Coco has been thinking about government tyranny -- especially the kind which would force me to have someone to take a knife to her private areas.

I don't want to do that to her -- any more than she wants it done to her. We both think it violates Natural Law to force a man to take his dog and mutilate her insides for no good reason, when she has done no harm to anyone. I think this because I am rational and I can write about it. As to Coco, I can tell you that it would be extremely difficult to take her away and do such a thing to her without my consent. (If you don't believe me, just try; she'd resist, and so would I!) And if I am not going to do that to her, then who is? Who claims the right to do this to Coco, and under what theory? Animal rights? Hah! Coco knows her rights, she knows her power, and in her own way she believes that she should not have to do anything unless I demand it of her. We have a sort of compact, and I like to think that I look out for her best interests, and that she in turn trusts me to do that. She would defend me, because that's her nature, and I would defend her -- because that is the nature of our relationship. It is healthy, and based on thousands of years of interaction between man and dog.

We've been brainstorming a bit, and I've been reflecting on whether there is any connection between the effort to take away my inherent natural right to defend myself and the effort to take away Coco's natural rights. True, mine are more complicated, but that's because I am a human being. But, assuming there is such a thing as natural rights, Coco's natural rights would seem include the right to keep -- and defend -- her organs. To the extent Coco cannot do that, then I am obligated to defend her rights for her. But if my own rights -- especially the primary right to self defense -- are taken away, then how can I defend Coco's?

As I thought about this, I thought about the United Nations. There are a lot of governments run by dictatorships whose reps are hanging around right now thinking about ways to take away a basic right of people all over the world -- the right to defend themselves.

If self defense is a right, then how are we human beings to exercise it? We don't have teeth like Coco and like other dogs. Instead, we live in a world where there are people, and there are guns which can be used by either good people or bad people. Because bad people (including the bad people who run bad governments) have guns, there is no practical way for good people to defend themselves unless they have guns. In short, guns are the human equivalent of dog teeth. Without them, we are defenseless against those who have them.

While Coco may not understand this intellectually, I think she does instinctively and intuitively. Just as I don't want my guns taken away, Coco doesn't want her ovaries taken away.

So we posed together -- basking in our natural rights on the eve of the Fourth of July.

Coco, as you see, is wearing shades to prevent "redeye."

As she became more comfortable with the gun (a Yugoslavian M70AB2 Kalashnikov clone), without my posing her at all, Coco just seemed to relax.

I really didn't expect this of her, but it's not posed, and Coco stayed in this position for quite some time.

Considering that there are ongoing domestic and international attempts to ban Coco, to force me to subject her to genital mutilation, and to take away my guns, we thought a joint statement would be appropriate.

You can have our guns and ovaries when you pry them from our cold dead paws!

SAFETY NOTE: Not only were no animals harmed during the making of the above pictures, but neither were any humans. That's because unlike Senator Dianne Feinstein, Coco had the good sense to keep her paws off the trigger while posing!