On the Keeping and Bearing of Weapons.

I keep dogs. This is going to be funny as hell to some of my friends, because when I first came here I wasn't a particular fan of dogs. But I haven't really changed: before that I kept cats, and the principle applies to them as well.

Despite some argument with my now ex-wife, I have never declawed a cat. That's because cats need their claws even more than they need their fangs, for defense. Defense is the absolute right of a cat, so much smaller than many of the animals that would aggress against them. They mostly defend themselves very efficiently; their claws are like razors. I knew a big gray tom that sent a German Shepherd to the vet to have its guts sewed back in one time. Up till then that dog thought it was the biggest, baddest SOB in the valley, but it barely survived the encounter. The dog challenged the cat, and the cat attacked the dog. The cat had claws, and also superior tactics. Bet that dog didn't do that again.

Point being, the small and weak need weapons to defend themselves against the large and strong. That's just the way it is. I'm not a big fan of Thomas Hobbes, but he wasn't entirely wrong. We do exist in a state of nature. The word for the one who believes that weapons aren't needed because nature has been tamed, is fool. Nature always has the last laugh. And my life may be solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish, but I'd rather it not be short. Hence, like my dogs and my cat, I carry my weapons openly and at all times.

It is the privilege of all immature creatures to be protected by their parents, to the extent possible. It is the absolute right of all mature creatures to be protected by themselves. Adult dogs possess teeth. Adult cats possess razor-sharp claws. Humans...well, humans seem to have been short-changed by our Maker in this regard. But what we lack in natural weapons we compensate for by our ability to make artificial weapons. And we further have the ability to stand on the shoulders of giants. Left to my own devices my weapons would be clubs and maybe sharpened rocks. But fortunately I have access to the labors of Messrs Browning, Freeman, Garand, and Kalashnikov.

This morning my pup Little Bear killed and ate a large rabbit. Rabbits seem to have been designed to be prey animals, since they have only two means of defense: Stealth and speed. They have no effective weapons. So this rabbit, which was certainly mature and probably older than LB, went down his throat. If it'd had weapons, the outcome might have been different. I might have been rushing LB to the vet. I might have been burying him. Instead I'm just planning to buy some wormer medicine because LB had all the weapons in that encounter. It should be a teachable moment.

Look, I don't care about the Constitution. This predates and supersedes the Constitution, or any other writing of man. I am what I am, a mature creature walking the earth, and predators would hunt me if they could. But they have a poor chance of success, because I am frickin' armed.

That's all I'm trying to say.