Correct, because in recent years they didn’t need to be. They must be shown that a re-examination of that assumption is necessary. And I DO mean MUST.

Mike, Skeptic here. Your article “All the Marbles” was on point. Too much to say to put in a comment thread.

Watching commentators marvel at the open, outright theft of the most important office in the land is hilarious. And everyone is just amazed and befuddled at why the Democrats would even attempt such a thing. I can tell you why they are doing it.

THEY AREN’T AFRAID OF US. Not one little bitty-bit. They do whatever the hell they want to us and sleep well, because they have no fear of us whatsoever.

And you know what? They’re right. “But we have guns!” Seriously, who gives a shit? Weapons only have two values: their ability to deter or their ability to destroy. Their deterrent value is only based on their ability to destroy – and the willingness of those who possess them to wield them to destroy. And if there’s anything that’s obvious by now, it’s that “our side” won’t wield those weapons.

Compare and contrast the two approaches. First, look at Antifa/BLM. Government officials are TERRIFIED of them and what they’ll do. Sure, they may be rabble and savages, but damned if they don’t know how to get their way. In many big cities, it’s practically illegal to arrest a black person for anything – and don’t even think about trying to stop a BLM riot. Even Trump has kowtowed to them with the “Letting black criminals out of prison” act, laughingly referred to as ‘reform,’ as well as numerous other giveaways and virtue-signaling to black America. Riot, burn down some cities, and mayors and governors are scared shitless. Even during the scamdemic, when other gatherings were prohibited, nary a single government official dared to even suggest that the riots weren’t the best possible thing that could ever happen in our world – no matter what political party they belonged to. And the idea that SCOTUS, or any other government body, will stop the steal of the election? Spare me. They know that the Lefty riots that would follow would make the Summer of George look like a coffee klatch. Hence, no matter what is right or wrong, the Dems will get their way. Period. Fucking Dot. Antifa/BLM is exercising deterrence WITHOUT weapons, because they are unafraid to destroy.

But what about our side? Well, we’ll hold toothless hearings. We’ll write strongly worded letters. We’ll peacefully protest. And then we’ll go home as the tyrants inside the government buildings laugh at us. EVEN IF PEOPLE ON OUR SIDE CARRY GUNS TO THE PROTESTS, the petty tyrants won’t lose a single wink of sleep, because they know that those guns are strictly for show, not for use. Hence, no deterrence. The Michigan Militia went into the Statehouse fully armed – and yet didn’t do so much as tear a piece of paper. No willingness to destroy.

“So, Skeptic, how would YOU handle it?” Well, I’ll be honest. I am, like you, not a young man. I never served in the military (a regret). I don’t even own a gun (another regret which I will soon be correcting). So I have not the youth, nor the tactical training, nor the weaponry to lead an armed insurrection (and I fear that if I did, I’d be the proverbial army of one). But I’m also not someone constantly saying, “Muh guns is gonna pertect us from tyranny an’ stuff.” Because they won’t. America’s gun owners are but a paper tiger, and they will quietly sit at home counting their ammo up until the moment that the tyrants come to get their weapons. Then they will surrender them meekly and get onto the cattle cars themselves. Or maybe the tyrants have already figured out that there’s no NEED to get the guns – because gun owners have voluntarily disarmed themselves. They can leave the guns in the hands of the owners, knowing that the barrels will never be pointed at them.

2020 has seen unprecedented tyranny in our country. Never before have businesses and livelihoods been wantonly destroyed just because. Never before have innocent, law-abiding people been placed under mass house arrest and seen their most fundamental Constitutional rights destroyed. And yet…..nothing has happened. No riots of the oppressed. Shit, not a single mayor or governor has suffered so much as a paper cut. So, you will excuse me for acknowledging that we, as a country, are going ever so gently into that good night. If the gun owners were going to do something, they would have by now. Peaceful protests have actually taken place in front of governors’ residences, with the governors and their families inside, and them worrying not a whit that they would be frogmarched out to face the fate that should face all tyrants.

So, sure, we can sit around talking about how we have 300 million guns and eleventy trillion rounds of ammunition. Nobody in power gives the slightest of shits. The election thieves should, at this very moment, be terrified to show their faces because they know that someone will blow it off. The mayor of Austin who admonished his subjects to stay at home – FROM HIS ROOM IN CABO – should be making plans to stay in Mexico because he knows he’s a marked man if he returns to Texas.  But they are not.

“But, Skeptic, we’re better people than that!” Are we? Really? Is it “better” or “weaker?”

Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States. Trump will be removed from office, likely arrested on the front lawn of the White House, to be imprisoned for the rest of his life. Within a month, Kamala Harris will be sworn in as the 47th. Then will begin the most sweeping power takeover in the history of our country. There will never be a legitimate election again. And meanwhile, America’s Gun Owners won’t do a single fucking thing.

Wish I could be more optimistic.

As do I, but CF Lifers will no doubt be aware that my own optimism has more or less dried up and blown away at this point too.

BUT. All that acknowledged—and being nigh unable myself to persuasively argue with Skeptic’s closing prognostications, much as I might wish to—I’ll nonetheless offer an idea that’s at least somewhat hopeful…if anticipating bloodshed, chaos, and national disaster can or should be called hopeful.

Bad as things admittedly have become over this last year, seems to me there’s a reason nobody has started shooting yet. When they do, if they do, it isn’t going to be election chicanery that will inspire it. It will be THEVIRUSTHEVIRUSTHEVIRUS!!!™ that causes the balloon to finally go up.

Why might that be, sez you? Why simple, sez I: nobody is starving yet.

The one thing—the ONLY thing—invariably capable of turning usually mild-mannered, generally diffident people into slavering blood-fiends perfectly capable of blasting away full-auto at the agents of their suffering with nary a shred of hesitation or remorse, is hunger. Very, very few of us can meekly sit back and listen to his hungry child plead desperately for food without taking some kind of direct action in response. Damned near NO ONE is going to just lie back and starve to death themselves.

This is by no means a purely American rule of thumb, either. People, in the US and almost everywhere else, will put up with one hell of a lot before shooting and looting begins to look like a reasonable option to them. As I’ve often said, that is by no means a bad thing. Not if you enjoy little things like peace, stability, and civilization itself, it ain’t.

But when the kids’ bellies are distended, their eyes sunken and dim, and their ability to do much more than lie around mewling feebly as a newborn kitten for sustenance…well, once that sort of thing becomes widespread enough in most any nation or region, the odds favoring a sudden, violent change of government rocket past fair to middling and right on into just you try and stop us territory.

Losing one’s job due to phonus-balonus lockdowns; having one’s life’s work and savings blown away like tumbleweeds in an old Western; being disenfranchised via a brazenly stolen election—that’s one thing. Watching as the spark of life slowly gutters out in the eyes of one’s wife and little ones due to hunger, their spirits crushed and broken, is something entirely else.

In too many ways, modern Americans have been wheedled, cajoled, and just plain hoodoo’ed out of their dignity and self-respect—to such a degree that they’ve passively tolerated encroachments and abuses that would inarguably have had the Founders taking aim and pulling trigger long ago. Maybe I’m wrong, but I still think having real hunger foisted on them and their loved ones in the name of a phony virus, their plight then cemented for all time by a communist hijacking of their country itself, might turn out to be a bridge too far even for them. We’ll find out soon enough.

A time for choosing update! This may seem unrelated to the above. I disagree.

It is clear, after the weeks have passed since the election, that there is no means of arriving at the appropriate transfer of the consent of the governed through legal means. Judges, Secretaries of State, Governors and representatives of the people are incapable of dispensing the true and faithful duties of their offices for various reasons, all of which stem from some sort of corruption, be it bribery, violation of oath, treasonous intent or some other corrupting influence. 

Over these weeks, the people have seen their votes discarded, changed and invalidated. Their objections to illegalities in the processes of tabulating and verifying votes has been met with complicit silence, refusing a redress of grievances. 

Still, at the end of the day, that is fast approaching, the people of the United States seek a peaceful means of resolution. They look to the Supreme Court for favorable rulings. They assemble at state houses to demand that their votes be counted and verified. They wait for some official to declare their voices heard and the egregious fraud exposed and reversed. They wait for the possibility that the republic can continue, that rule of law has been restored and respected. 

In absence of that, WHAT? 

It’s time to stop looking to the corrupt for honesty. It’s time to stop looking at officials for guidance. It’s time to stop expecting anyone to do the job of the citizen. There is only one militia, it is the people. The militia has a right to keep and bear arms, not for hunting or self defense, but the defense of the nation, their lives and their liberty. If you want freedom, you are going to have to fight for it like almost every American generation in history. Some of those who have fought on foreign soil for some political objective that kept changing understand what is expected, but this time it is for their homeland, to secure it from globalists that do not recognize individual rights. It is a fight for the ground their children and grandchildren play on. It is for the right of self determination. You can’t imagine the nation we will live in if we do not fight to preserve this one and I suggest that we should go further than that. If they force us to arms, by their inability to restore our rights, we must not put them down until the corrupt who have conspired with the communist governments abroad have been ruthlessly ripped from their seats of power. There is no going back to some previous version of America, there are no roads to the past. We have to build a new road, first with arms and then with reason. But, this stolen election cannot be our last breath of freedom. It is a cause to fight. Let them go through the motions, but in the end only the eighty million people who were robbed of their consent have standing in the court of the republic. 

The passage from TL’s last paragraph that I boldfaced is the most crucial bit, I think, although the whole thing is damned important.