Free Control: Exposing the Truth About Guns by Glenn Beck

people who mock this idea usually rely on a few standard tricks to make the whole concept seem ludicrous. One of those tricks is to paint a battle scene in which a lone person is trying to fight against the entire government.
    You want an assault rifle so that YOU can take on the entire United States military? That is ridiculous!
    I completely agree, that is ridiculous. I would definitely not be able to defeat the United States military in battle. In fact, if disaster strikes and Rachel, Jon, and Joe evacuate Manhattan and come take refuge on my ranch, I probably won’t even be able to protect them from roving bands of gangs looking for food. Butthe best part about the Second Amendment is that, as long as it exists, I will probably never have to try. Any government would be certifiably insane to attempt to overrun a country composed of 80 million people owning 300 million firearms.
    If a government is someday dumb enough to attempt it, at least citizens stand a fighting chance. To head off the usual retort, yes, the U.S. military does have tanks and jets and bombs—so what? The odds that an armed citizenry is ever taking on the armed forces as we know them today are Powerball-winning small. If things were ever to get to the point where armed conflict became necessary—especially if the underlying issue was an abandonment of the Constitution by our leaders—we’d likely see most soldiers refuse to fight or even flip sides and join the masses.
    Of course, those are hypotheticals that do nothing to make the case anyway. People who believe that to be a laughable scenario (and I agree that, right now, it is) will never be convinced, because they don’t want to be. For the rest of us, the Second Amendment is the ultimate deterrent, a German shepherd sitting on the front porch, frothing at the mouth and barking like mad.
    If we continue to stand for our rights, none of us alive today will ever have to pick up a weapon against our government. The bad news is that if those rights are watered down or taken away, the risk of tyranny will increase with each passing generation.
    In the meantime, there are plenty of other reasons why a law-abiding American household may choose to have a semi-automatic gun like an AR-15 in their home. During the 1992 Los Angeles race riots, hundreds of violent looters targeted average citizens and businesses. According to the History Channel:
    Traffic was blocked, and rioters beat dozens of motorists, including Reginald Denny, a white truck driver who was dragged out of his truck and nearly beaten to death by three African-Americanmen . . . . Los Angeles police were slow to respond, and the violence radiated to areas throughout the city. California Governor Pete Wilson deployed the National Guard at the request of Mayor Tom Bradley, and a curfew was declared. By the morning, hundreds of fires were burning across the city, more than a dozen people had been killed, and hundreds were injured.
    Rioting and violence continued during the next 24 hours, and Korean shop owners in African-American neighborhoods defended their businesses with rifles. On May 1, President George [H. W.] Bush ordered military troops and riot-trained federal officers to Los Angeles and by the end of the next day the city was under control. The three days of disorderkilled 55 people, injured almost 2,000, led to 7,000 arrests, and caused nearly $1 billion in property damage, including the burnings of nearly 4,000 buildings.
    Sounds like fun. How would you like to have been a business owner in that area armed with nothing more than a baseball bat or a single-shot pistol? Think you’d stand much of a chance against a violent mob? And what about those who were trapped in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when armed looters ruled streets that had been virtually abandoned by police?
    “It’s downtown Baghdad,” tourist Denise Bollinger said about New Orleans. “It’s insane.”
    “The looting is out of control. The French