{"id":78507,"date":"2022-03-09T19:34:16","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T01:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=78507"},"modified":"2022-03-09T19:34:16","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T01:34:16","slug":"78507","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=78507","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

BLUF:
\nClearly, simply being armed doesn\u2019t stop every threat to our national or personal security. It does, however, give us a fighting chance at survival, and in these perilous times I\u2019d argue it\u2019s more important than ever for us to protect, preserve, and strengthen our right to keep and bear arms. We might not have to worry much about a Russian invasion of U.S. soil, but unfortunately there are still plenty of homegrown madmen capable of committing\u00a0atrocities against innocents<\/a>, and an unarmed populace would only put more of us at risk..<\/p>\n

The importance of armed deterrence for national and personal defense<\/a><\/p>\n

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to some strange political sights here at home, including some Democrats\u00a0cheering on<\/a>\u00a0a government handing out \u201cassault weapons\u201d to civilians, even as they try to criminalize ownership of modern sporting rifles here at home. Meanwhile, gun control activists are trying to\u00a0shut down any comparison<\/a>\u00a0between Ukraine\u2019s self-defense as a nation-state and the importance of the individual right of self-defense.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On today\u2019s Bearing Arms Cam & Co, I\u2019m pleased that my buddy Jim Geraghty from National Review\u2019s could join me to talk about why armed deterrence matters, from both a national and personal security perspective. I invited Jim on the show after reading his piece on Tuesday about why the \u201cRussia hawks\u201d\u00a0were right<\/a>. While I may not agree 100% with everything Jim wrote in his column, I can\u2019t find much fault with this.<\/p>\n

The Russia hawks were right about Vladimir Putin; KGB men don\u2019t turn over a new leaf. Now, as ever, if Americans want to live in a peaceful world, we must prepare to fight and win in a warring one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think the same could be said about violent criminals here in the United States. While some individuals convicted of violent crimes may actually change their ways,\u00a0many of them wont<\/a>, and those of us who want to live in peace and security must also be prepared to defend ourselves and our loved ones from those who would do us harm.<\/p>\n

As Geraghty writes:<\/p>\n

\u00a0The world has no shortage of evil people \u2014 rulers who see weakness in neighboring states and seek to conquer them, raping and pillaging, building or rebuilding empires atop the backs of subjugated neighbors. The world has simmering ethnic hatreds and madmen who dream of genocide, and angry young men (and sometimes women!) who find meaning by joining up with extremist movements and lashing out violently against innocent people.<\/p>\n

The presence in the world of rulers, regimes, factions, and movements that we would define as evil is a cold, hard fact, and one that I suspect many people instinctively turn away from, preferring to believe we\u2019ve left that kind of wanton malevolence behind in the darker chapters of our history books. The idea that someone powerful would deliberately hurt others, just because they can, is frightening; it\u2019s better to conclude that everyone is always acting out of rational self-interest, and that if we just approach them with the right combination of carrots and sticks, they will calm down and be reasonable. (Senator William Borah reportedly said<\/a>, upon learning that Germany had invaded Poland in September 1939, \u201cIf only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided.\u201d)<\/p>\n

You can find foreign-policy thinkers who will turn themselves inside out to argue that every attack on Americans or American interests traces back to some sort of U.S. \u201cprovocation.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And you can just as easily find gun control advocates who argue that every illegal act committed by a violent criminal is actually the responsibility of U.S. gun makers, Second Amendment supporters, and legal gun owners. If we didn\u2019t have all these guns around, goes the argument, we wouldn\u2019t have nearly as much crime. So even though you may\u00a0think\u00a0<\/em>that buying a gun makes you safer, according to the anti-gun ideology your purchase only empowers violent criminals.<\/p>\n

I confess, that \u201clogic\u201d is lost on me. A free people have a right to defend and protect themselves, but must possess the\u00a0means\u00a0<\/em>to do so in addition to having the will to fight if they\u2019re going to be successful. We can\u2019t rely on outside forces, be it NATO or our local police force, to arrive in time to save us. We are our own first line of self-defense, and a disarmed people are a defenseless people.<\/p>\n

Clearly, simply being armed doesn\u2019t stop every threat to our national or personal security. It does, however, give us a fighting chance at survival, and in these perilous times I\u2019d argue it\u2019s more important than ever for us to protect, preserve, and strengthen our right to keep and bear arms. We might not have to worry much about a Russian invasion of U.S. soil, but unfortunately there are still plenty of homegrown madmen capable of committing\u00a0atrocities against innocents<\/a>, and an unarmed populace would only put more of us at risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BLUF: Clearly, simply being armed doesn\u2019t stop every threat to our national or personal security. It does, however, give us a fighting chance at survival, and in these perilous times I\u2019d argue it\u2019s more important than ever for us to protect, preserve, and strengthen our right to keep and bear arms. We might not have … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rkba","category-safety","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78508,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78507\/revisions\/78508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}