... Otherwise known as "getting something off my chest."

A lot of my fellow People of the Gun, gunbloggers, and armed citizens expend a lot of time and effort railing against the "government", its "jackbooted thugs", the laws and regulations passed by the aforementioned government, and all the rest. A lot of that sound and fury makes perfect sense, given some of the things our government is doing recently, but I have been trying my best to stay out of the whole mess. Why? Because, when you get right down to the world of gunbloggers, I am a very small fish in a world of juggernauts. However, even though I am a minnow steaming around in a very large pond, I just wanted to take the time to remind a lot of people of something small enough and simple enough that it is often overlooked:

We ARE the government.

And when I say "we", I mean all Americans - gun-owners, hoplophobes, people who do not care about the Second Amendment, and everyone everywhere else on the entire spectrum. You know, the whole "...government of the people, by the people, for the people..." (emphasis added) thing? Yeah, that. You see, the American government did not just spring into being of its own accord, but rather we American citizens created it, and we continue to allow it to exist.

Sometimes, to me, as a part-time Second Amendment activist, it seems as though too many of the "hardcore" activists are spending too much time focusing on convincing their lawmakers to look at something a certain way, explaining what will happen if the police or other law enforcement agencies start behaving unconstitutionally, or otherwise focusing on some nebulous "government", without realizing what I see to be the simple truth of the situation: Convincing the government is not the battle... convincing the people is.

The unfortunate truth of the matter is that talking about shooting law enforcement types is bound to cause neutral observers to either become very concerned, or just tune you out entirely. Yes, in those situations where individuals were talking about those kinds of activities, they were referencing what they would or would not do if those law enforcement types were operating outside the bound of the law and/or the Constitution; but when people start talking about shooting cops, civilians and cops alike start worrying, regardless of the motivations or causality of the situation. It is just a simple truth of the matter. Yes, I know, those situations are purely hypothetical, and no, they were not talking about just randomly shooting people in uniform... but that simply does not matter to the average reader. The second you put "shoot" and "cop" (or semantically equivalent words) in a single sentence, alarms start ringing, regardless of content.

The fact is, those average readers will be completely thrown off by such talk, and the other fact is that we, as gun owners, are not going to win this fight against the hoplophobes of the world on our own. Sure, you might win the battle of shooting down those government operatives who came to unconstitutionally strip you of your right to bear arms (not delving into the arguable futility of such an action), but if you do so at the cost of alienating the populace, you lose the war. It does not matter if you were right. It does not matter that the majority may not have the full picture of what happened. It does not matter that the "government" was wrong. The second you lose the popular opinion, you lose.

And talking about shooting cops, even hypothetically and in what you might be consider to be "appropriate" circumstances, will make you lose that populace.

Mayhap I am a "traitor to the Second Amendment", whatever the hell that might mean, for saying this. If so, so be it. And, yes, I know the majority is not always, if ever, right. But the fact is, if you alienate that majority, it will not just be the clueless lawmakers who will be working against you - it will be the mother and father next door to you demanding that your guns be taken away... Hell, it might even be your own family. Because they, your grocery bagger, your dentist, your car mechanic, and every other American citizen is the American government, and those are the people you are talking about fighting against... and possibly even shooting. Might they deserve it in this carefully-crafted hypothetical situation? Possibly - it is not my scenario. But history is written by the victors, and unless those who are doing the shooting are considerably more organized than I would wager possible among such a wide group of disparate and different-opinioned gun owners, they will not be the victors, and their actions will have been for naught. In fact, those actions would probably cause more damage than good by further eroding the public's image of gun owners and gun nuts. Sure, the shooters will probably feel vindicated (if you feel anything at all when you are dead), but that is a solipsistic self-gratification, possibly at the cost of millions of others' rights and property. Just how much are you willing to pay to be dead right?

Have your line in the sand - I know I have one of my own, though damned if I know where it is at the moment. Be selfish and graphically express it in an intentionally inflammatory way, at the cost of some, possibly significant, fraction of the populace around us. But try not to be surprised when people react negatively to it - even gun-owning people. Because this ongoing struggle we are fighting for maintaining and expanding our gun rights is very much one of public relations, and those are almost never improved by the introduction of bullets, righteously fired or not.