By Brandon Smith
In all the world the US as a nation is utterly unique in its tradition of citizen rights to self defense. There is no other protection written into any constitution anywhere that is as solid and unapologetic as the 2nd Amendment. Whenever I end up in a debate with a gun control advocate from another country that wants to “educate me” on the level of firearms ownership overseas I have to laugh because these people just don’t get it.
There are many countries where some guns are allowed to be owned by the public, but in every case this is treated as a PRIVILEGE which the government can give and take away anytime it pleases. Only in America is gun ownership an individual right regardless of what the government and the so called “majority” likes or dislikes. The government’s opinions on personal firearms are meaningless. The majority’s opinions on gun rights are meaningless. I own guns because natural law and the constitution says I have an inborn right to self defense. And, if someone wants to take those weapons from me they better be prepared to die in the process.
This is not an attitude shared by most of the rest of the world because most of the world has never fought and defeated a global power to achieve independence. This experience of freedom is not written into their cultural subconscious. In fact, most nations have lived under one level of authoritarianism or another for centuries. Many people inherently want freedom, but very few people have ever risked everything to get it and succeeded.
The only time you will see a mass awakening in favor of public self defense in these places is when a country faces an existential threat, then suddenly people start to question why they are completely disarmed and helpless.
This is a revelation that the Ukrainian people are experiencing today. As I write this the capital of Kiev is being surrounded by Russian forces and the nation’s government is calling on all able bodied citizens to take up arms and repel the invasion. This all sounds rather noble and the media in the west is waxing romantic about it. However, the situation reveals a foolishness that plagues most countries today. Why wasn’t the Ukrainian public ALREADY armed and organized?
Ukraine’s gun laws are not as strict as many in Europe or Eastern Europe, but they are certainly not conducive to civilian defense. It’s generally not legal for anyone to own a pistol for any reason other than special government issue, while a person must be at least 25 years old just to qualify for a permit to get a rifle. The types of arms allowed are select and few, and magazines are limited to ten rounds or less. Overwhelmingly, it is the upper middle class and the rich that obtain most of the permits, as is often the case through the majority of Europe. Middle class and poor people are rarely allowed to own firearms.
I’ll say it again: When some European leftist tries to argue with you online about how there are “gun owners everywhere” in their country despite their strict laws, remind them that firearms ownership is ‘pay to play’ in most countries outside the US. If you are not relatively wealthy you are probably never going to be allowed by the government to get a permit to own a gun. The rich are allowed firearms because the rich are more naturally inclined to support the status quo.
This kind of elitism has left Ukraine with a highly disarmed population, with only 1 in 10 people having access to weapons of any kind, and a majority of these weapons are bolt action rifles and shotguns which are generally not effective for military defense (unless we are talking about bolt action rifles set up for long range shooting, and there are scant few people that have the knowledge to actually use such tactics effectively). In many countries you aren’t even allowed to own military grade scopes or red dots.
The reason for this is easy to figure out and it has nothing to do with preventing crime – Rather, government elites want to ensure there is little chance of the public ever overthrowing them should they implement controls that push the people too far. We have seen this everywhere in the wake of covid mandates and vax passport laws.
There is a reason why these draconian measures were unsuccessful in the US; we are heavily armed and there’s nothing Biden or anyone else can do about it without risking annihilation. It’s the same reason why the US has not seen a major military invasion attempt since the Mexican-American War (I am not counting the minor incursions by the Japanese into Alaska during WWII). An invasion of the US would be a quagmire unlike anything in history and far deadlier than trying to take over a country like Afghanistan.
This is not opinion, this is FACT given the amount of arms, training and combat knowledge common within the American population. The only way the US can be taken over is from within, which is a subject for another article.
One area which Americans have failed to remain secure is in the abandonment of the citizen militia, which is an element of the 2nd Amendment that is just as important as gun rights. For many decades we have allowed the National Guard, which is now basically federalized, to take the place of the militia system. This is completely unacceptable and not a viable replacement in any way. Luckily, there has been a resurgence of local organization in recent years, and though the “M word” has yet to make a major reappearance, this is what will inevitably happen as mainstream systems continue to fail and people look to their own communities for safety instead of the government.
In the Ukraine there used to be a more concerted citizen call-up effort but again, this was a strictly centralized government affair. The only organized militias in the country are among the pro-Russian separatists. Today, as Russia invades, the Ukrainians don’t even have basic measures in place. Their ability to hold off the Russians at all is predicated on American missile systems like the Javelin which are being steadily funneled into the Ukrainian military.
SIDE NOTE: Also, the methods which Ukrainian forces are using to ambush Russian armor columns are rather advanced and familiar. I suspect the possibility that there are outside military “advisers” (perhaps US advisers) on the ground right now in Ukraine. The advanced guerrilla-style ambush tactics and the results look similar to training that is often given to Green Berets or SAS. The UK did send anti-tank weapons along with a small group of “trainers” to Ukraine in January.
Maybe I am mistaken, but if this is the case it would be diplomatically disastrous if such adviser teams were ever discovered to be involved in the fighting.
Despite all the help from the west, large chunks of Ukraine territory are now in the hands of Russia including two major cities so far. The Ukrainian government has offered to arm up any citizen who wants to fight, but the training I have observed in video footage is clearly substandard. Most of these people have never handled military grade arms in their lives, never fired a gun and never shot a 3-5 round group at 100 yards let alone faced the prospect of a two-way firing range and the sheer panic this can cause in untrained men.
Even more disturbing to me is that many of these call-ups for volunteers are peppered with women young and old. Guys bringing along their tiny girlfriends and wives as if the whole thing is a vacation at a Crossfit camp. This is delusional for a number of reasons, including the fact that having a loved one (especially a female) with you in the middle of combat can be a deadly distraction from the mission. Where is the soldier’s attention going to be? On the enemy in front of him, or his wife next to him who is screaming in horror as bullets zip past her head? When she realizes it’s not like the movies where every woman is a natural sniper that can go hand-to-hand with 200 pound men, will she then try to convince her husband to abandon the fight and leave with her?
It boggles the mind! At least make sure the women and children are safe in another place before going to fight.
The reason this desperation is happening at all is because of Ukraine’s complete lack of readiness. I find it hard to believe that president Zelenskyy was really tricked into believing that Putin was bluffing about invasion. Even if he thought that was the case, he should have been preparing defenses anyway and forming citizen militias. He had months of prior warning to do this, yet he did not.
I’m not going to field any theories here on why the Ukraine government was so unprepared (though I have a pretty solid idea), and it’s not my intention to support one side or the other politically. As I have written in previous articles, Ukraine is a globalist engineered distraction from bigger things, including the inflationary decline of the global economy. My purpose here is to examine the reasons why Ukraine was so easily invaded and to use it as a cautionary lesson.
The bottom line is this: If Ukraine had true self defense rights and a militia system in place then Russia may not have been able to invade at all.
I also find it interesting that the political left in the US, which has always been rabidly anti-gun rights for decades, is now cheering the prospect of the Ukrainian government arming civilians to fight a guerrilla war against the Russians. This reveals a dangerous hypocrisy which conservatives have suspected for some time – Leftists are not necessarily “anti-gun”, they are are just anti-gun when it comes to any person that disagrees with their ideology. When crisis strikes they become pro-gun, as long as they are the only people with guns.
The Ukraine event sets an important example for conservatives and moderates in America in that it reinforces the reality that owning guns alone is not enough. Local organization and public militias are the key to the survival of a society under threat. In fact, public militias can even act as a deterrent to future attacks from without AND from within.
Finally, local organization requires time and training. It’s not something you can slap together at the last minute and trying to form public security groups after an attack has already occurred is going to be a mess. One thing that has always bothered me about the Hollywood notion of the Red Dawn scenario and tales of regular people networking to fight foreign invaders is that these unprepared groups rarely if ever actually get very far in a real life fight. Rather, its the groups of people that were ready BEFORE the crisis happened that make the most difference.
You almost never see prepared people portrayed in the movies. I suspect because mainstream society has been conditioned to view preparedness as militancy, and militancy as extremism. God forbid a person is labeled as “extremist,” better to be apathetic and ineffective. It is always the people that step outside the artificial limitations of the mainstream that end up making a difference in the world, and it’s always the people that conform that end up becoming refugee fodder and victims of the historic tides. The Ukrainians are paying the price right now for this kind of attitude, lets not allow the same thing to happen here in America. It’s time to organize.
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