The Divided Fall

Your behavior will define your future

The book which cover is portrayed above, “O Coleira Preta” by Brazilian writer Francisco Marins has a story about a jaguar that wants to feed on the local capybaras but is not successful because they would keep vigilant and always supported each other. As time goes by the capybaras started to get tired of living in that state of alertness and vigilance, and the jaguar perceives that.

The jaguar being a smart predator finds a way to conquer the capybaras. He sends a message that he respects the capybaras and likes them, and that he is only interested in eating the ugly ones. And the capybaras get together and after much talking decide that no body would miss a few ugly capybaras.

Well, the capybaras are no longer vigilant, and many of them decide to relax because they don’t consider themselves ugly. And then the jaguar comes and eats several capybaras, and fear takes over them. But the jaguar sends them a message that they should not worry as he only had eaten the ugly ones.

Sometime later the jaguar announces that being hungry again he has decided to only eat the very fat capybaras. Again the capybaras get together and decide that nobody would miss some fat capybaras, and the jaguar once again has not problem eating those.

And the story goes on until the jaguar eats every single capybara in that part of the woods.

A similar story is going on right now, and the centerpiece of it is the private ownership of guns in the United States of America, a fundamental right bestowed upon us by the Second Amendment of the US Constitution: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The current federal government administration is taking the same divisive tactics as the jaguar, saying that they do not oppose guns in general, but only certain evil guns like “military style assault rifles” and “high capacity magazines”. Those are ugly and fat capybaras, and you can image what comes later.

Many accuse the National Rifle Association of America of being radical and insensitive to changing times, and that America’s forefathers could never foresee that common people would have as powerful a firearm as an AR-15. However we must remember that the Minutemen were armed with rifles that were fair superior to the British Army smoothbore muskets during the War of Independence, and it just might be that were not for civilians armed with superior guns this great country could not have been.

At these challenging times we cannot behave like the capybaras of the story inside of “O Coleira Preta”! We must follow the words of Benjamin Franklin instead, “we must hang together, or we will be pretty sure to hang separately.”

Write your senators and representatives. Join the NRA. Speak up and defend your rights.

“I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands." – Charlton Heston