Headshot!

I hold a degree from a prestigious liberal arts university. I claim Christianity--a fundamentally nonviolent religion--as my own. I have never drawn a weapon of any kind in anger, nor have I yet been in any fight I would consider 'real'. I live in a first world country where hushing a person on the phone in a movie theatre is enough to get you fined.

And yet, at my core, I'm a gun nut.

I was raised by libertarian parents in small-town Alabama, that alone should form an explanation for my obsession. In addition, my friends were mostly homeschoolers, lots of them farm-kids--by environment if not by family profession. I grew up around guns, firing the ones owned by friends and learning the language as I went. I was probably first handed a pistol by a buddy when I was no more than thirteen. We had a philosophical conversation about whether the item was evil in-and-of itself. We agreed it was not.

In late high school I learned that .45 ACP is very near and dear to my heart. I had been firing an older model 1911, and even with it having a few issues with the cheap ammo we were using (causing the occasional failure to eject) I was still very much in love by the time the session was over.

I was a poor kid growing up though, and put my personal money towards video games and computer hardware; my interests were more electronic than kinetic at the time. Had I lived 100 yards north, which would have put me outside Tallassee city limits and given me the luxury of firing in my own back yard, I might have grown up very differently.

As it was, I held off on purchasing a firearm. I went through college, subsequent jobs, and even employment at my current place of business when I reached Macon. I focused my money first on other things, and I decided that I didn't want the added complication of my roommates' possible discomfort at having a gun in the apartment. I don't think they would have minded too much, but I figured it was easier to ignore the itch at all.

It is probably a good thing I waited until after I'd secured the house before purchasing my first pistol, a Glock 19, since it kept me from starting the inevitable avalanche of kit buying that would begin as soon as I had my first.

I went with a 9mm first for several reasons. The first is that ammunition is cheap--about half the cost of .45 ACP. It is also plentiful--if the apocalypse starts tomorrow, there will be 9mm rounds floating around like the coins in Super Mario World. Still, my intention is to go up to 45, and down to 22, so I have a handgun for every occasion, be it teaching a new friend to shoot something non threatening, or being the biggest threat in (most) rooms.

Of course, having been bitten, I've now got to step up at least one notch as well. I've started eyeing the AR-15, and have settled on a configuration that I desire. Of course, I should have settled on it a month ago, before the market panicked at the likelihood of a new gun ban when our new legislative and executive branches take office, but hopefully I'll get my orders in under the wire, even if they do cost me more than they should.

Somehow, I hope to avoid the siren song of a tactical shotgun. I don't really need one and I think the combination of AR and Glock will serve me just fine in most situations where one would be required.

I firmly believe in the big three principles of France: Libertie, Egalitie, Fraternitie. All citizens should be brothers, all citizens should be equal, all citizens should be free.

To secure those rights, I think Jeff Cooper is partly right in his comments: "In fact, [the rifle] is the only means of resisting tyranny, since a citizenry armed with rifles simply cannot be tyrannized."

I believe that a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State. I believe that the right to bear arms has nothing to do with hunting, home defense, or recreational shooting--it has to do with a populace that cannot be tyrannized by its government, because it is too well prepared to defend its freedom. I believe that any attempt to disarm the American people is an attempt to pave the way for fascism, and that it should be fought against in our election booths, in our legislative buildings, and in our courts.

I believe that a free populace governed by a democratic republic will become well educated by nature (one need look no further than Massachusetts before public education to see evidence of this). I believe that within a well educated and free populace there are more good men than bad, and therefore arming that populace will result in a net gain for the community as a whole, and each individual within it.

I say Cooper is partially right because I believe there are other components necessary to the security of a free state. Freedom of communication and association are just as vital to our liberty. It is for these reasons that I was so glad to hear Obama speak critically of our lost civil liberties during this campaign, and why I was so disappointed to hear that he had caved and voted for ex-post-facto telecom immunity after being so critical of it. To hear them go unmentioned by McCain was, to my mind, a terrifying thing.

An ignorant and carefully segregated populace, no matter how heavily armed, can still be destroyed by lies and misinformation. In this way the whole of the country is turned against one small part. We saw it done by Andrew Jackson with the Trail of Tears, we saw it done by Bill Clinton and Janet Reno in Waco Texas in 1993, and I fear we might see it again soon with the current populist movement to demonize Scientology. That's not to say I agree with a single word of the Scientology movement--I don't--but I suspect we are on the verge of seeing our government, desperate for money, declare their religion null-and-void and confiscate their assets in a bid to shore up an economy weakened by bad economic policies (on BOTH sides of the aisle) for the past 90 years.

I wonder, has that ever been tried before?

And yet, these other rights I spoke of are ethereal--they must be derived. To paraphrase Cooper: In many cases these rights can be secured by good men with rifles.

In short, I own a gun because I believe it is the most vital possession of every good man who is capable of firing one in the defense of his family, his home, his country, and his liberty.

And on those grounds I say that yes, President-Elect Obama, I do cling to my guns and religion, every ounce as fervently as I cling to my intellect and my obligation to the civic good.

And so I hope that you will remember that you are my president too.

As an aside, the photograph included with this post is of a silhouette target from my last trip to the range. It shows the five head shots in a 15 round mag, emptied in 15 seconds, at 20 feet. These are the other ten.