Op-Ed: A Nation Sinking Under Small Ideas about Guns
By Mark Fitzpatrick • November 15, 2023At Old State Saloon, we have our next quarterly AR-15 giveaway scheduled for our November 21st, 2023 trivia night, entitled “Conspiracy Theory Trivia II”. As owner of our small, family-owned business, without a doubt it’ll be another round of verbal and written abuse from a minority group of mental neanderthals who clearly neither understand the second amendment of our constitution, nor its critical importance. They’ll call me a bigot, racist, “Proud Boy,” extremist, and other vulgarities. They’ll publicly write wishes for our business to fail. They’ll promise never to be a customer and will warn others to stay away. Some bands have canceled their music gigs at our saloon and pressured others to follow suit. Perhaps we’ll even see some protesters. And, instead of being thankful this season for heavily armed countrymen that can (and maybe soon will have to) defend what’s left of the USA from invasion on our soil against our foreign and domestic enemies, these leftists succumb to same old small idea messaging, devoid of data and lacking sense and sensibility about where we’ve been as a country and the dangerous road ahead.
The small idea aforementioned is that guns kill people so more gun regulation is needed. It’s an ignorant concept hailed in Hollywood, peddled in Paris, and disseminated in D.C. meant to distract us from the actual and consequential reasons our founding fathers included the 2nd Amendment in our Constitution. The small idea places blame on a piece of metal for causing death instead of truly grasping the state of our Union and just how imminent our painful destruction may be. Ignoring the warnings of history, we’ve become of nation of many cowards and shirkers who’ve had their common sense culled by “enlightened” entertainers and possessed politicians who sold their souls to the highest bidder years ago becoming obedient of the evil, whip-wielding tyrant above them on the pharisaical food chain. The evil plan to control the world systems of data farming, press, laws, medicine, education, food production and distribution, entertainment, and banking is spreading like a pandemic (a real one) and has been for decades. Meanwhile, we’ve sought comfortability over correction, delight over discipline, and feelings over facts.
Our automatic and willful acceptance of pseudo-science has left us in a clown world where we gladly purchase and consume poisoned food and chemicals that get us sicker by the day and dependent on a pharmacy system that keeps us ailing in perpetuity. Lost in an ever-deepening death spiral of toxicity, we weakly return like an abused ex-girlfriend to her drug dealer boyfriend as we beg for more of the same. More pain. More dependency. Instead of embracing our own observations about our physical world with our God given intelligence, and instead of cherishing simple and local solutions for health and living an impactful life, we give in to the tyranny of taxation and the slavery of our own contemptuous cesspit of voluntary reliance on the same set of systems created to slowly kill us, deceive us about our very cosmology, and most importantly separate us, at any cost, from our spiritual relationship with our Creator, the God of the Bible.
Our country’s minds and bodies are weak. It’s been planned for a century. We are vulnerable, ready to be taken over and there is really only one hope: God. If God decides to protect the USA in His own way, we won’t need any guns. But if he decides to empower us to protect ourselves, we will. If and when that time comes, when there is blood spilled and real death on our own soil, leftists will be instantly cured of their insatiable desire to disarm the very men and women brave enough to take up an AR-15 and protect the sheep from the wolves’ slaughter.
On November 21st, OSS will be full of those men and women… my friends, family, and soon-to-be friends who are willing to take up arms to defend our country and protect all our compatriots, liberals included. Unlike the thankless losers of our current worldly society, on Tuesday of Thanksgiving week we’ll meet together, sing the national anthem, say a prayer and engage in a fun night of trivia together, celebrating what we know USA can be, a country where a revival is underway and a country that will hopefully soon tear down its idols and get back to recognizing and living as though we know the truth: Jesus Christ is on the throne, the King of all kings. Happy Thanksgiving. Merry Christmas. We’ll see you at Old State Saloon!
This Op-Ed was submitted by Mark Fitzpatrick. Op-Eds do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of those at the Idaho Dispatch.
Tags: 2A, AR-15, Constitution, Firearms, Founding Fathers, Guns, Old State Saloon, Regulation, Second Amendment
Very well said, thank you! These anti zealots are a distinct minority among us and thus have to mob up against anything and everything they seek to destroy. If they had no ability to mob up (thank you internet) they would not be the royal PIA that they are in our society these days. Again thank you for a well thought out statement and here’s hoping you have a successful event.
So inspiring. So accurate. That’s what we need to hear from any.., of our “public servants”.
I wasn’t aware the the OSS or Mark.
I’m so encouraged by reading this.
To my knowledge, the Idaho Dispatch is the only media with the balls & spine to print this.
How far we’ve fallen….
Thank God for Mark. Idaho Dispatch has become my favorite and likely only source of local news I’d trust.
Great article summing-up the dysfunction of today’s society! Have to ask, “What pronouns do you use at OSS??…LOL…Do gender-confused-pervert-biological-males use women’s restrooms?…LOL…how about reparations?…you know, folks who never owned slaves, having to pay megabucks to people who never were slaves?…LOL, and of course, OSS is supportive of the invasion at the southern border It’s a crazy world. Sounds like OSS acknowledges and celebrates the 1st Amendment as much as it does the 2nd. 🙂 Article should be nationally disseminated. Thanks.
You should take a look at this piece in the WaPo. They handle quite sensitively the issue of what easy access to AR-15s leads to. It provides a sensible and non-exploitative answer to the argument that we should have powerful guns because apparently God wants us to have them, and use them.
You should perhaps move back to California or whatever blue hole you crawled out of. All you do is make the case to be armed at all times, as most of us in Idaho are. Such things, then, don’t happen. Blaming inanimate objects for violence is a form of the mental disorder your thoughts indicate and your citation from WAPO proves.
It is hands that kill. Tools are simply instruments we wield, nothing more and nothing less. Those that don’t know Jesus as their personal savior are afraid to die and they do everything in their power to avoid it. Not realizing they are powerless to its fate. In their quest to quench their fear they will attempt to strip others of their rights of freedom and self defense. Cutting their noses off to spite their face. In all of history and in whatever future we have left, there has always been a need for defending oneself against tyrants and evil. That will not change and no liberal mindset will cure the evil or mental illness that resides between their ears.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.
We are at a crossroads once again and we have to decide what time is it.
Amazing Speech Uncle Mark
Well said!
You lost me when you said “take a look at this piece in the WaPo.” Citing a left-leaning propaganda rag as a source in your argument says it all. And “easy access to AR-15’s” is a nonsensical phrase. What is the difference between an AR-15 and any one of the hundreds of other semi-automatic rifles available in the US today? They are scarier to uninformed liberal snowflakes for some reason, but their capabilities are no different than the others. The Communist/Facist left in the US tries to construct boogey men to scare uninformed people and sway elections. So they pick on the AR-15. They inaccurately say the “AR” stands for “assault rifle” or “automatic rifle” because they need to give the boogey man a name. It is an old trick that most of the tyrants throughout history have used. We have the right to own guns not because God wants us to have them, but because the founding fathers wanted us to have them. Remember what they had just gone through, having to fight a war to obtain freedom from a tyrant. They knew that one day we might need to use them again if enough people who think like you manage to gain control of our government. That is the primary reason for the Second Ammendment, not personal protection, hunting, or shooting sports. Trying to outlaw the AR-15 to prevent gun violence makes as much sense as outlawing 4-door sedans to prevent reckless driving and drunk driving deaths. This displays a real cognitive problem. You really can’t follow the logical thought process to the valid conclusion that violence is caused by people, not by guns or cars, or by knives, panel vans, airplanes, baseball bats, rocks, ropes, pitchforks, kitchen knives, hammers, fire, suicide vests, or even feet and hands. If you have identified the wrong root cause of a problem, your solution is doomed to fail. Try to wrap your brain around that instead of wasting your time reading WaPo.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2023/ar-15-force-mass-shootings/?utm_campaign=wp_the7&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_the7
Right. Because the problem is always the tool and never the person wielding it…
It’s people who allow their emotions to overrule their minds who think that taking guns away from good people will somehow affect the evil people. And there are a LOT of evil people in today’s world.
This article is so misleading: “When a gunman fires an AR-15 a seemingly safe, familiar place instantly transforms into a hellscape of chaos, destruction and mass death.”
I’m open to your argument, Blair, but this article is immediately manipulative in the narrative, which negates any legitimacy. “A gunman fires an AR-15” should actually be “When a mentally unstable human wields any weapon whatsoever”
The majority of AR-15 owners fire them without killing humans, and that is a fact. If this particular rifle (ArmaLite is what AR stands for, contrary to popular belief that it means “automatic rifle, which it is not) didn’t exist, the mentally unstable would simple use a different weapon. Blame the human who made the decision, not the mode of choice to hurt others.
The following is a simple breakdown of the percentage of each type of firearm used in nationwide homicides:
Handguns 45.7%;
Rifles 2.6%;
Shotguns 1.4%; and
Firearms (type unknown) 23.9%.
Oops, sorry, I meant to respond to Richard, not Blair.
“. . .has also given assailants the power to instantly turn everyday American gathering places into zones of gruesome violence.”
Only one mention of “assailants” and should be, “gathering places into ‘GUN FREE’ zones of gruesome violence.” The left always uses the narrative of the weapon, but RARELY, the miscreants who commit atrocities.
I looked in detail at several “mass shootings” in the US, including Las Vegas, Parkland High School and Sandy Hook, and it was obvious they were all false flag operations. They were staged events to scare people into giving up their gun rights. In all three cases they blamed a “lone gunman,” but that was not what happened. For instance, there were multiple shooters in multiple locations in Las Vegas, but before the night was over the FBI and Las Vegas declared it was a lone gunman who was conveniently killed, before they had a chance to investigate a crime scene involving thousands of people and multiple city blocks. Total BS.
It is interesting to see how when there’s a Democratic president with an anti-gun agenda, that they tend to have more school shootings and mass shootings than under a republican president…coincidence? I think there is a correlation between the two…
If the main purpose of mass shootings is to scare people into assenting to gun control measures, it would make sense more incidents would happen under a democrat administration that is more favorable to gun control.
Trump was President when the Vegas massacre occurred.
Sir,
There are more of us than them. I agree with every word you said. It really is in the hands of God, but I and apparently others will be ready to put on the armor to save the Republic in His Name.
BRAVO! I felt chills as I read that. Yes, 100%!
The fools do not understand that laws do not may us safer– they only define crime. Isn’t murder, robbery, drive-by shootings, DUI, etc, already against the law? Hello! People must COMPLY with laws for them to be effective, and criminals do not. Make MISUSE of firearms (or other weapons) a crime, but leave the law-abiding alone. Just as police with guns make us safer, law-abiding citizens with guns do too. Long live the 2nd Amendment! Don’t let them erode it.
So true! Not to mention when the lawmakers make laws to criminalize everything you do to protect your rights as a citizen- that’s when you know there needs to be better lawmakers out there. Arresting a mom for going to the park, people holding church services outside, people protesting (which is their first Amendment right) and other such nonsense is why the jails are filled with man made criminals. It’s like handing someone a gun and pointing it at yourself, and telling them not to shoot you as you violate them. If you shoot them, they use it to their advantage by being the victim, when it was not them who was really the victim.
Those who are anti-gun are also anti-death penalty for heinous crimes of murder. They aggressively support abortion and the slaughter of the unborn. They are also promoting the closure of prisons and letting murderers, rapists and child molesters out of prison early. Lesser punishments for child rape. Gang operations are run from our prisons. Mental patients picked up on 5150’s are held for 72 hours and released back on the streets along with felons with criminal histories thicker than the Bible.
When a mass murderer runs over 20 people in the street, no one blames the car but they immediately look to sympathize with the killer.
The insanity of the Left is beyond obvious but no one calls it out. Liberalism is a national health crisis and an immediate danger to our National Security. Nothing the government is presently doing convinces me that we don’t need our 2nd Amendment. Unfortunately, I believe this mass invasion of unknowns, is going to end in urban warfare on our own soil. 9/11 will look like a ride at Disneyland compared to what is coming. Great articie Mark! Best I’ve read in years. Armor up and stay prepared. Thank you!!!
Great reply to a great article! Thanks for your courage and also to
The Idaho Dispatch for printing it.
I agree. Only I think that this agenda is on a more broad level. I don’t believe it is just “leftists” or “democrats” pushing this. I believe it is the “RINOs” pushing this agenda as well. For example, if you look at these policies implemented or entertained in schools today, you would be mortified. However, how did these policies get implemented in the first place? We have a hospital that still does transgender surgeries, policies in schools pushing acceptance of this, and people who have no clue what is being accepted right under their noses, because they don’t read the legislation before pushing it through. We don’t have a lot of Democratic representatives in our red state, or we don’t listen to them. They generally get out voted. Whenever a Democrat gets implemented in our state, we watch them like a hawk, and our policies end up being spoke out about. When we have someone with the name of “republican” in office, we seem to think that everything suggested is going to be with those ideals, and we can rest assure that we won’t have to speak out or watch them like a hawk. So how did we get so far down the road on even entertaining this sort of thing? Taking away our Constitutional Rights shouldn’t be entertained by either side. If we stereotype the “woke agenda” to one party, we are actually allowing the agenda to push through the republican party instead of the democrat party we are watching so closely. Compare representatives to how they view the Constitution, which is the very document that brought our nation together once upon a time. Don’t let that slip away in word or deed.
It’s the conspiracy-driven, paranoid, Insurrectionists, that peddle the rot that democracy loving, law abiding Americans find repugnant, dangerous and ignorant.
This country is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy. A republic is based upon natural, inalienable God-given rights acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence and protected under the Bill of Rights.
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”
People like Ralph Sims are incapable of assimilating such basic truths.
Excellent!! As a person who frequents the Saloon, it is a welcome breath of Fresh Air to see and listen to other patrons and people who share this very smart and grounded ideology.
I pray we don’t have to defend (by Men with Guns) our land inside our borders. But if and when we do defend against – Both Foreign and Domestic – Enemies, we in Idaho will have plenty of tools and the culture to do so.
Our Government is clearly running ruffshod and our Freedoms are evaporating quickly. Thank God for Mark, the OSS + his other event Venue Stone Crossing for donating another tool on Nov 21 and making a very entertaining night out of it.
Bill of Rights – Amendment II
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
December 15, 1791
“…SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED…”
Excellent!Well put! Keep up the good fight. It’s because of you and others that bring these issues out into the light so clearly that our republic has a good chance to thrive even in troubled times.