Bob Thomas: Nation needs self-protection; guns provide it

Haven’t you noticed that those who protest guns but favor legalized drugs and unrestricted abortions are liberals? Of course, many are students with nothing constructive to do. Now that the Colorado movie killer almost has a court date, liberals are relentlessly trying to outlaw guns, having failed to get Colorado’s insanity law declared unconstitutional.

Taking a look at so-called assault weapons — they’re also defense weapons, depending on the use — I personally know owners of these guns, and none uses them for hunting. No hunter wants to blow his or her game meat to smithereens using multiple shots when there are far better guns for such purposes.

Every assault-gun owner with whom I’ve talked thinks those weapons offer the best chance to defend their families in the event our government turns rogue and wants us disarmed. I don’t know why liberals, the main agitators for gun control, refuse to acknowledge that every despot who forcibly took control of his country immediately disarmed its citizenry. Hitler did. Stalin did. Mussolini did. Mao did. Castro did and Hugo Chavez did.

Think what the Jews might have done to defend themselves in Germany in the 1930s had they owned AK47s, M-15s or Uzis — that is, had such weapons been available. Our forefathers knew that all governments historically go berserk with military coups and clandestine alliances, and they wanted us citizens to be able to resist our own government aggression. That’s the real reason for the 2nd Amendment — to keep our own power-mad zealots in check.

In today’s world, our president and/or state department, or a rogue military, are capable of alliances with our enemies — the Chinese, the Muslims or whomever, not to mention the UN, which won’t always be a paper tiger. The day will certainly come when one will come knocking on our doors.

Paranoia, you say? Is that what liberals think of us? If you do, then you, who are supposedly mankind’s intellectual elite, not only ignore history, you deny human nature. Why can’t liberals be honest and acknowledge their goal of abolishing the 2nd Amendment?

So, what do we do about the nut cases who want to kill people? Guns or no guns, they will do whatever it takes to get the notoriety they seek. With the tens of thousands of psychiatrists and psychologists in this country, we should be able to identify these future perps at an early age. And if legislatures once again enact laws permitting the incarceration of insane people before they kill, and if the Supreme Court stops pandering to the ACLU and the trial lawyers in such cases, we might well reduce the probability of mass murders.

I find it perplexing that private studies showing that children raised by parents who regularly attend church or synagogue, paying homage to God as a family, as well as those who are home-schooled, do not experience the mental illness problems of children coming from parents who do not. Such studies rarely, if ever, see the light of day in secular publications.

Now, I’ll make you liberals a deal: Change the 1st Amendment to permit the establishment of a lawful commission to censor and/or ban video games that glorify violence and killing, and also Internet pornography, and do the same with the movie industry (like our Hays Office did in the 1930s in regulating morality in films), and I will forthwith cease carrying my legally registered gun.

Bob Thomas is an author and a retired high-tech industrialist who served on the Carson City School Board, the Nevada Welfare Board and the Carson City Airport Authority and as a three-term state assemblyman. His website is www.confessionsoftheentrep reneur.com.