Supreme Court Decision - Why we Carry

There is a part of it that is as simple as self protection. As was my Dad in the Air Force, my Mom was a Law Enforcement Officer, a Sheriff, and I heard firsthand the abuses she saw against other women in the course of her work, women for whom their only crime was to be small and timid against a raging bully. Women who had yet to learn that evil does not go away by submitting, but by fighting back. So she and Dad taught me to shoot and the reasons for which they did needed no voice. Individually, collectively I believe it's a right of mine, as a law abiding citizen, whether I am a LEO or not, male or female, large or small. That being the right to protect my body and my interests for which I've toiled. And I would defend with each breath, against any interference with that liberty on which our country was founded.

The Founding Fathers did not give us that right, they simply affirmed us that right, one over our own bodies and minds that was God given long ago. But with the right comes obligation and responsibility. Our country was not founded on the principle that government would take care of our every need, including protecting us at every instance. To have the law enforcement power to achieve that alludes to an Orwellian world I would not wish to live in. I carry because I am empowered with not just the right, but the duty to take care of myself. I am sovereign in my protection of myself, charged with that moral duty and supported by the Second Amendment and the steady hand that holds the grip. It is a decision that I alone make, to carry responsibly, to be proficient, to be sure. I can no more imagine giving that up, than the sibilant intake of breath as I squeeze the trigger.

Then there is simply the sheer love I have for that which is history, of the acts of courage that defined a persons freedom, of the mechanical workings of objects which support self sufficiency and strength. Planes, trains, steam engines, old tools, and yes, the gun. There's an attraction to old tools and old machines, the human values they represent. Nothing that withstands history gets built without brilliance of design, a laboring effort and the dreams of man. Some say a gun is a killing instrument. Man is a killing instrument. The gun is only a tool, from which we have the pure mechanical force which can keep one alive or take a life. As a tool it is as weak or as strong as he or she who hold its, as good or as bad as the collective soul that keeps it in working order. The guns I own are defenders of good, soldier's weapons, officer's weapons, my weapons.As a female, I am by some cultures considered weak, yet my will to survive is born out by a life that most would have shied away from. That strength, that utter potency of the will to live is instilled in some things more than others, and in my weapons I can feel it. Taking that, holding one in my hand, feeling the power and the recoil shudder through me is empowering. Using my own will and ability to place the precision of liberty onto a small piece of paper, it's history. That of the past, that of my continued future.

I support the Second Amendment as it supports what our country was founded on, the means in which as patriots, we can protect and defend. The true measure of the patriot is steadfastness. We all have small moments of wanderlust in us, tearing off on paths that others may not follow, testing limits, testing ourselves. That is the nature of man. Yet when we strive to hold true, to stand firm to our beliefs as free men and women, as a group, to carry our weapons and defend our land and our homes, the weak become strong, and the wandering hold together as one. For then we are united in something much greater than the elemental whims of mankind. Together as patriots we are much more of the courageous and less of the selfish, we become brothers in arms, one household at a time.

.- Brigid