I decided to write this after reading so many of your thoughts and opinions on gun rights issues. I hope this story will entertain you, and give you a perspective on why the 2nd amendment is so important.
I immigrated to the USA in 1968. At the age of ten my immediate family left Cuba after a four year wait from the time of application. I was born one year before Castro took power. At that time my father owned a small piece of land and he operated a small country store. Clients rode in on horseback, horse and buggy, and a few on old 30's and 40's trucks.
After Castro had firm control, he first disarmed the population.. He then took my father's land from him for redistribution to peasant population. They were to grow whatever crop the government demanded.
This also brought about my fathers first arrest. He was suspected of being a counter-revolutionary and imprisoned for a week, then released, with no due process.
Castro pushed Cuba in the direction of communism and demanded the citizens to register as such. My family refused. With the little money we had, my father moved us to a small town where he opened a small store. A year later, the government took all moneys in deposit in the banks from all Cubans. Pro government propaganda grew, contolled by Castro, with more insistance in being a good communist. The students and some teachers at the elementry school I attended ridiculed me for not being a communist. We were on food rationing now and were not receiving our full share. My mother had to smuggle food home from friends in the country-side at risk to herself, in order to feed me and my new little brother.
My fathers second arrest occured shortly after the bay of pigs, failed invasion. Not being a communist he could only be a simpathizer with the Americans.
Again just picked up, locked up, and later released after no proof of collaboration was found. In these times, people were being picked up of the streets, tortured, killed, plain dissapeared. Anyone who was discovered to be talking in anti-government tones was game. I remembered many a whispered conversations with adults around the kitchen. You never knew who was listening or who is a government spy.
At 7:30 am, three armed soldiers knocked on our front door. They demanded the keys to my fathers store. What could he do? He gave them the keys. His business and our livelyhood taken for no just cause, other than we were not registered communists.
Several months later my father organized a group of men in secret to attempt to escape from Cuba on a boat. We were being persecuted and had to go. 5 men, my pregnant mother, my brother and I,; we all boarded a boat whose motor broke and we were forced to return.
Because we had dissapeared for a prolonged period of time, rumors that we had escaped circulated. When we returned home, my father was arrested for a third time. Imprisoned for a month, interogated, with no due process. He was later released and ordered in to a labor camp. I remember makiing the train trip once a month with my mother to bring him supplies/basic nessecities.
It was finally in 1968 that our family was granted permission to immigrate. We came here pennyless.
If you remeber, at the beginign of this story, it was by disarming the population that the government was able to take control and abuse human rights with no fear of any armed assault to reverse the injustice.
Our constitution in the United States was drafted by our founders, two hundred years earlier to prevent just such a thing.
The second amendment was drafted so that we would have a means to protect ourselves from our government, So that it would never be able to take away the means by wich it's citizens could wrest control back from overreaching politicians. That a bullit could bring order, balance, and the restoration of our rights.
Why are people today afraid of guns? because they are ignorant of the facts. They don't understand the importance of civic involvement to keep politicians honest, and knowledge of history's lesons. Many are victims of misguided anti-gun movements.
God bless this country, with all it's faults, it is still the best nation in the world. Please support those organizations that help protect our rights, so we never have to contemplate raising the gun to do so.
I immigrated to the USA in 1968. At the age of ten my immediate family left Cuba after a four year wait from the time of application. I was born one year before Castro took power. At that time my father owned a small piece of land and he operated a small country store. Clients rode in on horseback, horse and buggy, and a few on old 30's and 40's trucks.
After Castro had firm control, he first disarmed the population.. He then took my father's land from him for redistribution to peasant population. They were to grow whatever crop the government demanded.
This also brought about my fathers first arrest. He was suspected of being a counter-revolutionary and imprisoned for a week, then released, with no due process.
Castro pushed Cuba in the direction of communism and demanded the citizens to register as such. My family refused. With the little money we had, my father moved us to a small town where he opened a small store. A year later, the government took all moneys in deposit in the banks from all Cubans. Pro government propaganda grew, contolled by Castro, with more insistance in being a good communist. The students and some teachers at the elementry school I attended ridiculed me for not being a communist. We were on food rationing now and were not receiving our full share. My mother had to smuggle food home from friends in the country-side at risk to herself, in order to feed me and my new little brother.
My fathers second arrest occured shortly after the bay of pigs, failed invasion. Not being a communist he could only be a simpathizer with the Americans.
Again just picked up, locked up, and later released after no proof of collaboration was found. In these times, people were being picked up of the streets, tortured, killed, plain dissapeared. Anyone who was discovered to be talking in anti-government tones was game. I remembered many a whispered conversations with adults around the kitchen. You never knew who was listening or who is a government spy.
At 7:30 am, three armed soldiers knocked on our front door. They demanded the keys to my fathers store. What could he do? He gave them the keys. His business and our livelyhood taken for no just cause, other than we were not registered communists.
Several months later my father organized a group of men in secret to attempt to escape from Cuba on a boat. We were being persecuted and had to go. 5 men, my pregnant mother, my brother and I,; we all boarded a boat whose motor broke and we were forced to return.
Because we had dissapeared for a prolonged period of time, rumors that we had escaped circulated. When we returned home, my father was arrested for a third time. Imprisoned for a month, interogated, with no due process. He was later released and ordered in to a labor camp. I remember makiing the train trip once a month with my mother to bring him supplies/basic nessecities.
It was finally in 1968 that our family was granted permission to immigrate. We came here pennyless.
If you remeber, at the beginign of this story, it was by disarming the population that the government was able to take control and abuse human rights with no fear of any armed assault to reverse the injustice.
Our constitution in the United States was drafted by our founders, two hundred years earlier to prevent just such a thing.
The second amendment was drafted so that we would have a means to protect ourselves from our government, So that it would never be able to take away the means by wich it's citizens could wrest control back from overreaching politicians. That a bullit could bring order, balance, and the restoration of our rights.
Why are people today afraid of guns? because they are ignorant of the facts. They don't understand the importance of civic involvement to keep politicians honest, and knowledge of history's lesons. Many are victims of misguided anti-gun movements.
God bless this country, with all it's faults, it is still the best nation in the world. Please support those organizations that help protect our rights, so we never have to contemplate raising the gun to do so.
)
but are they free? I have been to some of those places and I assure you they are not. They live short brutish lives but they are well armed.