First Class Versus Second Class Citizens bearing Arms

and The Training Lie

People like Hillary Clinton and her rich Hollywood comrades try to deny the right of most of us to keep and bear arms, while they and their loved ones are being protected by guards with guns. This shows how they really feel about whether it’s safer to be armed or unarmed. And it shows whose lives matter to them. In Hillary world, first class citizens are allowed to have armed guards, second class citizens are not. So that raises a question: if the elite are worthy of being protected by armed guards, why are those they look down on as commoners not worthy of armed protection too?

One common lie used to justify this double standard is that those who work for government can be trusted and the same applies to the professionals who guard rich people, but second class citizens can not be trusted. This is a lie because American law assumes innocence unless there is probable cause (and ultimately proof) of some kind of guilt. Civilians who are licensed to bear arms are among the most law-abiding and they have an exceptional record of safety, equal to that of the police. They are a proven deterrent to crime on top of that. So there is no valid reason, and no legal authority, for civilians to be denied their Constitutional right to bear arms because of what elitists in government think one of them might do.

Another lie is that we are protected by armed guards in the form of the police. This is an obvious lie because they have the same police protection the rest of us have (actually better), and they have armed guards on top of that. If police as our only guards is good enough for us it’s good enough for them too. And if they have a right to have armed protection beyond the police that is dedicated to their personal protection, so do we. Unless their lives are just worth more than ours.

The most common lie is probably “training,” the idea being that those who guard the elite have training and therefore are not a threat to public safety, but those without training, or those with less training, are a threat. And to the ignorant that makes sense. But it ignores the fact that private citizens carry weapons in public and around children every day and do so very responsibly. Licensed armed citizens have proven beyond any doubt that they are no threat to public safety whatsoever. The threat they are claimed to pose is purely theoretical, and that theory has been proven conclusively to be nothing but pure fantasy.

And private citizens do stop killers, including mass killers. How many innocent people have been killed by a legally armed citizen in a public place shooting at a bad guy and missing? Is the possibility of this happening a valid reason for all citizens to be denied their right to bear arms in certain places? Law-abiding armed citizens don’t do any worse than police as far as missing their targets and endangering the public. Those who claim they are a public safety threat are lying.

Most gun deaths are not accidents, and accidental gun deaths are the only ones that can be stopped by training. Most gun deaths are suicides, and murders committed by criminals. Training will not keep those gun deaths from happening. And even among professionals, training does not completely protect against stupidity. The better training professionals get, in other words (or supposedly get), is not a significant factor in public safety.

Even where civilians do get training, including advanced training, they are no less restricted on where they can carry than the rest of the second class citizens. (There are a few exceptions to this but they are rare and limited.) If lack of training is the reason second class citizens are denied their right to bear arms in certain venues, then a certificate showing they completed training should be all it takes for them to be able to bear arms wherever they go. But it doesn’t work that way. So lack of training is not the real reason.

Training is a code word that means government decides who gets to bear arms and who doesn’t. And when government gets to decide, we end up with first class citizens and second class citizens, as ordained by government. What training means is you have to either work for government, or guard the lives of people government decides are worthy of being protected. If you have money or connections, you get to be a first class citizen.

Another excuse given is that if there was no one guarding the rich they would be kidnapped for money. And that very well might be true. But as Obama likes to remind us, many kids in schools for second class children have been visited by killers, who took a terrible toll because there was no one there to stop them. And there is violence in other forms in and around many schools, especially in the inner city. You don’t see much violence in the schools first class citizens send their kids to. Do armed guards maybe have something to do with that?

So why are second class citizens typically denied the right to be armed to defend themselves or a loved one when they go to school, but first class citizens get to be protected by people who are allowed to bear arms?