(Incidentally, I actually wrote this post a few days ago, but only just got around to posting it — there’ve been even more discussions on this topic since.)

Lots of good discussions going on over at The Smallest Minority.

On the post titled “Freedom’s Just Another Word for ‘Nothin’ Left to Lose’“, Kevin quotes the speech which contains Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” line. It’s the first time I’d ever read the whole speech, and it moved me. I can only imagine what it must’ve been like for those who actually heard the man say those words.

Go read the whole post, then read the comments. Read, especially, the discussion between Billy Beck and Kevin. As regular readers here might have noticed, I love The Smallest Minority. Kevin makes solid, impassioned arguments, he cites his sources well, and I almost always agree with him.

I think he’s wrong now, though. Maybe I just hope he’s wrong. I don’t think it’s too late to reverse the erosions of our freedoms, but I do think we need to do more than just sitting around and complaining. Kevin’s absolutely right that the people of this nation are mired in apathy and ignorance, but neither of those conditions is irreversible.

Kevin goes out of his way to fight the ignorance. His blog was among the websites that led to my taking a real interest in our freedoms and our political system. He currently has a post up titled “Let the Discussion Begin!“, written by guest poster Alex as the “opening salvo” in what Kevin obviously hopes will be a long debate. Alex isn’t the first person who has been invited to have these discussions with Kevin on his blog, and I know that Kevin also takes an active interest in these debates where they appear on other blogs.

Just fighting ignorance won’t help, though. We also need to actively fight apathy. There has to be a way to reach out to the American public, and yelling “From my cold, dead hands” isn’t going to do it. I agree with the sentiment, and I understand how that sort of sentiment is useful for furthering one’s support among the gun owners of America, but what we need is people who are dedicated to the cause but with enough charisma (not the word I’m looking for, but it’s cose, and I’m drawing a blank) to get some favorable attention from the masses.

I saw a quote recently that I unfortunately can’t cite. It was on an image on someone’s blog, and it’s not turning up in a glance around the sites I normally hit. It said (possibly paraphrased), “How does it make you safer from criminals to disarm me?”

That is the message that gun-rights activist need to get out there. Disarming most of us will have absolutely no impact on the safety of the common citizen. We need to let them see gun owners who are, other than their ownership of guns, just like them. They need to see rational, likeable people who just happen to own guns, so that they see the difference between most gun owners and the “goblins” who own guns and use them to commit criminal acts.

This kind of publicity has to come before the isolated incidents of people reaching their “Moments”, because that will destroy any chance we have of fighting the impression that so many people have of the “gun nuts.”