Never give up your guns

Stanislov Mishin is a Russian who guessed posts at Stolinsky.com provides a bit of history to remind us Never give up your guns. A hat tip to David Codrea of the War on Guns website.  I go back to the Communist revolution in Russia, not because it was the first.  No, man has always had a propensity for bloody and savage cruelty.  Especially when they combine their savagery with a belief that they are doing good are they the most cruel, for then their god gives them sanction to do these things.  So it was in Russia.

 Mishin relates some of the history of the Russian revolution, recounting how in Tsarist times the country was well armed:

This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of traditional attire, and those little tubes criss-crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.

...snip...

This well-armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918, and wage a savage civil war against the Reds. It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own. If it had not been for Washington’s clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently.

Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lying guile of the Reds. Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors. Even then the battle was fierce and losses high. However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed. The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene. They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons: where they were promptly shot.

Go read the whole post, as it is instructive. Note that the emphasis above is mine, but also note well the sequence of events. Now, maybe you won't be shot, but you will no longer be free. They can call you "comrade" or "citizen," but you will actually be a subject, a glorified surf. Do not, under any circumstances, give up your guns. As for Ben Dickman, "May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

*  Note that things were not so great under the Tsars either.  The Tsars were tyrants, to be sure, and had secret police to go out and terrorize their political enemies.

  If Mr. Mishin looks with favor on the Tsars, it is only because he Russians went from the frying pan into the fire with the Bolshevics and later the Soviets.  But while the people held weapons and ammunition in their own hands, there was a limit to how far the Tsars would go.  Also do not be fooled into thinking that those in our society would be more "civilized" than the Russians were.  If you don't believe me, take it from someone who infiltrated the Weather Underground terrorist group, Larry Grathwohl here.