Thank You, Mr. Bracken

To Matthew Bracken, former Navy Seal.

Thanks for this very timely essay.  I'll be shopping for your books.

To my friends and relatives, and those who are neither, this essay is one of the most important things you will ever read.  And it comes to you at probably the most important time in the history of your country.

Seriously, imagine your own life as if you were going about your business in 1775, when King George was hatching his own schemes to keep you in your place, would you have been able to re-stick your head in the sand? Would you know which side was which when the bullets started flying?

Dear Mr. Security Agent, 

Federal, state, or local. You, the man or woman with the badge, the sworn LEO or FLEA and those who inhabit the many law enforcement niches in between and on all sides. This essay is directed to you, because in the end, how this turmoil about gun control turns out will depend largely upon your decisions and actions over the coming months and years.

[...]

Why is this essay titled Dear Mr. Security Agent, when it dwells mainly upon the media and coastal-dwelling urban liberals and their utopian belief in the benefits of new gun control laws in the United States? Mr. Security Agent will protest that he is no liberal, he is ex-military, he’s a cop, he’s a fed—he’s one of the good guys! He took the same oath to defend the Constitution that you did, Buster! He doesn’t need any lectures on defending the Constitution! So why single him out in this essay?  

Friends, this essay will take you a good thirty minutes to read.  And it will be thirty minutes well-spent.  Please don't dismiss it as just more hyperbole in the gun-rights versus gun-control dialog.  Set aside the time to do it.

Please.

(Tip o' the cap to Cold Fury.)