GOVERNMENT-MANDATED GUN OWNERSHIP, BECAUSE FREEDOM

Hey, remember when right-wingers told us the government can't force you to buy a product? I guess they no longer believe that:

A small Utah town has a population of less than a thousand people, but the City Council is proposing that each one of its citizens own and carry handguns.

Spring City Councilman Neil Sorensen, the man behind the bold proposal, wants to take it even further. He wants the city to pay for every elementary school teacher in the town to take a concealed carry permit class.

Sorensen says the Council is taking a stand for the Second Amendment....

Um, no. The Second Amendment says the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. It doesn't say anything about a duty to keep and bear arms.

Apparently, this proposal is going to sail through the legislative process:

City council members hope to have this pushed through quickly, with an ordinance drafted as early as next month's council meeting. At that point there will be a public hearing, but it doesn't look like there will be much, if any, resistance from residents.

Crooks and Liars reminds us of this:

The city of Kennesaw, Georgia claims that crime rates there dropped after a 1982 law required "every head of household to maintain a firearm together with ammunition."

Well, crime pretty much dropped everywhere after 1982, including (no, especially) up here in the gun-control Northeast, but never mind.

Gunners will tell you they're all about freedom, but they're not. They'll tell you they're all about keeping government power at arm's length, but they're not. They care about making public displays of their power and rubbing liberals' faces in those displays. They care about having hero fantasies of themselves, and imagining their like-minded neighbors as their vanquishing army.

They don't give a goddamn about freedom or restraining government power in the abstract, because they have no respect for the freedom of people who disagree with them, and no fear of government when they control it. The only freedom they care about is the freedom to do what they want. The only government they fear is one in which they have to share power.