As an indi­vid­ual who believes in Lib­er­ty, Non-Aggres­sion, Self-Defense, Self-Own­er­ship and a Free Mar­ket with­out state inter­fer­ence it is Jesse’s firm belief that we should all be bet­ter stu­dents in life. His auto­dac­tic edu­ca­tion in Amer­i­can His­to­ry, World Reli­gious His­to­ry, Gov­ern­ment and accred­it­ed edu­ca­tion in Crim­i­nal Jus­tice, Juve­nile Deviance and Drug Relat­ed offens­es and crime allows his phi­los­o­phy to be ever chang­ing. So be crit­i­cal, he will glad­ly attempt to respond to all intel­lec­tu­al and hon­est crit­i­cisms. Con­tact Jesse at jesse.mathewson@hotmail.com how­ev­er, please under­stand that he receives sev­er­al hun­dred emails dai­ly and may not nec­es­sar­i­ly have the time to respond to them all.

In every­thing there is an aura, a qual­i­ty that res­onates a vari­ety of har­monies depend­ing on whom you speak with. The gun is seen by many as malev­o­lent, an enti­ty capa­ble of great harm unto itself. By oth­ers it is an imple­ment, a nec­es­sary tool for the defense of self and oth­ers. For myself it is a part of the art of the gun, a nec­es­sary com­po­nent in this phys­i­cal­ly dis­abled per­sons desire for peace.

The obvi­ous ques­tion raised by the state­ment above is, “How can you be peace­ful or desire peace if you train in mar­tial arts or car­ry a firearm?” Peace is not just about tran­quil­i­ty, peace is also secu­ri­ty of one­self, har­mo­ny in per­son­al rela­tions or a state of mutu­al agree­ment between enti­ties. To be tru­ly secure as an indi­vid­ual one must be both will­ing and able to pro­tect one­self against unfor­tu­nate pos­si­bil­i­ties that may occur, be they human, ani­mal or nat­ur­al in design.

His­to­ry shows that peo­ple have car­ried rocks, clubs, swords, bows and much more for defense. His­to­ry also shows that the large per­cent­age of deaths relat­ing to the use of weapons have occurred at the behest of gov­ern­ment,  Addi­tion­al­ly, his­to­ry reflects that when­ev­er a gov­ern­ment restrict­ed the abil­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion to defend itself, either against the gov­ern­ment or crim­i­nals they have adapt­ed and cre­at­ed some of the finest phys­i­cal mar­tial art sys­tems in the world. Muy Thai, Escrima, Kung Fu, Karate and more were invent­ed and spread in no small part due to the states desire to see the peo­ple defense­less for the sake of enslave­ment.

Weapons too have been trans­formed lit­er­al­ly from farm­ing imple­ments to sup­ple­ment a pop­u­la­tion of indi­vid­u­als made defense­less by its rul­ing mas­ters. The Ton-fa, Bo, Nun-chucks and more were tak­en from com­mon farm­ing imple­ments and adapt­ed to make inter­est­ing and effec­tive defen­sive weapons. Entire schools of mar­tial arts and philoso­phies sur­round many of these weapons and many long years can eas­i­ly be spent learn­ing the use of just one of these anti­quat­ed and yet still effec­tive tools.

Weapons have evolved with time and tech­nol­o­gy and now we have firearms and with firearms we have peo­ple who would rather not see these tools in the hands of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. I have spo­ken with politi­cians, police offi­cers and indi­vid­u­als in the train­ing world who dis­like that I learn and teach the same tac­tics allowed for law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary to reg­u­lar cit­i­zens. There are orga­ni­za­tions par­tial­ly fund­ed by or that sup­port polit­i­cal lead­ers specif­i­cal­ly designed to dis­cred­it the need and use of firearms. As a stu­dent of his­to­ry it is easy for me to respond to all of the pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions.

When the peo­ple can­not defend them­selves dic­ta­tors rule. When the peo­ple will not defend them­selves death occurs. When peo­ple do not take per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty for their own secu­ri­ty there is none. His­to­ry out­lines what hap­pens when peo­ple are kept from defend­ing them­selves. Hitler banned guns and slaugh­tered mil­lions of his own cit­i­zens. Pol Pot banned pri­vate gun own­er­ship and than mur­dered mil­lions. The same thing has hap­pened since before the Pharaohs of Egypt, and though I am not a reli­gious per­son the Old Tes­ta­ment clear­ly out­lines what hap­pened to the Jews when they had their abil­i­ty to defend them­selves restrict­ed by the Pharaoh.

At no point in his­to­ry has tak­ing away the abil­i­ty of the com­mon man to defend them­selves end­ed pos­i­tive­ly. How­ev­er, does this address the Path of the Gun? In some ways, it does, by help­ing the com­mon man under­stand that the hand­gun is the mod­ern short sword and the rifle it bow and arrow we show that just as we dri­ve cars instead of ride in horse drawn carts we have evolved. There are those who would say that we should have no need for weapons, I would sub­mit that those indi­vid­u­als are nei­ther stu­dents of his­to­ry nor the present real­i­ties of the world. At this point in his­to­ry over just the last 200 years gov­ern­ments have slaugh­tered more peo­ple, destroyed more prop­er­ty and caused more may­hem than through­out any oth­er peri­od of his­to­ry com­bined.

Now more than ever the com­mon man needs to arm them­selves, to learn the path of the gun, or to at least under­stand it. Now more than ever the com­mon man should be pre­pared for the day when the state they cur­rent­ly rely on turns on them and rapes their women, steals their homes and mur­ders their men. His­to­ry shows us this is not just a the­o­ry, it is a real­i­ty, it hap­pens, has hap­pened, and will con­tin­ue to hap­pen as long as the state exists. Until man evolves past the need for mas­ters and gods we will con­tin­ue to be oppressed, mur­dered, raped and will need to defend our­selves. On a much small­er scale there is the non state relat­ed crim­i­nal ele­ment. Defense of self against them is also nec­es­sary, and for some­one like myself who is phys­i­cal­ly inca­pable of run­ning away or engag­ing in a match of mus­cles the path of the gun allows me to prac­tice a mar­tial art and still defend myself.

I have a daugh­ter, wife and son, they mean more to me than any oth­er human on the plan­et. I hope to raise them to under­stand that defense of self is nev­er bad, and by embrac­ing the pos­i­tive aspects of the path of the gun it is pos­si­ble and even like­ly that they will con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion. More impor­tant­ly, I will teach them what I have learned. I will teach them the Non Aggres­sion Prin­ci­ple, and to Do No Harm. I will teach them that self-defense is not aggres­sion, that direct­ing harm at some­one or some­thing is nev­er good unless in defense of self. I will teach them to think, rea­son and use log­ic. And I will teach them to avoid prob­lems when­ev­er pos­si­ble, that this approach to life is not cow­ard­ly but intel­li­gent.

I have been putting togeth­er a pro­gram that allows me to teach begin­ners how to approach the mar­tial art that is the path of the gun. Much like Bruce Lee did when he stepped out­side the bound­aries of con­ven­tion­al mar­tial arts my approach dis­cards many things that lead­ing train­ers across the Unit­ed States would have you believe are essen­tial aspects. How­ev­er, because I am dis­abled, and oth­ers are female, male, youths, elder­ly and more I see a strict one approach as a hin­drance to the path of the gun. As a result my approach has been more Daoist in nature, adapt­ing as water to the ter­rain, flow­ing around obsta­cles and cre­at­ing beau­ti­ful suc­cess sto­ries in the process.

The path of the gun is not to be dis­card­ed light­ly, and if you are one of those who believes guns to be the great evil on the plan­et. Remem­ber, its not guns in the hands of the com­mon man that cause the prob­lems, numer­i­cal­ly it is your state and its min­ions who would win that race hands down.

Stop, think, and remem­ber lib­er­ty begins with the mind.

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