Terror threats, rising violent crime and the European Union’s suffocating strictures on guns have many Europeans craving their own version of America’s Second Amendment.
Source: America’s 1st Freedom | Is Europe Grasping For Gun Rights?
For decades, European have been quick to disparage the United States for our robust Constitutional protection of the right to keep and bear arms, as enshrined in the Second Amendment.
Shielded, whether they knew it or not, by geographical features which (until recently) have served as de facto barriers to easy migration, and even more by despotic but mostly stable governments in places like Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and secure in almost completely homogeneous and law-abiding societies, they mocked us for our “love affair” with guns, and derided our supposed “frontier mentality” on the subject.
But now, in light of the deluge of Third-World immigrants that was unleashed upon Europe in 2015 and continues to this day, some, at least, are mocking no longer. Rather, they are wishing (and I have heard this same thing from European friends on Facebook) that they had more Constitutional guarantees of freedom, and especially a 2nd Amendment!
The linked article is on the longer side, but worth reading in full; here are a few excerpts:
“In 12 days I visited Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Monaco, Italy, the Vatican, San Marino, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria. Everywhere I went, I interviewed people about the state of things in Europe, and I was truly shocked by one thing in particular — the number of people who told me they envy America for its Second Amendment.
“I’m not making that up. Ask yourself this question: How much do you know about the details of the founding documents of any country in Europe? If you are like me, it’s not much. So that makes it even more remarkable that many people in Europe are familiar with one very important detail about the U.S. Constitution—our Second Amendment freedom to keep and bear arms.
“Even more surprising was the number of people who expressed a wish that they, too, could be given the right to defend themselves and their families. And in several European countries, gun-rights measures are being actively addressed…”
It goes on,
“The vast majority of Europeans have a very skewed idea of life in the United States, much like the average American might have a skewed idea of life in, say, Colombia. All they know is what they hear on the news. And all they hear on the news are the bad things that happen.
“But even with a misguided understanding of America as much more violent than it is, many Europeans wish they could be more like us—better able to protect themselves from rising violent crime, sexual assault and even terror, all of which characterize the news about Europe that we often see in the United States. Such attacks have become common enough to have largely dropped off the pages of “mainstream” U.S. publications. But they still make news in Europe.
“I’m talking about the stabbings, the ramming attacks, the riots, the no-go zones. Europeans are tired of it all.
“Many of those who were once gung-ho about the economic progress offered by the EU are now fraught with the bitter aftertaste of unintended consequences…
And finally,
“I’ve always believed Europeans to be extremely hoplophobic (terrified of guns), judging from the draconian self-defense laws in most of those countries. I guess I’ve been swayed by the media’s portrayal of the old country as a more ‘progressive’ place that America should emulate.
“But talking with regular people, it’s clear there are many who envy our country for the freedoms so many of us take for granted. And if there is one thing they’d like us to take away from their experiences, it’s to never let so-called ‘progressive’ incrementalism nibble away at those freedoms.”
Read on, and learn – and, perhaps, find some glimmer of reason for hope. Change is coming. The question is, will it come quickly and fully enough to stem the destruction of Europe that seems, now, all too likely?
The Anglophilic Anglican 