In Praise of President Barrack H. Obama

Yeah, I bet you never saw that one coming, did you? Many folks wouldn't, seeing as how I'm one of his most outspoken critics. I think he's a complete scumbag, just like 99.44% of the rest of our elected officials. However, there is a silver lining to that cloud.

In case you haven't read many of my previous blogs, I'm gonna come right out say it. I'm a gun nut. I'm that guy that finds over 200 rounds of ammo (not counting .22LR shells!) when he cleans the clutter out of his Jeep. The guy who had to stop buying guns until I get a more secure place to store them. The guy who has a US Army TC23-14 sniper manual in his bathroom, so he can study trajectory charts in preparation for deer season with the M14, while taking a dump. The guy who keeps a quarter on his key ring...and is able to do so because that quarter has not one, but three, bullet holes put in it from the other side of a football field. The guy who bought the plastichrome stick-on numbers reading "46.02" and placed them over the driver door of his Jeep, so the next cop that pulls him over won't have to bother asking if the 9mm is in the console.

Suffice to say, I'm a "gun nut". I own guns built for all manner of purposes. I've got my "plinker" .22LR rifles, a few pistols, a couple of shotguns, and the civilian-legal version of every military rifle ever used by the United States since WWII except for the M1 Carbine and Thompson SMG. I am a hunter, as well as a collector of firearms in the same manner that some would collect baseball cards or comic books.

More importantly, however, I am also a firm believer in a man's inherent and inalienable right to defend himself against any aggressor. I am a Christian, believing His word when He said that any man without a sword should sell his cloak and buy one. Okay, so never sold my coats or bought any swords...but I did cash a few paychecks and buy a few firearms!

Our United States Constitution's 2nd Amendment holds a bit of value to me. Some people think that the ownership of weapons is so important that it should have been the 1st Amendment...or, even, put into the actual original body of the constitution. Honestly, I'm not worried about it. The 1st tells our government that they have no decision over what we say, how we pray, who we can gather with, or what we can broadcast to the masses, so long as we don't go telling lies about others.

The 1st Amendment tells our government they have no right to make such decisions for us. The 2nd Amendment simply tells them that if they try, we have a physically violent recourse waiting for them.

That brings me to my original point, before I got so damned side-tracked by my love of guns and the Bill of Rights. You see, Obama supports just about every "gun control" measure anyone ever thought about, and accepts the idiotic notion that the Second Amendment is a "collective" right. For some reason, while he accepts that all other rights of the people granted legal protection by our constitution apply to us equally, he sees owning a firearm as a legal right granted to a state-authorized organization.

Unfortunately, the very twisted views upon gun ownership held by the current president were also held by a good many Americans. Even more sadly, a lot of these Americans were hunters of deer and ducks, who supported the idea of an "Assault Weapons Ban". These "sportsmen", who have no problem with their right to keep and bear arms being relegated to arms with "sporting purposes", are in many ways a lot like me. They don't think it's right to go on a shooting spree, nor are they looking for any reason in which they would actually need 180 rounds of 5.56x45 ammo in a six-magazine pouch ready for deployment. Where we differ is our belief that a man should always have this available to him.

I look at my gun collection much like I see the spare tire in my jeep. I hope I never have to use either. It's a dirty business, having to shoot a man...or, at least I've been told, I've never actually been unfortunate enough to do have it forced upon me. That doesn't deter me from the fact that the possibility exists. Yes, I keep a spare tire in my jeep...and I loathe the thought of having to get dirty installing it if I were to have a flat. That doesn't stop me from owning one.

President Obama's anti-gun stance, as well as his generally anti-freedom stance with any other issue, did this nation a favor. Since the time he was elected to the office of President of the United States of America, it is estimated that 14 million newly-manufactured firearms were purchased through a registered sale by private American buyers. That's a one, a four, and six zeroes. Fourteen Million. 14,000,000 newly-manufactured guns in the hands of American citizens. Yes, that makes me happy in my pants.

Granted, many of these firearms were bought by people who made multiple purchases, such as myself. I personally purchased six firearms in the past year and a half, with three of them being lawfully transferred to other owners. Knowing that there are "gun nuts" like myself, and "weekend warriors" who are content with owning a shotgun, let's split the difference and say that one in every three new firearms went to a single person. That leaves us with more than 4.6 Million new guns.

That's 4.6 Million new firearm owners in America, within the past year and a half...which is more than a million better than the number of every active-duty and reserve-duty member of every branch of the United States military. On top of that, there are a good many military men and women that wouldn't even think of drawing a bead on a United States citizen, just on general principle.

Even as much as I express distaste for the profession of "Law Enforcement" as it has become in this nation, you can bet your ass that even a few of them won't hesitate to turn their weapons on "the powers that be" if it came down to it. I know this, because I know a few of them. There are approximately one million LEOs in America today.

Let's say that only 3% of our military, and only 3% of our law enforcement officers, decided to act with the population in the event of an uprising. That's 90,000 US servicemen, and 30,000 cops. Subtract that from the original numbers, and you're left with 2,910,000 servicemen and 973,000 cops against 4,600,000 new gun owners...and that number doesn't include those of us who have purchased firearms from private sellers, which have not been recorded.

Nor does it include servicemen and policemen who will not obey orders to imprison or shoot civilians, which bumps that number up to 4,720,000 Americans. Nor does it include the number of private American citizens who owned guns prior to the election of Barrack Obama.

As if 1994, there were approximately 200,000,000 privately-owned firearms in America. The majority of these were possessed by multiple-gun owners, but there was still a firearm owned by one in four American adults. Keep in mind, this statistic comes from the US government, and actual numbers are probably much higher.

The population of the United States is slightly over 307,000,000. The National Institute of Justice says that 25% of these people own firearms, which puts the number of gun-owning Americans at slightly over 76 million people. Of these seventy-six million people, only 46% of them said they were packing weapons to defend themselves against crime, which brings the total down to roughly THIRTY FIVE MILLION PEOPLE.

Obama, all you did was increase the number of people who are armed and willing to defend themselves. More importantly, the significant increase in gun ownership was largely due to the fear of your political policies. Even at the numbers provided by the government, you've spurred a 13% increase in the population of us "nutcases" that "bitterly cling to guns and religion".

For that, Mr. Obama, I applaud you for involuntarily waking up so many of my fellow Americans...