As Americans know, the surest way to create a tyrannical government is to ensure the general public has no means to resist authoritarian measures.

The French used to understand this as well, considering that one of the country's foremost scholars, Alexis de Tocqueville — author of "Democracy In America," circa the late 1700s — was a seminal work in describing the benefits and advantages of a free, open society.

That included a favorable analysis of the U.S. Constitution, a truly unique document written by our founders and ratified by the new states that empowered people over their government and guaranteed them fundamental rights, like the right to keep and bear arms (again, so that government could not become too powerful and tyrannical).

Fast-forward to the present.

De Tocqueville is long gone, and the French republic is a shell of its former self, as evidenced by the thousands of citizens who are now turning in "illegal" guns to their masters (as if they learned nothing from World War II, either).