Around 600 BC, the Greek storyteller Aesop wrote a story about the value of planning ahead. One character in the story was an ant that toiled away foraging for food and storing it away below ground. The other character was a grasshopper that lived for fun and didn’t bother himself with planning for the future.
As the story goes, the Grasshopper mocked Ant for failing to enjoy the good things in life and being too focused on the possibility of hard times. Of course, hard times do come and the Ant is resting comfortably with her resources while Grasshopper is cold and starving.
This fable is almost 2600 years old and is told to children in some of their earliest days of grade school so why are so many people struggling to make ends meet in the earliest days of the COVID-19 emergency?
As a nation, we have been under emergency declarations for less than two weeks yet stores are out of hygiene essentials, service industry workers are at risk of going bankrupt, some gun shops are being forced to close, and people are fighting over toilet paper.
The especially poignant aspect of this is to see how people react when they recognize the laws and policies they supported are now the laws and regulations that prevent them from operating their business or being able to buy a firearm.
- In Constitutional Carry states, a responsible citizen has the right to purchase a firearm based on the merit of their clean records.
- In license issuing states, new permit applications can take anywhere from 30-180 days to obtain.
- The false statements used by politicians to exaggerate how easy it is to buy a gun online and have it shipped to your home is being dispelled one voter at a time as people try to place gun orders and get them shipped to their homes and they are refused by responsible gun shops (kudos to these shops, by the way).
There are valuable lessons in this:
- If you support laws that you don’t understand, then you are in for a rude awakening when those laws impact your rights.
- Waiting for an emergency to suddenly rush out to buy firearms, generators, and medical supplies that you are untrained to use will put you at a severe disadvantage in terms of keeping yourself and your family safe.
- You are your own first responder and you are responsible for yourself and any dependents who may look to you for their health and safety.
As for the Grasshopper and the Ant, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to balance both mentalities. Enjoy the moment and experience life but don’t forget to build certain contingencies into your medium and long range plan.
Plan ahead. Share knowledge. Be alert.
All the best, Joshua
Grasshopper and the Ant image from Library of Congress online
A lot of people finding out you can’t just buy a gun online posted by OmahaOutdoors written by Andrew Touhy
Anti gun people want guns posted by ConcealedNation.org written by Brandon Curtis
Photos of Target shelves taken by me.
Wise Food Co picture ad from 2A4Life.com