What it is about guns isn't even about guns. Part I of a series.

With the election of Senator Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States, there are reports that Americans are buying more guns. Americans are not buying more guns out of fear of future confiscations – if you have one or ten, confiscations would take them all, wouldn't they? And for gun owners, more than one gun is like having more than one fire extinguisher.  Gun ownership is not on the offensive, it is on the defensive, and it is not fear; it is preparedness.   

The belief of many Americans is that the new Administration will change many things, judging by official remarks. Examples would be predominantly how crime is managed, watering down of victim rights, choking the system with cases in the administration of justice, police asset response times, budgetary changes and priorities, programs and policies on self-defense, new technologies of evidence and evidence collection, electronic surveillance, and other abstracts which bring a powerful truth to the minds of these tens of millions now — the idea that we are on our own in the first moments of a violent crime, the first days of civil disturbance, and all the first weeks of widespread disaster. And here is the frightening part: though there is nothing new in the fact that we are on our own – I said it myself after Hurricane Katrina – what is new is the banking scandals and utter defiance of the electorate accompanying these new changes. There is a very serious movement of officials in a greater and greater defiance of the electorate.

Let's catch up with some truths many non-gun owner Americans do not know. My first is that the right to carry a gun was preceded by the right to carry our own burdens. Put another way, we are on our own not by adversity or bad luck, but by choice. Preferring to carry our own burdens is not a family value of pride, it is a national safeguard, and more Americans are coming to appreciate this truth as a safeguard of independence from our servants that has been pushed aside, especially in the last few years. Millions will be emphasizing this in 2009 as a matter of personal dignity as much as an essential of liberty, and they feel their liberty is threatened if not defied.

Nowhere is this very first burden more evident than in how we meet violent crime and love our families on various levels. The very first burden we carry is that, for ourselves and for our loved ones, we are the first line of protection in all things, and the first line of defense in time of violence, and no police and no policy will every change this. No one will ever be able to take your place as the first line of defense, no matter what they promise.

Each of us is loved, each of us is important to someone, each of us is precious, and the first obligation of gun ownership is not in the safe operation of a lethal mechanism, but in accepting and rising to the responsibility of protecting self and loved ones in the absence of first responders. The safe operation of the weapon will always be second to its purpose in first acquiring it.

What it is about guns is not only that we alone are responsible for our safety, but that the armed citizen's insistence on being on our own is essential to keeping dozens of silly programs at bay. Defiance of this insistence claims to manage life better if only the citizen will surrender, but in the process of officially insisting on lifting our burdens, these programs lift our liberty with them. This is what has awakened people in 2008 and 2009 -- the idea that we are urged to cooperate with officials when the very reason officials are hired is to cooperate with us.

More than a right.. Authority.    Most non-gun owners are not aware that the citizen has all legal authority to stop a crime in progress, to use up to lethal force when facing grace danger alone, and may even come to the aid of another. Rape, murder and abduction are high on this list. Understand that being on your own and resisting is more than a right, it is your authority to act. It is this authority which we confer to police, but do not give up any of our own. It's easier and easier to see now how so-called anti-violence programs have actually grown violence by obfuscating this individual authority to act.

 With awareness of your authority, then, the freedom to exercise the right to carry a gun anywhere and at all times is a prime indicator of the overall health of our nation by what sort of anti-violence programs conflict with that authority to act.

 Why a gun for the household and for family away from home? Why not pepper spray, a whistle, a big dog, or baseball bat? Because less-than-lethal doesn't cut it. Dogs, whistles and baseball bats don't work well on multiple assailants or other common conditions. How does one make a choice at this hour to limit your response at that hour of facing grave danger? Less-than-lethal limits the target's ability to match force to threat assessment. Without the choice, the target's response in a ladder of force cannot become the superior force necessary to de-escalate the situation.

You can see how the anti-violence movement, then – a movement which discourages the very idea of resistance – has obfuscated choices and the use of your own authority, and this adversely affects whole communities. This has become a model for various other programs, creating the experience of 2008.

Remember that crime is not fought by chasing it after-the-fact – once a criminal act is completed, crime has won. Crime is not fought by chasing it, crime may be caught by chasing it. How does one now prepare for during-the-fact choices on their authority to act?

Next Edition: Guns On Campus.

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John Longenecker is author of Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns.