I've often commented that if you want a snapshot of America, stand in the middle of a large shopping mall on Christmas eve. What at first glance seems like chaos, is not. You will see, in most communities, a vast crowd hurrying here and there. There will be tall, medium and short. Fat, medium and skinny. Every color of skin on earth. The cultural leavings of about every place in the world. Male, female. Red heads, brunettes, blondes and a cornucopia of hair color, sometimes on one head, and no hair at all. Beards and clean shaven. Tats and no tats. facial hardware and no hardware at all. In other words, just about every critter on earth.
Now the test: Smile at any one of them and say Merry Christmas and you will get nearly universally a smile and a Merry Christmas in return. That is the real America. The land of the free and the brave and the noble.
We have firearms because our founders knew that it was better for our government to fear the people rather than the people fear the government. So far it's working very well. In other places in the world, change comes by bomb, fire, fear and death. In America change comes at the ballot box. That change can be a pardigm. Watch this November. Another pardigm change is slowly and inexorably occurring.
Freedom is a messy thing. The more free the more inherent the danger. The more inherent the danger, the fresher the wind of freedom. But, freedom also brings peace and contentment. Sometimes it seems like irony, that we must shed our blood for peace and contentment. Nobody ever said that freedom was free.