The Patriot Post® · Candidates, Don't Hold Back

Now that H.R. 822 seems to be on the move, a lot of optimism about a climate change in Washington is coming alive. Our idea of climate change is, of course, how warm things are for the second amendment. I don’t care for gun laws that ‘permit’ second amendment freedoms; I much prefer the repeal of all gun laws as an affirmation of who is the Sovereign in this country. All gun laws are a challenge to our authority as supreme, and when we stand for it, we confirm that paradigm that we are not the Sovereign and the servants are.

How this can be reversed to obtain a brighter weather outlook is for 2012 candidates to affirm our second amendment authority over them. Yes, over them. Anyone who recognizes this on the stump will probably be jet propelled into the White House with further evidence of climate change, the landslide.

I was intrigued by the report of an Arkansas candidate who announced that she obtained her concealed carry permit. The castigation of her was obscene. Someone gave her good advice in announcing her second amendment values, and though she may be in for a rough road, so will we all for the sake of smaller government. She is Republican Beth Anne Rankin, a candidate for 4th District Congress.

A lot of candidates will wonder whether this step is politically safe for them. It is.

Here is something which is terribly important and which gives significance to this plank on the platform of liberty: affirmation of gun rights is the affirmation that the candidate trusts the electorate and that the candidate believes the electorate is the Sovereign.

Put another way, what makes it politically safe is that the candidate will be committing to the people that the people will be increasingly independent of government, including her. What makes it safe is that the candidates state that he or she trusts the people more than asking the people to trust the candidate. How many candidates will state publicly that they will work for your independence, including an increasing independence from even them? In comparison, how many candidates pander to the lesser interest constituents instead of obeying the constitution? In terms of enumerated powers, there are things government just shouldn’t be doing because they are not assigned them.

How many candidates promise to bring new ideas instead of accepting your ideas as constitutional instructions? The tried and true is what makes America. What makes America is that it doesn’t take courage to change it, it takes courage to keep it, and we won’t keep it if public servants don’t trust the citizens to be armed.

This is why we need to repeal gun control, and one of the most encouraging findings is that a candidate – just one candidate for now – is stating that she has a concealed carry permit. Maybe one day, we won’t need to ask permission from our own servants to be armed wherever we have a right to be. Maybe one day, we’ll have more servants who know exactly what we need by a system of shared values and personal integrity, not by insisting on new ideas of theirs so much over our own.

2012 candidates need to speak about our being the Sovereign and, by all means, don’t hold back. Candidates need to speak to our independence of servants, including them, and not hold back. Candidates need to speak boldly to the repeal of gun control as the most meaningful statement of their servant trust of the people. The rest will take care of itself.

What is our job in all of this? Well, one thing we can do is get involved more. I’m a regular on Arizona’s Gun Talk station NBC/1260 Tuesday mornings, and yesterday I mentioned that, if the appearance of impropriety is to serve us at all, we need to heed it much sooner than we have been. This is involvement, the kind we need to exercise. This is supervision of our servants, not their supervision of us.

In a nation of self-rule, we haven’t been putting much self into it. We have more rule than we have self. Involvement puts the self in self-rule, and we need to stand up to get others to stand down when they exhibit their earliest signs of impropriety and assumptions of powers not granted them. It is a very bad indicator of the health of the country when citizens fear their servants more than they fear thugs, our present situation; the assumption of powers not granted – for whatever reason or mandate – is one form of corruption and early impropriety.

The base and the candidate of integrity will find each other by shared values, and we’ll even draw better candidates once they know it’s politically safe. One of those shared values is the respect for the electorate and the official trust of the citizenry to be armed … and don’t hold back on that.

Meanwhile, America needs to have a lot less tolerance for the earliest appearances of impropriety. She needs to trust her instincts and stick to them with unshakable resolve in keeping the self in self-rule.

John Longenecker is author of The CPR Corollary, a liberty outreach tool for gun owners to the non-gun owner electorate.