The Land of the Free
Friends stared at me with disbelief when I told them I intended moving to the United States. "Why would you want to live there?" "It's so dangerous!" "You'll get caught in the crossfire of a street shooting!"
Thanks to liberal airing of the TV show Cops in Australia, the general perception of life in the US has become a little cloudy. I guess Hollywood movies can also take part of the blame. This seedy and violent image is enthusiastically fanned by the Australian media. Every time gun laws become a newsworthy issue, you can be sure to hear one of the well known personalities say, "We don't want to go down the same path as America". Repeated parrot-like until it becomes embedded into the national psyche without question.
As an avid shooter I knew for many years that my hobby was doomed to extinction. Every time gun violence occurred it was another excuse to further tighten the noose on legal ownership of firearms. The Port Arthur Massacre of 1996 provided the impetus to finally unite all the Australian States in uniform gun laws and drive wedges between the various sections of the gun community.
The NRA here in America reported the buyback era as the end of the battle in Australia. Shortly after moving here in 2000, any shooter I met believed that private ownership was no longer allowed in Australia. Of course this was not the case. The patient was on life support, but still breathing, if barely. To this day gun ownership still exists in Australia, but year by year the prognosis worsens, with no sign of remission.
As much as I admire the NRA in their fight for 2nd Amendment rights, I believe their use of the Australian situation as a short-term scare tactic was a little short-sighted. They could have been analyzing and publicizing the continued methodical stamping out of basic freedom in what most people consider to be an enlightened democracy. The right to bear arms has recently become a privilege, and sometime in the future will become a memory. It has not been done by government alone, and the forces that are at work here are global. America is in effect an island, the last bastion of freedom, but it is not immune to these forces that have prevailed most everywhere else in the world. It is no conspiracy, just an epidemic of good-intentioned idiots trying to protect us from ourselves.
I have years of adventures from the front lines of the so-called Australian gun lobby to draw from. The stories you will read on this blog all happened. There is a lot to be learned from their downfall, and I like to believe that forewarned is forearmed. Congregating with like-minded souls, saying "They'll never take my guns!" has all been done before. The fact of the matter is, when it comes down to choosing between obeying the law and becoming a criminal in the eyes of the law, most men will follow their social conditioning.
But if we recognize and point out the scheming of the social engineers as they attempt to (ever so gradually) sway consensus, I believe freedom can remain intact in this great country.
Thanks to liberal airing of the TV show Cops in Australia, the general perception of life in the US has become a little cloudy. I guess Hollywood movies can also take part of the blame. This seedy and violent image is enthusiastically fanned by the Australian media. Every time gun laws become a newsworthy issue, you can be sure to hear one of the well known personalities say, "We don't want to go down the same path as America". Repeated parrot-like until it becomes embedded into the national psyche without question.
As an avid shooter I knew for many years that my hobby was doomed to extinction. Every time gun violence occurred it was another excuse to further tighten the noose on legal ownership of firearms. The Port Arthur Massacre of 1996 provided the impetus to finally unite all the Australian States in uniform gun laws and drive wedges between the various sections of the gun community.
The NRA here in America reported the buyback era as the end of the battle in Australia. Shortly after moving here in 2000, any shooter I met believed that private ownership was no longer allowed in Australia. Of course this was not the case. The patient was on life support, but still breathing, if barely. To this day gun ownership still exists in Australia, but year by year the prognosis worsens, with no sign of remission.
As much as I admire the NRA in their fight for 2nd Amendment rights, I believe their use of the Australian situation as a short-term scare tactic was a little short-sighted. They could have been analyzing and publicizing the continued methodical stamping out of basic freedom in what most people consider to be an enlightened democracy. The right to bear arms has recently become a privilege, and sometime in the future will become a memory. It has not been done by government alone, and the forces that are at work here are global. America is in effect an island, the last bastion of freedom, but it is not immune to these forces that have prevailed most everywhere else in the world. It is no conspiracy, just an epidemic of good-intentioned idiots trying to protect us from ourselves.
I have years of adventures from the front lines of the so-called Australian gun lobby to draw from. The stories you will read on this blog all happened. There is a lot to be learned from their downfall, and I like to believe that forewarned is forearmed. Congregating with like-minded souls, saying "They'll never take my guns!" has all been done before. The fact of the matter is, when it comes down to choosing between obeying the law and becoming a criminal in the eyes of the law, most men will follow their social conditioning.
But if we recognize and point out the scheming of the social engineers as they attempt to (ever so gradually) sway consensus, I believe freedom can remain intact in this great country.
posted by Warren at 8:14 AM
1 Comments:
I guess it's in the nature of governments to stack the balance of "power" in their favor, to varying extents.
Not having lived there for over six years now, I don't know how aggressive their jackboot brigade has become. What I do know is, if the media portrays you as a right wing fanatic, or if ASIO or the Federal Police take a dislike to you, you'd best be prepared for a rough time. I'll post a story soon about a friend who was set up on conspiracy charges, raided by the Feds and took years to clear his name. All of that took place back in the relatively innocent 1990s.
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