By John Cylc

June 3, 2022

“I prefer dangerous freedom to peaceful slavery.” This is a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison. In the content, he described three types of societies. One has zero government, one has a government that controls everything, and the third a government in which “the will of everyone had a just influence”. The latter best describes The United States as it is, for now. Forces and bonds are forming, some unknowingly, to give government more control than ever intended, pushing our country closer to the second description in Jefferson’s letter.

School shootings. Workplace shootings. Church shootings. They are all murder, on a grand evil scale. They are the same as the attacks of September 11, Bastille Day 2016 in Nice, France, the Milwaukee Christmas Parade of 2021, and Kunming Railway Station in 2014. Multiple deaths committed by a perpetrator looking for mass casualties to make headlines. All these events showed evil human intent, but each was executed by a different weapon.

Evil people plotting events of mass murder in secret, whether as a loner or a team, are damn near unstoppable. They will find a way, especially in a free society. Even the railway station attack in tightly controlled Communist China was successful. So why, when there is a mass shooting, do many people think restricting our freedoms is the answer?

No handgun, shotgun, or rifle, even the maligned AR-15, has ever conducted a mass shooting on its own. At least one evil coward, intent on carnage, must pull the trigger. Despite what you hear in the media, they pull that trigger many times (semi-automatic). Rarely has an actual “assault rifle” (fully automatic) been used. That term has been demonized and verbally attached to the wrong weapon by the unknowing media for decades.

You read that correctly. An AR-15 is NOT an “assault rifle”. It is merely a semi-automatic rifle, like most hunting or sport rifles. It is black and has many accessories to choose from, but it is just a rifle, nonetheless. It is an item already governed by hundreds of laws and regulations. What would new ones change?

We have the freedom to drive cars, following many government regulations, even though every year there are tens of thousands of deaths from accidents and drunk driving incidents.

We have the freedom to pilot and fly on airplanes, following many government regulations, even though there are thousands of incidents or accidents every year, resulting in many deaths.

We have the freedom to buy tobacco. following many government regulations, even though smoking-related cancers kill thousands every year.

We have the freedom to buy alcohol, following many government regulations, even though thousands of alcohol-related deaths occur every year.

We have the freedom to buy bicycles, following many government regulations, even though there are @1000 bicycle deaths yearly.

We have the freedom to buy fast food and junk food, even though heart disease is a leading killer of Americans. All levels of government even support, and probably even encourage this by allowing EBT (think food stamp credit cards) to be used at fast food restaurants.

Government regulation does not remove the threat of accidents, injuries or deaths are gone, especially if the threat is intentional. The government cannot regulate the evil out of a person’s heart. Laws and regulations making it tougher for a non-evil individual to arm, carry and defend themselves or their family will solve nothing.

There have always been those who are afraid of freedom because it imposes a sense of responsibility on the individual. Someone telling you what to do removes the pressure of thinking for yourself, but it also removes your individuality. This ties in with the old saying “no risk, no reward”. Many Americans, especially those on the left, want to alleviate any risk by turning our freedoms into government permissions.

I, and many Americans like me, prefer “dangerous freedom, and the rewards that come with it, but do we outnumber the modern-day Tories who prefer the “peaceful slavery”?