“Guns” and “fight tyranny” might not show up in proximity to one another with great frequency in a Google search, but their joinder has been a constant theme from those who advocate a right to own firearms by individuals.

The idea has been that the ultimate way to fight tyranny is for individuals to own guns. This is nothing more than 3-card monte, a sleight-of-hand where distraction wins the real thing. Now we know “guns” and “fight tyranny” really belong together, but not as previously thought.

After all, people with bolt-action deer rifles or even high-caliber machine guns cannot beat the tanks and aircraft of the modern nation-state. No one can seriously advocate that individuals should own nuclear weapons. Domestic disputes might take out cities.

Yet nukes are necessary if one is to oppose, with military means, a foe similarly armed, but the
focus has been wrong. The sleight-of-hand has been done well. The “tyranny” is perpetrated by white supremacists who carry “guns,” but we cannot “fight” those forces with violence.

Only in the rarest of instances does one fight fire with fire. Otherwise one seeks to extinguish a fire through passive means or substances. Today there seem to be more bullies with guns, and they are most frequently white.

A member of the U.S. House has run an ad at the end of which a gun shot sounds after a graphic of Speaker Pelosi is shown. Gun violence and the tyranny of guns have to be opposed. A first step is, as an individual, to neither own nor allow a gun in one’s home or business.

An exercise of the rights of private property and of forces in the marketplace is as conservative as one can get and is not “cancel” culture. And please realize, with nearly 40K people killed each year by guns, this progressives stand is as pro-life as one can get.