By Jim Pontillo
For those who lament America’s cultural evolution toward secular society devoid the moral absolutes that served our Founding Fathers and guided them with providential authority to set to parchment the most “progressive” government the world had seen, our national degeneration is viewed with sadness.
We find ourselves trying to reconcile cultural reality with factual reality where morality would suggest they both are congruent, and yet, increasingly we find truth has become more a component of personal whim than one of real life circumstance.
As a person who has spent his life in the business of manufacturing, where compensation is intimately connected to real output and production of goods, it is difficult to comprehend the esoteric idea that value and worth is somehow a nebulous concept that politicians can debate over. To exasperate this inability to comprehend, my company serves an industry which caters to the down to earth blue-collar man who more often than not is making his living as I do, by producing some product or service of value that he/she must sell in an open and free market.
“Customers” of our wares are often disparaged by the political class and by the main stream media as “dim”, “stupid”, “simplistic”, and my personal favorite, “red-neck”, where only such people of lowly station would be interested in obtaining and possessing such an artifact.
My firm manufactures handguns.
While I ruminate and consider this political assault on the idea that America is not a nation based on merit, but a rigged institution where the rich get richer at expense of the poor, I can’t help but wonder, then for what is it that we are working for?
To remedy this notion that merit is not the preeminent component required for success in America, we have systematically grown government at expense of our free-enterprise system, and all the while politicians proclaim this progression is endeavored to create a fairer America.
The question begs to be asked, “Fairer for whom”?
A contrast is brightly illuminated when we look to those who purchase firearms and those who fear their proliferation. These camps predictably line up on opposite sides of this larger/smaller government issue, but one can’t help but think, what is it that gun possession among law abiding citizens threatens?
Individual safety; or is it omnipotent government power, where only that institution shall be arbiter of who and what will be awarded with success in America.
This distinction is most prominently revealed when we watch those in debate over the meaning of our 2nd Amendment to the Constitution.
“A well regulated militia…” is repeatedly highlighted by the big government crowd to suggest its prefatory inclusion was designed by the Founders to allow future politicians to refute the guarantee, “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Today, in a society where factual reality yields to cultural whim, this interpretation has somehow become sensible and part of the conventional wisdom.
The conventional wisdom proclaims a lot of things that aren’t so, and when reflecting on the work he and his contemporaries accomplished in that very hot and muggy Philadelphia summer, John Adams stated, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”.
Recounting Adam’s musings, and considering the wisdom of his observations, we might do well to consider how wise the contemporary conventional wisdom actually is, and while we do that, perhaps we ought to focus on that clause in the 2nd Amendment that no one seems to argue about.
“…being necessary to the security of a free state…”
In case you’re wondering…
Free is the operative word.
Jim Pontillo is Founder of FMK Firearms, one of two handgun manufacturers still doing business in California. The FMK 9C1 Handgun is engraved with America’s Bill of Rights. FMK Firearms can be viewed at www.fmkfirearms.com.
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