On Sheepdogs and Liberal, Anti-Gun *ssholes

This morning, I was following and commenting on a post made by a Facebook friend lamenting the horrific killing and mutilation of 43 people by Mexican drug cartels. My FB friend is a professor and has a few liberals who follow her FB page as well.  True to the liberal playbook rules of: (1) never let a tragedy go to waste when you can spin it toward your own agenda; (2) always show America in a bad light and; (3) always blame it on your political opposition, this excuse for a person proceeded to compare the NRA to the Mexican drug cartels, implying that they were as responsible for the last American school shooting as the cartels were for the massacre being discussed.  I have to be careful when I reply to people like this because I know that answering a fool in his folly can be in itself a fool's mission.

I grew up on a rural Oklahoma ranch.  Guns were a part of our life.  The typical law enforcement response to a trouble call was sometimes measured in hours not minutes. My father's pistol was never far from reach wherever we went and there was always a wicked old double barrel shotgun on hand in the house.   The only reason any of us in that neighborhood and time were able to own cattle or anything else of value was because folks who would be tempted to steal knew that if they were caught in the act they were liable to be shot on the spot. For that matter, the only reason we were able to live on isolated acreages without fear of personal violence was because of our guns.  Samuel Colt was dead right when he called the pistol the "great equalizer."

By the time I was five, my combat veteran father had given me a pop gun replica of a 1903 Springfield and taught me how to knock down tobacco cans with it on the living room floor. He taught me the shooting positions of a combat rifleman.  He also stood me tall and made me do the complete manual of arms with it.  In the process he taught me rudimentary gun safety. By the time I was eight or so, I had a Daisy lever action BB gun. With that weapon came new responsibilities like never do damage to property and never torment or kill small animals.  At twelve or so I had a bolt action .22 rifle.  With it came more rules like watch behind your target and don't shoot a living creature unless it's a varmint or you are going to eat it.

There was never a question whether or not I would serve in the military, only when and what branch. In the world my father raised me in, men of honor served when called.  All of my father's close friends were veterans.  All of my uncles on his side were veterans.  Men of my father's generation who didn't have a darned good reason for not serving were not respected. In short, in my father's generation men were expected to be "sheepdogs."  They were expected to serve the nation and their community if necessary and also be individually capable of protecting their families, themselves and their property.  They were expected to be men of honor, courage and discipline who could be trusted with a firearm.  That was the right given to them by Second Amendment and the duty imposed upon them by that right.


The men of my father's generation were a force to be reckoned with.  You were polite to these men and they were polite to you because both sides knew that, despite their usually genial manner and easy going attitude, they had long ago proven that they were also capable of incredible courage and, if necessary, lethal violence when the situation called for it. Many of them, like my father, had little pieces of metal and ribbon to prove it.

I have nothing but pity and disgust for this new class of American man that does not share the traditional American male "sheepdog" values.  I pity them because they did not have a sheepdog father to teach them these values.  I pity them because they probably did not have the honor of serving their country in uniform.  And, I pity them because, at whatever age they have now attained, they have yet to take responsibility for their own and their family's safety.

I have nothing but loathing for people who would disarm civilian sheepdogs because they are afraid of their fangs.  I suspect that these political and cultural castrati fear armed citizens because of the deep fears, hatreds and anxieties in their own hearts. Having never been taught the honor, self control and discipline of the sheepdog culture, they project their own fear, hatred and inadequacy upon everyone else.

I have a message for the cultural castrati of our generation.  The only reason they are able to mouth their whining, bitter little diatribes and psuedo intellectual fallacies is because good men are protecting them.  They sleep better at night in their homes because the predators in their community don't know whether the house is occupied by a member of the ideological victim class like themselves or a sheepdog that will shoot them the minute they break through the door.  They are free to walk the streets in comparative safety and mouth their destructive drivel on street corners and in classrooms only because a better man is somewhere nearby to take on the duty of protecting them. The bottom line here is that the new cultural castrati can just kiss my *ss.  If they really want our guns ....