By the time you read this, Ukraine may have already fallen to the much better-equipped and better-trained Russian army. Vladimir Putin intends to arrest or kill the President of Ukraine – Volodymyr Zelensky – and replace him with a pro-Russian puppet who will keep Ukraine out of NATO. As soon as that goal is accomplished, it will all be over. The Ukrainian people don’t have much of a will to fight Russia, or resources. Their army and military equipment is severely undermatched compared to Russia’s. What lessons can we learn from this?
For one thing, our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is vitally important. The Ukrainian government realized this when it was too little, too late. Their military is nowhere near large enough or skilled enough to defend the country from Russia. When Vladimir Putin shocked everyone by actually invading, the Ukrainian Parliament immediately voted to lift all of its civilian gun restrictions and start handing out AK-47s to everyone between the ages of 12 and 80 in Kiev. Zelensky immediately signed it into law.
(I refuse to use the new mainstream media spelling of Kyiv or the stupid pronunciation of “Keeeeev” to describe Ukraine’s capital city. It’s Kiev and it’s pronounced “KEY-ev.” These people who think Ukraine’s borders are so precious don’t seem to have ever actually talked to anyone from Ukraine.)
Key in on that age 12 demographic that Zelensky wants to give fully automatic AK-47s to for a second. Call me old-fashioned, but I think when you’re conscripting children to fight the Russian army, maybe you’re not the “Democratic ally” that the United States should be morally and financially supporting. Just sayin’.
By now you’ve probably seen photos of Ukrainian ladies lining up at gun ranges and learning how to operate their new fully automatic rifles. (It doesn’t appear that any parent has willingly sent their 12-year-olds to fight for Zelensky as of this writing.) It’s cute.
Far be it from me to ever want to deny a woman the right to defend herself with the biggest gun she can handle. But for the Ukrainians, this is just too late. If they had allowed their civilian population to arm themselves before the invasion, it would be a much different story. They could have turned Ukraine, which is about the size of Texas, into an Afghanistan-style quagmire for Russian troops. When every civilian is a potential threat and part of the resistance, armies have a really tough time ever “winning” a conflict in that country.
Upon signing the bill, Zelensky announced, “We will give weapons to anyone [including small children] who wants to defend the country. Be ready to support Ukraine in the squares of our city.”
About 10,000 people in Kiev have taken Zelensky up on the offer and received free rifles from the Ukrainian government. Hey, I don’t blame them. If the US government ever starts handing out free automatic rifles, I’ll be in line right next to you. Free rifle!
Whether any of those people are actually interested in dying in a fight with the Russian army is another matter. But it always warms the heart to see people exercising their right to keep and bear arms.
America doesn’t have this problem because we have the Second Amendment. 25% of all the firearms in the world are possessed by the militaries of every country. The other 75% of guns on planet Earth are owned by American civilians.
It’s probably BS, but there’s an old story that during World War II, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto supposedly said, “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.” Even if he didn’t say that (which he probably didn’t), the sentiment was true then and it’s true now.
Interesting story: Alaska was a US territory during World War II. The US Army formed the Alaska Territorial Guard to protect against Japanese invasion and handed out thousands of rifles in rural Native villages. Many families still have those rifles to this day and use them to blast caribou out on the tundra.
We should all be glad and proud that we live in America and have the Second Amendment, instead of in a dictatorship like Ukraine that restricts the ownership of firearms. As Madison wrote in Federalist 46, the fact that everyday people are allowed to own firearms makes America unique among the world’s nations.
They sure were handing out ak47s before putin attacked them.
mad vlad says that Ukraine joining NATO was a ‘threat’ – but that would only be true if he was up to no good in that region. Face it, he is power mad and wants (needs?) the resources there.