Ever since the Republicans lost the White House, we’ve been warned every day that Big Government is coming for our freedom and our guns. And every day it was dismissed as the ramblings of paranoiacs and conspiracy theorists.
Well folks, the nanny state is in full effect, and it’s just a matter of time before we’re North Korea-lite, threatening to build militarized fences on our southern borders and unprovokedly nuke countries ideologically opposed to us.
We can’t say we weren’t warned.
Luckily for us, there are still enclaves of freedom and fierce individuality fighting the good fight and keeping the spirit of America alive.
The north Georgia city of Nelson proposed a mandate last week that would require all heads of household in the city to own guns.
Bravo, Nelson. What better way to fight the threat of bureaucratic interference than for town leaders to step in and give an ordinance making all citizens carry some ordinance?
In a time when the government is trying to take away our inalienable rights to wallow in uninsured squalor and order tubs of carbonated sugar water with our 27-inch meat-bathed party pizza, it’s refreshing to see liberty upheld and forcibly enforced by a small town.
Nelson, with its population of 1,300 and police presence of one patrolling officer at a time, introduced the mandate to help citizens protect themselves from crimes.
Rather than increasing funding for the police and introducing further socialized law enforcement, Nelson is calling upon its responsible citizens to protect themselves. And if some of the citizens are less than responsible, the responsible citizens are empowered to keep them in check with maximum firepower.
Nelson is returning to the last time Americans were truly free: the Old West.
Instead of the bleak, grey, totalitarian grind of New York City under Comrade Bloomberg, the air in Nelson will ring with the gunshots of lawmen and vigilante citizens.
Maybe they can get some loudspeakers to play Ennio Morricone on a perpetual loop.
Some pinko critics of the law have said that the Nelson town council is itself becoming too big for its boots and intruding in its constituents’ lives.
Some people just have no perspective.
This isn’t a dangerous government mandate, like stealing freedom by forcing people to have health insurance.
Making everyone in town carry a gun promotes freedom as well as keeping the general populace safe. Who would dare commit a crime or speak out against the consensus of the community while living under the constant threat of being shot by everyone around you?
Sure, the Obama administration will tell you that having fewer guns leads to fewer deaths. In fact, a study released last week using Centers for Disease Control data shows that exact correlation – states with more gun control laws have significantly fewer gun-related deaths.
But who are you going to trust –– a bunch of bespectacled scientists from Obama’s socialist cabal or 1,300 patriots from backwoods Georgia?
Take it from Nelson councilwoman Edith Portillo, a staunch defender of the Second Amendment and proponent of the bill.
“It’s a statement from a little town to the government – you’re not going to get into our lives and take our firearms away, that type of thing,” Portillo told POLITICO. “This government intrusion in our lives is getting bigger and bigger – it’s getting into every section of our lives.”
Portillo is right. Government is getting bigger and bigger, and we need to find a way to solve that problem.
And if a problem can’t be solved by waving guns everywhere, then I just don’t think it can be solved.
Gordon Brillon is a 19-year-old mass communication sophomore from Rhode Island.
