Patriots: For over 26 years, your generosity has made it possible to offer The Patriot Post without a subscription fee to military personnel, students, and those with limited means. Please support the 2024 Year-End Campaign today.

May 26, 2011

Attention All Candidates for President

Conservative, independent and libertarian candidates running for President need to understand one value which resonates with voters; safer streets will be good evidence of a healthier self-rule. You won’t get safer streets viz-a-viz violent crime without a repeal of gun control.

Gun control has been the cornerstone of all costly and predatory big-government bureaucracies. Immense centralization never seems to be as good at the stated goal as the citizen is. Centralization is becoming a real mainstream pain on man, many issues now. The gun control formula is the Hegelian model of crisis management and dependency instead of crisis eradication and prosperity in independence. In this, it has seemed so far that conservatives are identical with liberals. Not a dime’s bit of difference. Americans are very apprehensive now that we will soon reach a point of no return where we will lose the country thanks to stubborn indolence and unwillingness to heed constituents. We have lost a great deal of self-rule, and we’re losing it more every day. What do the conservatives, libertarians and Independent candidates offer?

Good question. It might be best to tell them what we need and see if they really listen. Unwind gun control, and smaller government will come sooner than anything the candidates have planned. The way you do this as President is to stump for it boldly and get elected on it among other mainstream values. The way you stump for it boldly is to understand how the second amendment really operates and operates non-violently in its safeguard role against centralization. This is the part which affects the whole nation.

If the repeal of gun control reduced the size of government, would constituents support it? If it meant your pocketbook and the price of a gallon of gasoline, would you go for it?

There is too much misunderstanding among the candidates about what the second amendment is. It at first looks like force and appears to too many officials to be unneeded and uncouth, a foible of toothless, bitter, survivalist isolationists, but you’re wrong. Too many candidates don’t know that police have no duty to protect individuals to begin with (I know, I’ve spoken with them), and some dopes think Militia is National Guard. It isn’t. The armed citizen is not a redundancy of official agencies, the agencies are a redundancy of citizen authority. [Centralization.] Think about it, and you’ll be able to grasp second amendment issues better.

The ‘force’ is with us originally when there was no centralization for generations and it is not debatable nor negotiable. What makes it non-negotiable is that centralization has attempted to substitute itself for the optimal and most righteous force for meeting and managing violent crime. This is a disease. The error conservatives, independents and libertarian candidates for President make is in thinking that it somehow is negotiable or that some regulation or gun control is reasonable. Actually, gun control is an interference with our ability to meet and fight crime and is a challenge to our sovereign authority. This needs to be understood by any candidate who says he or she will reduce the size of government.

Without the repeal of gun control, you will not be able to begin the process of reducing government. How does this play for a candidate? Simple: stumping for the repeal of gun control reflects the proper understanding of the relationship between the government and the governed. For all the speeches on the stump, nothing could say it better. The key is not to get rid of guns as a solution to violence, the key is to get rid of gun control as one major contributor to violence.

In being the lethal force which backs our sovereignty, there is no so-called controversy about “guns.” One either respects us as the sovereign or one gives out signals that we are not respected as the sovereign. The first thing candidates need to comprehend is that the armed citizen is where violent crime is fought best. Restore this in the major cities – through a repeal of gun control – and crime will drop. We have been saying this for decades. But the eloquence of the armed citizen – the real core of the concept as a mainstream value and not a ‘single issue of guns’ – is that armed citizens show that there is little need for the second-guessing impositions that eventually, consistently, become big government. Violence is an excuse to be radical. Gun control grows violence, and voila, a necessity for yet another bureaucracy.

As crime grows – including the threat of terrorism – so grows the government. Unwind gun control and violent crime will shrink. This is the non-violent function of the second amendment in action. Impeaching centralization.

One of our candidates for public office told me that he would not stump for second amendment rights because it was a single issue and he wanted to win. He lost.

An affirmation of second amendment values must be part of the platform and boldly so. This is no ‘single issue’, but more of an aggregate of mainstream values in one value. Enunciating seriousminded affirmation of the armed citizen will telegraph unmistakably to constituents how you resonate with all other values you want to talk about, and you will attract voters across party lines; they will know. I urge my favorite candidate to please stump for the repeal of gun laws as integral to safer streets as the first step to reducing the size of government.

You won’t get smaller government without it, and it explains why we’re not there yet. If a conservative, libertarian or independent takes the oval office and we still don’t see smaller government, then there won’t be a penny’s bit o’ difference at all.

John Longenecker is author of Even Safer Streets 2011 – The Second Amendment as a Mainstream Value, now available worldwide.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.