M2 Carbine
If you are over 50 years old you have seen this isn't the same country you knew as a youngster.
That's correct, even for those of us a bit under 50. I'm 43, and I can remember (dimly, but I do) seeing a Luger for sale in the display case of a local department store (along with a whole bunch of other guns) when I was about 5 or 6. In NEW JERSEY. This was before NJ began its transformation into the PRNJ with its 1967 gun law (a precursor to the '68 GCA, just as the PRNJ AWB was a precursor to the federal AWB).
My uncle is 54, and he carried a rifle to school and put it in his locker. In NEW YORK CITY.
Yeah, times have sure changed, and mostly not for the better. Oh, we can buy lots of new toys (except for certain "dangerous" ones like full autos), but try to live like your grandfathers did and you'll end up in prison pretty quickly.
As for the topic of the thread, just keep one phrase in mind:
Bread and Circuses. Or the modern equivalent: Junk food and cable TV. So long as the vast bulk of the nation is fat and entertained, no revolution is possible. Human nature hasn't changed since the Caesars figured that one out nearly 2,000 years ago, and because of that those who strangle our liberties in the name of our safety (or our children's) - with them in charge and not subject to the same rules, of course - will continue to have success after success. We will have to be well and truly oppressed in order to have a revolution - oppressed as in 1 in 100 or 1 in 50 being dragged off of the streets and thrown into Patriot Act prisons or just summarily shot. We're a long way from that, so the slide will continue.
I'm pretty pessimistic about our nation's future because most people just don't care. Those that do are labeled as kooks of one type or another, and even if they aren't, they might as well be peeing into the wind because very few people are listening. Sure, every once in a while we get a bit fed up and elect a "pro-freedom" candidate like Reagan or this Bush, but they never get much done in the short time that they're in office, and they're inevitably followed by someone a whole lot worse. The MSM, though badly damaged and weakened over the last several years, is still the voice of the Left and the source of news for most people. That, and the fact that our public education system has largely left our children ignorant about how our society is
supposed to function and what the role of our government is
supposed to be within that society, bode very poorly for this country.
spartacus2002 is right on point about Social Security - which is why, barring some huge increase in productivity (which would, inevitably, throw a bunch of people out of work) we'll have a big inflation starting sometime in the next 10 years. Taxes will be raised and benefits cut at the margins, but the only way to get out of debt is through inflation. Oh, BTW, Medicare is a FAR bigger problem than Social Security. I read somewhere last week that the increase in the unfunded liabilities of the Medicare system rose more last year than the entire unfunded liability of Social Security (and this is BEFORE the Free Drugs for Geezers Act was passed). The only thing that will cause a revolution fast are huge tax increases, big cuts in government benefits to the middle class, an outright denial of most parental rights or an outright confiscation of weapons - and the gov't isn't THAT stupid.
That all being said, and trying to stick to the topic of guns (this is a gun board, right?), I'm one of the cold, dead hands crowd. I'm Jewish, and there is no force on this Earth that will keep me disarmed while having enough finess to leave me alive at the same time. After knowing what happened only 2 generations ago to many members of my family (and to my wife's uncle, who can still tell us about the numbers on his arm and the dead members of his family), not to mention the sickness and irrationality of the anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli propaganda coming out of the Arab World, the only way that someone is getting my guns is by carefully stepping over large piles of brass to grab the hot thing stuck in my rapidly cooling hands. As an American, as one of the hundreds of millions of beneficiaries of the legacy of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, the Adamses, Madison and the Patriots of their generation, I feel pretty much the same; and as a human being, I won't ever surrender the right to defend my life or those of my family.
