Businesses in major American cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. erected plywood barricades for fear of election day violence. To observers in other countries, the picture of boarded up businesses looked like they came from the third world. To historians, the pictures looked like they were taken from a country descending into tyranny.
We all know who these barriers were built to defend against. They weren’t built to defend against Tea Partiers. They weren’t built to defend against Proud Boys. They were built to defend against Antifa and Black Lives Matter, groups who Joe Biden has repeatedly refused to condemn despite their coordinated violence and property destruction.
Shortly before the election, Biden tweeted that he would ban “assault weapons,” implement “universal background checks,” and enact other allegedly “common sense” gun reform laws.
If he proves the victor, and the Democrats win the remaining races in Georgia, America will see an unprecedented assault on the Second Amendment. A Biden Department of Justice would try to bankrupt gun manufacturers in court. And gun confiscation would be on the table, given that Biden has promised to put Beto O’Rourke, who famously said “Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15s,” in charge of his administration’s gun policies.
Fortunately, over the last six months gun sales – especially to first-time gun-buyers – have shattered all historic records. This is because for hundreds of thousands of Americans, 2020 has settled the gun control arguments they hear so often in the media. The question “what could anyone need an AR-15 for?” has been answered by images of store owners standing guard against a mob with that gun as their neighbor’s businesses burned to the ground.
The argument that “people should rely on the police for protection,” has been countered by the reality that in major American cities our elected officials pro-actively refuse to allow the police the enforce the law. This wasn’t a matter of the police getting there moments too late. What we saw was elected officials refusing to allow the police to enforce the law because they agreed with the political aims of the violent mob.
As these mobs march through the street, they shout “this is what democracy looks like!” But anyone who has taken more than an hour’s study of world history knows that violent mobs marching with the approval of a political party that aims to disarm its citizens is what fascism looks like. What communism looks like. What tyranny looks like.
Our founding fathers placed the right to keep and bear arms second, just after the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, in the Bill of Rights because they studied enough history to know what tyrannical governments can and will do to an unarmed populace. Because of their wisdom, America never descended into the totalitarian horrors experienced by our counterparts in Russia, Germany, France, and China.
The Second Amendment is not, of course, the sole reason why America has been exceptional in this regard. Our separation of powers, checks and balances, emphasis on federalism and decentralization, combined with a citizenry that prided itself in temperance, prudence, hard work, and fear of G-d all taken together have been a bulwark against tyranny. Unfortunately, however, as has long been the case in other countries, there is now a powerful force working its way through our government that sees all of these civic institutions and virtuous dispositions as problems that must be eradicated along the road to a utopia.
Unless President Trump’s legal challenges succeed in exposing sufficient fraud to swing the election back his way, the question of whether America will have divided government or single-part control will hinge on Georgia’s Senate run-offs. If either Democratic candidate wins, then the Democrats will control all three branches of government. From that will flow much else, especially the security of American’s Second Amendment rights.
But ultimately, our rights do not come from the federal government. They come from G-d, and if not secured by the government must be preserved by a vigilant citizenry. It would be far easier for a Biden administration to inhibit gun sales than for a gun czar Beto O’Rourke to actually make good on his promise to confiscate them. Still, with so much hanging in the balance, and Americans having seen that their government might not just fail to protect them, but actually help facilitate violence and destruction for political purposes, I believe the one certain project we can make at this time is that gun sales between today and January 20, 2021 will reach unprecedented levels.