“Look, okay, he’s full of shit, we just grabbed that stuff the day before yesterday,” the other man said quickly, his eyes darting around the room. “And we didn’t even kill anybody, we found a patrol that had been ambushed, or something, and took their stuff.”
Sarah made a sound and moved behind the two men again. She began to dig through one of the backpacks.
“So who the fuck are you? You just wander into the city?” Hannibal made a face.
“We came up from Columbus. There was nothing happening there and we wanted to see some action.”
“War tourist?” one of the dogsoldiers from Flintstone said dubiously. Sarah moved from the first backpack to the second. She wasn’t delicate, she opened the top and dumped it out on the floor.
“We don’t know our way around here, how things are set up. Is this your territory? We can leave if you want, we didn’t know. Are you guys ARF? You’re ARF, right?” His eyes moved back and forth between the dogsoldiers. None of their gear matched, and they were all covered in mud and smelled like actual shit for some reason, but they were all fully kitted-out and behaving in a professional manner, so it was a good bet. Hell, they weren’t just kitted out, they were buried under gear, bulging backpacks and magazine pouches and olive drab tubes, the very sight of which surprised him.
Sarah made a sound, and turned around. In each hand she held a top-of-the-line military-grade radio. The two men on their knees looked over their shoulders at her.
“Radios?” she said, the look on her face like she’d eaten something sour.
“Yeah, we took them off the bodies too. We’ve just been using them to talk to each other when we split up.”
“That’s encrypted, they can’t track it,” the other man said.
“Are you lying to us, thinking we’ll still buy your line of shit? Or is that what they told you? Because while they can’t understand what you’re saying, yes, they can track it. Or at least triangulate it. Man, did they screw you on your mission briefing.” Sarah could see it in their eyes. “I’m almost embarrassed for you.” She looked at Ed and Hannibal. “Not a doubt in my mind,” she told the two squad leaders, her voice flat.
“Yep,” Hannibal.
“Maybe they’re half-assing it because that’s all they think they need to do,” Ed said. “Should I be insulted? I feel insulted.”
“Look, I don’t know who or what you think we are,” the bigger guy said, now getting a little nervous, “but we’re here to fight the Army. The Tabs. Fuck those guys if they think they can take our guns, right? A few common sense laws are fine, right, to keep the wrong kind of guns away from the wrong kind of people, but banning everything for everyone? So I can’t even defend myself against criminals? No fucking way. They went too far. So fuck those guys. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re all here, right?” He looked around the room, looking for support and sympathetic faces.
Ed shook his head. “You need to just stop.”
Hannibal just sighed. He was so tired. “It’s not about guns,” he told the two men on their knees. “That’s like saying wars are about flags. It’s never been about guns, it’s about freedom. It’s always been freedom. Guns have just been the bellwether, the canary in the coal mine. Governments always want to control you, and bad governments want to enslave you. They can’t do that if you have guns, so the first thing any government which has evil intentions needs to do is take away the ability of its citizens to defend themselves. That’s World History 101.” He treated the men to a dirty look. “But the gun bans were the very last straw, not the first or only, that’s what you fuckers just don’t seem to get. The last straw from a government that had spent decades attempting to control every aspect of its citizens’ lives, what they could eat, drink, drive, own. What kind of toilets they had to use, what kind of lightbulbs they had to buy. Guns were just the final line in the sand, and we finally said this far, and no further. And if you were fighting on our side, you’d know that. The only people who still think this war simply started because ‘crazy’ people wouldn’t give up their guns are the other side, your side, the same people lying to themselves about the reasons for the war, who have always had a problem seeing the reality in front of them, and who love to rewrite history.”
The bigger of the two looked back and forth between Ed and Hannibal, his eyes finally resting on Ed. “You,” he said. “You look reasonable. What are you doing? This is treason! You’re fighting against your own government. Your own people.”
Ed cocked his head. “So because they are the government, our government, that automatically makes them the good guys? Are you that blind? That ignorant of history? You’re okay with whatever you’re told to do, simply because it came from the people that are in charge? Soldiers have a duty to disobey orders they know are illegal. Doesn’t your oath of enlistment state that you’re supposed to protect the country from all enemies foreign and domestic?”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Maybe you just don’t care. Is that it? You’re just happy to pull the trigger for whoever is signing the check? Might makes right?”
“Screw you. I love my country.”
“No, you love your government. If you loved your country you’d be fighting against your government, which has turned totalitarian and fascist and is everything our Founding Fathers went to war against in the first place. And more, actually.”
The man on his knees was shaking his head. “You’ve actually convinced yourself of that crap?”
Ed’s face flooded with heat. “The Bill of Rights,” he growled, “the entire Bill of Rights, was a complete ‘Fuck You’ to the idea of trust in government. An insurance policy. The people who wrote it had just fought off a tyrannical government—their own. Not just the Second Amendment, every amendment in there from the First to the Tenth enumerated the inherent rights of individuals, above those of government. The Bill of Rights doesn’t grant us rights or privileges, it lists the ones we have as human beings that the government has no right to take away. It flat out states the government has no authority to infringe our rights, and the Second Amendment is just there to guarantee the other nine. It’s not there so you can go duck hunting, or even so you can defend yourself against criminals—that was assumed. It’s there so that people like us don’t get ground under the bootheel of tyrants, or at least have a fighting chance, because there always have been tyrants. Always will be. Most of the Constitution is written in very plain language, but ‘shall not be infringed’ is about as plain as it gets, and only people with evil intentions could even attempt to start arguing it doesn’t mean what it says. Free men own guns, slaves don’t, it’s as simple as that. You’re fighting for a government that is trying to argue we should have no rights except for what they grant us. Besides plain unConstitutional that’s evil, pure and simple. And, if you actually took a look at the conditions that caused the colonists in America to revolt against the British back in the 1700s, those laws and regulations are nothing compared to the outrages citizens were having to endure prior to this war.”
“They didn’t even have cartridges back when the Second Amendment was written. The rifles were all muzzleloaders. And you think it gives you the right to own a machine gun?” The shorter of the two men scoffed.
“They didn’t have radio, TV, or the internet, but you folks seemed to think the First Amendment applied to those as well as pen, ink, and parchment,” Ed shot back. “At least, until you shut down the press because it was saying things you didn’t like. If you knew anything about history you’d know George Washington borrowed privately-owned cannon to equip his army to fight the Revolutionary War. Not machine guns, privately-owned cannons. That answer your question, sport?”