11 Nov 12

The “Sword Hunt,” of Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1588, disarmed the Japanese nation. Reason given: “Widespread possession of weapons makes it difficult to collect taxes and tends to foment uprisings.”

“There can be no proper relation between one who is armed and one who is not; nor is it reasonable to expect that one who is armed will voluntarily obey one who is not, nor that the latter will ever feel secure among servants who are armed.”

Niccolo Machiavelli

The American Revolution was fought over, more than anything else, what we call in our day, “gun control.” Spiritual ascendants of Hideyoshi, controlling England’s aristocracy in 1775, whimsically decided that isolated farmers in the American Colony “didn’t need” flintlock muskets and rifles, the “assault weapons” of the day.

Japanese citizens in the 1500s desperately needed the “assault weapons” of their day to protect themselves from roving gangs of brigands, since “protection” provided by the government at the time was sporadic and feeble, as it usually is.

Likewise, American Colonists of the 1700s had a similar issue with local Indians, as well as with conventional criminals. Like Hideyoshi before them, English kings assured colonists that “… the King’s soldiers will protect you.”

As in Japan, that was a blatant lie! It’s always been a lie. And, English kings didn’t care a whit about the lives and health of American colonists, any more than Hideyoshi did about his subjects. In the eyes of either government, citizens were just so much cannon fodder, and cynical promises of “protection” were as hollow and contemptuously insincere as are similar promises made by today’s politicians.

So, in April of 1775 at Lexington and Concord, a courageous group of American Colonists, openly armed with their flint-lock muskets and rifles, bravely (probably foolishly!) faced-down representatives of the most powerful army on Earth at the time, who had been sent to forcibly collect the Colonists’ “assault weapons.”

Americans of that day were not willing to give them up!

237 years later, Senator Feinstein from CA, performing a wonderful Hideyoshi imitation, is telling us that we don’t “need” our current generation of assault weapons (although she can’t even begin to produce a comprehendible definition) and is demanding that we insolent, insignificant peons “turn them in” to, of course, her government.

Do you suppose she, and her liberal colleagues, give a damn about your personal safety, any more than Hideyoshi did? Is this all about politicians trying to protect us from criminals, or politicians trying to protect themselves, from us? Of course, the latter is all “gun control” has ever been about!

On this Veterans’ Day, we should consult those first American Veterans. I suspect they would favor Machiavelli’s “Proper Relationship!”

/John