When I was a kid, I remember watching Scrooge McDuck cartoons where he would dive into piles of money in his vault like it was water in a swimming pool. It was silly and absurd, and it was fun to watch as a kid.
As an adult, I don’t think that type of thing really happens, of course, though, it’s clear that there are some people who live a different type of lifestyle that your average person due to the amount of money that they have. Call them elites, call them the uber rich. Whatever you call them, they’re the ones with their own private luxury jets, multiple million-dollar homes, and are traveling yearly to hear scary talks about finding ways to prevent guns and ammunition purchases in conferences of world leaders (like you can hear here).
My point here is not to talk about how good or bad their lives our (except for the planning on banning guns part). My point is that there are people who live a life separate (some would say “above”) the rest of humanity.
And one of the members of that exclusive group of people just broke their silence about why they want to ban our guns. David Codrea writes,
“The multi-billionaire owner of luxury jewelry company Cartier has revealed his greatest fear – robots replacing workers and the poor rising up to bring down the rich,” the U.K.’s Independent reports. “Speaking at the Financial Times Business of Luxury Summit in Monaco (obviously), the fashion tycoon told his fellow elite that he can’t sleep at the thought of the social upheaval he thinks is imminent.”
Johann Rupert’s first concern is that “the middle classes won’t want to buy luxury goods for fear of exposing their wealth.” Then he realizes “We are destroying the middle classes at this stage and it will affect us. It’s unfair. So that’s what keeps me awake at night.”
Here’s the thing: People like Rupert appear to think that it’s robots taking jobs that will cause a violent uprising. It’s probably not, though, because people can find other types of work if they have to (I’m not saying that it’s easy. I’m just saying that they can and will find ways to take care of their families).
No, what’s much more likely to cause an armed rebellion that this guy fears is the way that multi-billionaires like himself collude with governments to run every little part of our lives and prevent us from feeding our families in any other way than by working for them.
People won’t riot about not working for big corporations owned by some wealthy people. But people will riot when those wealthy people use governments to disarm everyday people and keep those people from finding other kinds of work.
They want you under their thumb, and they want you disarmed. And people don’t like to be controlled like that.
And preventing that kind of oppression is the entire reason that the Second Amendment is in place in America.