"All Political Power Grows Out of the Barrel of a Gun" - Mao

Via Instapundit comes this Captain's Journal entry on When Did the Left Fall Out of Love With Guns? Pullquote:

Yes, the left still loves guns. There is no other reason for the fawning acceptance of the vulgar SWAT raid tactics in which innocent men like Mr. Eurie Stamps get shot and killed. These tactics are repeated all across America every day.

The left just doesn't love guns in the wrong hands, and anyone who isn't an agent of the state is the wrong hands. Listen to Representative Jim Hines (D – CT) tell you why high capacity magazines are still necessary in government hands.

There is absolutely no justification for weapons that were made for the explicit purpose of killing lots of people quickly to be in the hands of civilians.

Let that wash over you again. "Killing lots of people quickly" and "civilian hands." The two don’t go together.

I'm reminded of two previous QotD's here.  One that now resides at the masthead of this blog:

The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them. Moshe Ben-David

And this one from Glenn Reynolds himself just a few weeks ago:

Governments exist, historically, for only one reason: Because they’re really, really good at killing people.

And governments are bound and determined to achieve and maintain a monopoly of force.  Ours is no exception.

As Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in his 2003 dissent in Silveira v. Lockyer,

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

We forget that at our peril.

It CAN happen here.