Red Line

By Tim “xrugger” Stebbins for The Burning Platform

I have been thinking a great deal lately about red lines, those Rubicon’s of thought and action that, once crossed, present little or no opportunity of a peaceful return to the original status quo. There are lines crossed by tyrants, which finally trigger the violent response of a people too long oppressed. There are lines beyond which not one more compromise, law, or government threat will suffice to maintain a precarious peace. The riflemen at Lexington and Concord understood that kind of red line.

I got to thinking also of Colonel Travis’ apocryphal “line in the sand” at the Alamo. His red line was an invitation to sacrifice and martyrdom. The men who stepped over that line crossed in an instant from their present reality into the mists of myth and legend. Such is the power of a red line.

It appears then, that there exist two sorts of red lines: Those crossed by a man or by an entire people in order to achieve some great end, or by a government to impose some great tyranny. These are, in a sense, offensive in their nature. There are those lines too, that have a defensive aspect in the sense that they represent a line of “thus far and no farther.” These lines mark the limits beyond which free men meet the forces of repression and subjugation with fire and steel.

Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes…,” but when oppression is unrelieved by reasonable appeals to power coupled with repeated protestations of loyalty to the existing order, both types of lines come into play. Governments cross over into naked coercion stripped of the thin veneer of legitimacy conferred by the ballot box and patriots rise to meet the threat. The irresistible force meets the immovable object. That point of collision is the red line. Such a point of collision is looming on the national horizon.

Does a free man, simply by virtue of his humanity, have the right to possess the tools necessary to defend, not only his physical being, but also his personal freedom, against the depredations of the statist lunatics that eternally seek to trample upon the liberty of the people. More broadly, do free people have the inherent right to possess the tools by which to defend that freedom? Those questions are rapidly bringing into focus the red line which, when actively contested, will determine the course of what remains of the Republic.

Of course, the tools of which I speak have varied over the centuries: At our founding, the tool of choice was a long rifle or a musket. Now it is simply the many iterations of the AR-15. The mechanisms are different, but the principle remains the same. Firearms are, after all, just tools. Harmless in and of themselves, the use to which good or evil men put them does not alter their inanimate nature. Only the intent of the man behind the trigger matters.

Let us be clear then, for time is growing short. The nation founded by our ancestors in the last quarter of the 18^th century no longer exists. It has not existed in anything likes its original form for over a century. It serves no purpose now to debate the details of our founding or the intent of the Founders. Debating where, or even if, we have gone astray is no longer of any consequence. We have reached a point where not a single person can do or say anything to change the mind of another. The truth is that the legacy of the Founding has been subsumed in the floodtide of revisionism that has swamped the nation. The plain language of the Constitution has not sufficed to secure our freedom. That was to be expected. That our system has worked as well as it has for as long as it has is an aberration unique in human history. Words on parchment are useless, however, if the ideas they express are not first engraved on the hearts of men.

It is pointless to debate with those who worship the state about the issue of “gun control,” or the current euphemism of “gun violence.” That time has passed. No deluge of facts and statistics will alter their view. No argument will persuade them to alter their course. Their stated intent is to remove the means of resistance from the homes and hands of the law abiding. Their desire is to render defenseless those who would stand in the breach in defiance of their depredations. They mean to reduce everything and everyone to one miserable level of existence, leaving us bereft of any means to raise our heads above the level of a serf. They mean to deny us the ability to defend our families, our communities, our property, and ourselves. They mean to have our weapons.

The source of our freedoms is beyond the ken of such people, and the wellspring of our rights beyond their reach. They wander in a statist wilderness bereft of any sense of the demands personal responsibility places upon those who would maintain a free society. They bow down before the golden calf of their feelings and whine about the scourge of “gun violence” as though inanimate firearms recklessly float about the country slaughtering the innocent. Not all the lessons of history will change the minds of those half-helots who presume to call themselves our fellow citizens. They are not. When it comes to the question of personal ownership of weapons, they have surrounded themselves with a minefield of ignorance impenetrable by either the evidence of the present or the lessons of the past.

Our countrymen are those who understand that slavery begins where private ownership of weapons ends. From there, it is only a small step to genocide and neither slavers nor mass murderers wish their victims to have the ability to defend themselves. Those who believe that the state alone should possess the tools of violence are fit only for the cattle cars. Leader or follower, they are the sworn enemies of liberty. Whether malicious in their intent or simply ignorant no longer matters.  Incapable of thinking for themselves, they have surrendered their lives and loved ones to the tender ministrations of the state. Their minds shackled by political and historical ignorance, they will willingly surrender their physical bodies to Leviathan as well. Moreover, they would see those who oppose their totalitarian vision similarly enslaved.  They would shame and browbeat us into submission to their statist vision of the American future. All the usual invective spews from their media organs like sewage from a rusty pipe. Their leaders foolishly believe they can sign away freedoms that reside in no law book, nor find expression on any printed page. The liberty they seek to destroy resides in the hearts of free men and finds expression in the steely grip of patriot hands on the weapons that are, in truth, the final arbiter of freedom. Whether in this or any other nation, that truth is absolute.

The history of the human race is a litany of tyranny and genocide following hard upon the disarming of a people. There is no mystery in this progression. There is no solution other than resistance. We are facing the same hard choices faced by other peoples at other times and in other places.

Only one question of any import now remains. That question requires both a personal and public answer. Will those who truly love not only their own liberty, but also the greater liberty of their fellows, relinquish the one freedom without which all others come under the threat of extinction. Every gun owner must ask himself or herself that question. Our liberty, our property, and, quite possibly, our very lives hang upon the answer. The riflemen of Lexington and Concord understood what was at stake. Their answer birthed the nation. Can we look our children and grandchildren in the eye and do less? Will all, or even most, of those who believe in life, liberty, and property surrender their weapons? When the defining moment arrives, will we settle for less than all three?

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