Not to state the obvious, but

I keep running into what I can only term stupid less-than-optimally-intelligent (hereinafter referred to as LTOI) questions. I’ve been told there are no stupid LTOI questions, only stupid LTOI people asking questions. My feeling is that in many cases both the question and the questioner are LTOI. But I digress.

One of the LTOI questions (presumably asked by LTOI people) I seem to encounter on a regular basis is some version of “why should the right to keep and bear arms include the right to own (insert hated gun type of choice)?” I’ve argued from the standpoint of freedom and Enlightenment principles until I am blue in the face, often to no avail. So, here, I wish to state what I see as the most fundamental reason the right to keep and bear arms, including the right to own those guns some might hate, is absolutely essential. Simply this: Should we ever again live in “interesting times,”* firearms are essential because they make it much easier to adorn lamp posts with piano wire and tyrants.

*shamelessly stolen from Old NFO, who may have borrowed it from a large country currently interested in a former British colony