Would you repeal nearly all 20,000 gun laws if it meant getting a handle on the budgets and curtailing shortfalls? Would you look at the repeal of gun control if it meant tax revenues went further with no need for increases?

In the fifties, it was alright to carry a concealed handgun.

In the fifties, there were fewer gun laws, less gun control ideation, and, not amazingly, a different sort of societal values system in viewing criminal violence and penology. Before the leftist movement really began to shape values and societal mores, guns were ignored and it was alright to carry a gun. Gun control was on the radar of leftism, but the time was not fertile. In self-defense, the law recognized the concept as an affirmative defense with a lot less confusion.

What changed? Ambiguity grew as new ideas challenged the successful safeguards of our society. People became more undecided, more uncertain about what was right and wrong.

What changed was the idea that self-defense was worthwhile. The incoming idea was that self-defense is futile. Changes in criminology, crowded court calendars, street violence and the idea of a wayward teen ‘making a mistake’ instead of committing a crime replaced the idea of resolve and consistency in everything from education to parenting. The idea of being a friend replaced fatherhood, and giving someone another chance to commit another offense was marketed as compassion. The left unwinds American safeguards this way, this sort of challenge that demands an open mind, opened just enough to pry out our integrity and resolve. For those who fell victim to such an open-mindedness liberalism asked, their brains fell out.

What gun control has managed to hide is the reality that armed self-defense is a safeguard of the nation by preventing or de-escalating violence enough such that bureaucrats will feel silly for trying to replace the armed citizen. We had that kind of integrity once.

Gun control hides personal independence to act in time of emergency. Gun control punishes the will to survive and one’s refusing to be a victim. It is no accident of good intentions. Gun control paved the way for further corruption, proving the depths of what the electorate would tolerate. Today, people fear the system more than they fear thugs, and that is also no accident of good intentions.

But what if the idea of armed self-defense is in fact not futile? What if it is the gun control which is futile, except purely as a device of change for the left, of challenging the brains of Americans to fall out?

One of the greatest frauds perpetrated in the anti-gun community is that self-defense cheats the aggressor out of due process. Another is that guns can be taken from the armed citizen and used against them, or that a gun in the home will increase the odds of killing a loved one, all of which make preparedness and training sound futile, too.

Speak for yourself.

Honest citizens who want to be pro-active and protect self and loved ones can overcome those demons which the left seems to know so much about by undergoing training and practice. The left seems to believe they will shoot a loved one in anger if a gun is anywhere within reach. Perhaps. 90 million gun owners don’t seem to have as high a figure for shooting someone in anger as the left anticipated. Remember that a criminal mentality – angry or just sick – can always obtain a gun on short notice, no matter what law we write. Experts believe that – legally or illegally – a criminal bent on murder can obtain a gun in about an hour.

Remember that leftist thought makes an awful lot of derogatory presumptions about taxpayers. They believe that people shoot others in anger; maybe criminals do that, but gun owners think of self-defense as more purposeful than angry, more preparedness response than emotional reaction.

Gun owners live by the values system that, in an emergency, they are the only ones they can count on. Crime is then fought where it is fought best.

But one question remains for the majority of Americans, gun owner or not: if you could get a handle on the size of government by the repeal of gun laws as a start, would you repeal gun laws? If you could begin to unwind bureaucracies which thrive on violence – from homeland security funding to RFID tracking and electronic stalking to all sorts of agencies – would you go for the repeal of gun laws?

If it meant reducing corruption in all its venues by way of more taxpayers who refuse to be a victim of crime, would you look at the repeal of gun laws to take away the boondoggle that the corruption uses?

If it all meant more jobs for businesses who return to communities with confidence, would you repeal gun laws?

If it meant that monies spent on redundancies of the armed citizen were not confiscated from taxpayers merely to take the place of the citizen, would you look at it? If it meant more integrity, would you look for the repeal of gun control?

The arguments for the civil right of the second amendment and the arguments for self-defense have been made forever, but the tie-in of safety as a commodity traded in the fungal blight of politics is the original purpose of the second amendment; that is, the idea that boondoggles (big government) are much less likely to be accepted when such an excellent way of fighting crime already exists within the armed citizen. Gun control is the first corruption which led to further corruptions.

There was a time when self-defense was not ever believed to be a futile concept, and there was a time when bureaucracies would never have proposed gun bans, because they would have looked silly to an electorate much more independent of their servants.

The key, of course, is our independence from our very own servants. And, today, corruption does not care what you think of it.

The only reason gun bans even sounded reasonable to some is because independence has been surrendered to such a degree that it feels ambiguous and difficult to grasp; this has made people easy prey for boondoggles thereafter.

Discouraging the armed citizen makes about as much sense as punishing citizen CPR in time of emergency. To my way of thinking, the two are identical in moral purpose and public interest. The armed citizen is identical to the idea of bystander CPR.

2012 will have to decide whether we want independence and the smaller government with which to enjoy it, with which to live with less corruption, or a dependency state where we don’t have to think about anything.

John Longenecker is author of The CPR Corollary available at www.NationwideConcealedCarry.com