We are Not the Government

The president made a largely overlooked statement today that I'd like to shed light on.

"You hear some of these folks: ‘I need a gun to protect myself from the government. We can’t do background checks because the government’s going to come take my guns away.’ The government’s us. These officials are elected by you"

Pay attention to one particular sentence, if you will: "The government's us." And the reason he gives? Because we elect the officials. 

Can we not conclude, by his reasoning, that in the case of all democracies "the people are the government?"

Well, seeing as Hitler's regime was elected democratically, the Jews must have killed themselves. They *were* their own tyrannical government, after all.

Each drone strike Obama makes on a U.S. citizen without trial? Well that man *is* the entity that caused his death. Must've been suicide.

How about all the people locked up in cages for victimless "crimes" that bring harm to absolutely nobody other than themselves? Guess it's self-punishment; how virtuously responsible.

Remember all those innocent people killed by our government's military in the process of policing the entire world? The civilians whose lives weren't spared, and brushed aside as a cost of war? Their blood is on your hands.

Except, it isn't.

We're not the government.

Government is that institution which monopolizes the use of force, and declares ownership of whatever income or life lies within its callous grasp. It is an organization in society- distinct both in existence and function from the people- whose parasitic yearning for centralization and growth drives leaders from sanity and countries to ruin. Unchecked and unmatched, it is the intolerable evil.

People *use* guns to hunt. They *use* them for recreation.

They need them for self-defense.

And when the day comes that useless bureaucrats are as baneful tyrants, 10 rounds aint gonna cut it.