And for those who need more examples of how a disarmed populace stands more vulnerable than Ashlee Simpson before a Bose voice processor ? let?s see ? what massive slaughter of unarmed citizens should I use to hammer the point further home? How about how the Turks systematically disarmed and then slaughtered, plus or minus, one million Armenians back in the early 1900?s?  Or the ?disarm-oppress-and kill? campaigns executed by bad leaders upon the innocent people of Cambodia, the Soviet Union, China, Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Indonesia, Iran, and Iraq? 

How?s that?

As Judge Andrew Napolitano points out in his book, Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws, nowhere in the annals of world history do an unarmed people ever fare well.   Never has an act of genocide in the 20th century occurred where the citizens were packing.  I guarantee that if the Gestapo had been strafed with 180 grain 30/06 lead, or pounded repeatedly at close range with 00buck from 12 gauge riot gun ? the numbers lost during that crazy crew?s reign of terror would have been far, far less.  But the GP acquiesced in peacetime to the bad idea of giving up their guns to quell violence, obviously never imagining that their government would ever go bad.  But it did.  And once it did ? the unarmed citizens were slaughtered by the armed government.  Judge Kozinski framed it nicely: ?Tyranny thrives best where the government doesn?t fear the wrath of armed people.?

My ClashPoint is this:  I?m sure some reflexively irate idealist is thinking that that was then and this is now and there is no way such atrocities will ever happen again, and that John Lennon?s vision for the world will not just be imagined, but actualized. 

That?s cool. 

I?m ready for the lion to lay down with the lamb; however, in this waiting period between now and when Xanadu actually manifests, I?m not giving up my right to keep and bear arms while looking solely to the government to cover my back.  Our framers got it right: armed people are free people.  As much as I laud, appreciate, and look to our Constitution-honoring soldiers and law enforcers to serve and protect me and my house, I also know it is my right and my duty to be packed, stacked and ready to whack just in case things get loopy.