We have all heard the expression, “Better to have it and not need it than to not have it and need it.” That expression is most often used by people who favor gun ownership. That expression is quite true. A gun is very comforting and useful when it is needed – there is absolutely no substitute. But that expression applies to ALL items, be they material or mental. It means that some planning be done so that what is needed be available when needed. It also means that what is needed be used responsibly, sensibly, not wasted, not taken lightly.
Planning: It was General/President Dwight D. Eisenhower who said, “… plans are nothing, planning is everything.” The act of planning is more valuable than the plan itself. Planning makes you realize that you can’t just show up and wing it. Planning makes you think about what you are wanting to accomplish. You cannot have/put forth a plan without some planning.
As anyone knows, the plan is good only until the enemy (the other side) is met. You can plan and plan, but the enemy just will not cooperate. But planning gets you to think about what you are going to do. Planning provides flexibility, the ability to deviate from your plan, to respond as you want to what the enemy does. Planning lets you respond to what you have not foreseen in a way that you want. By planning and developing a plan, you are not reacting to what the enemy does. Any military tactician will tell you that when you start reacting to what the enemy does, the battle is lost.
That thinking applies to anything. It allows you to respond in the way of your choosing, rather than in the manner others choose (or have chosen) for you. YOU are in control.
Responsibility: This concept implies the freedom to assume a burden, a plan to properly rather than indiscriminately use the things you choose to have. There is no escaping this concept. If you possess it (whatever “it” is), you are responsible for it – period. There is, in today’s society, too much effort forwarded to try to shirk responsibility for our own actions, to try to blame others for our actions. As Sigmund Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents, said, “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
There is an old saying in the military that applicable in any of life’s endeavors: “You can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility.”
These two requirements (planning and responsibility) are the primary reasons why Progressives/Liberals/Democrats (PLDs) are so adamantly against unrestricted (and unregistered) gun ownership. An armed citizenry may not like what they are up to, and may plan to not sheepishly go along with their schemes. And, all PLDs think that the entire citizenry cannot be free or responsible, that only they can be responsible enough to be free enough to possess what they want to prohibit the citizenry from having. That goes for guns, wealth, private property, … ANYTHING
Further, PDLs have a “knee jerk” reaction when they hear that expression, loudly proclaiming that they know what’s best for us, never pausing to think that we may have done some planning and take responsibility for our actions.
So, the next time you hear that expression, think about the attendant planning and responsibility that is expressed, that goes with it. You can be assured that PLDs won’t.
But that’s just my opinion
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