potential tyranny. If, in fact, guns are dangerous, then they are only dangerous to would-be tyrants. This is clearly a good thing. The socialist Left, by coining the expression "gun culture" and then using this expression is a disparaging manner, would have many believe otherwise. With so many Americans owning such large numbers of firearms throughout the entire history of the nation, they are quite clearly attempting to redefine America’s long tradition of defending liberty and freedom as barbarian.

When one considers that all of the nation’s founding fathers kept firearms and used them to drive out the British in a bloody revolt, it must be apparent that the socialist Left must be absolutely ashamed of men like, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and all of the other Founders. This makes sense. After all, the Left loathes what these men wrote, including much of the Constitution of the United States as attempt to circumvent and undermine almost everything it means. They must have no real sense of liberty or freedom because almost all of the legislation they propose is designed to empower government at the expense of the people’s liberty and personal freedom. One of the biggest blunders that we, as intelligent and principled gun owners, make is to assume that all Americans share our same values and sense of morality. This is not the case at all. Clearly, members of the socialist Left have values and a sense of morality that is completely contrary, and often mutually exclusive, to ours. We need to face up to this fact and prepare ourselves with the truth.

Distorting of facts, fabricating falsehoods, and presenting misleading innuendoes are not new tools of the gun-control activists of the socialist Left. Indeed, most of their vain arguments are based almost completely upon disinformation. Coining the dubious expression "gun culture" simply follows along their standard operating procedure. Not long ago, the Left coined the misleading expression, "assault weapon" (a true misnomer), hoping to deceive the American people by intentionally confusing semiautomatic firearms with military assault rifles. In addition, it has managed to portray the legitimate militia of the United States as socially dysfunctional racists parading about in the back woods brandishing a wide array of these so-called "assault weapons". They also claim that "assault weapons" are the "weapons of choice amongst criminals and drug dealers". By utilizing language deconstruction, the Left often changes the meaning of common words and then uses sophistry to publish outright deceit. Here, the Left defines their own freshly coined term "assault weapon" to mean any firearm that can be used in a criminal assault. This is also how they claim that thirteen children are killed by guns every day in the United States. They have defined children so as to mean anybody up to the age of twenty-one. The socialist Left is dominates the debate by attempting to control and define the language used in the debate. Is this not intellectually dishonest? Of course it is! However, the true objective of the Left is not merely that of winning a debate.

We, as principled gun owners, are constantly amazed at the brazen deceit deployed by anti-gun activists. We are even more astounded that the press never seems to catch on. We wonder why bright members of the press, that enjoy their rights to publish what they please, cannot fathom that the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution are protected by freedoms guaranteed in the Second. It seems that they have no understanding of realpolitik and think that the liberty they enjoy now will always be. Because the truth and is so obvious and important to us, we feel that we must correct the erroneous thinking of others, especially those within the news media. We make great efforts, but to no avail. Somehow, we have come to believe that we are engaged in an impassioned political debate concerning our right to keep and bear arms, but we are greatly mistaken. There is no gun rights debate. This is what the Left would have us believe for while we are doing the talking, they are doing the taking.

To the socialist Left, the gun-control debate is nothing but a ruse to keep gun-rights activists at bay by keeping them preoccupied writing letters to the editor of newpapers, attempting to correct the deceit and propaganda of gun-control activists, and petitioning those members of Congress that have long lost the ability to listen to their constituents. All of our arguments are vain because most of them fall upon deaf ears. This does not mean we ought to give up. No, we very much need to continue all of our efforts. However, we must back up all of words with real action. It is now well past time for such action. The socialist Left is diligently making plans to take away all of our arms. We, then, must be equally diligent at making plans so as to not let them.

The primary method of choice is that of noncompliance, of course. We are under no obligation to surrender our right to keep and bear arms; it supercedes even the U.S. Constitution which merely pledges that the government will not infringe upon this right. Unfortunately, we find that pledges made in the U.S. Constitution are not honored any more than the sworn oaths of many elected government officials. The U.S. Constitution is rapidly becoming a relic of the words written by our Founding Fathers, long ago. The current occupant of the White House thinks of it in this manner as do too many members of Congress. The federal courts have demonstrated that they are no longer dependable and often circumvent the intent of the U.S. Constitution by rendering law through judicial fiat. Noncompliance is a very good method of retaining our right to keep and bear arms, but eventually it may not be enough.

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