Ol' Remus on guns

 Ol' Remus

Control

There is only one way to shorten and ease the convulsions of the old society and the bloody birth pangs of the new —revolutionary terror.
Karl Marx

To overcome our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia's population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated.
Grigory Zinoviev, head of the Communist International, 1918, purged and executed in 1936

We know how socialism in Russia worked out: decades of terror, mass arrests, labor camps, intentional famines, atrocities and executions. Why did the populace not resist? It began this way, in 1918, and you'll note it was not a suggestion:

Citizens! Hand over your weapons

94 years late

It is truly a strange time in which we live. The Russian news outlet Pravda, formerly the mouthpiece of the Soviet regime, has published an opinion column encouraging Americans not to surrender their guns and gun rights to the government. The column warns that the disarming of the population is one of the first steps toward government repression and totalitarianism, and cites Russian history as an example, as this is exactly what happened in Russia when the Bolsheviks came to power.
Daniel S., comment at amnation.com

We have our own leftist elite. Anti-gun partisan Michael Moore employs armed body guards, as does Rosie O'Donnell. The staff at The Journal News, which publishes maps of concealed permit holders in New York suburbs, now employs armed security. Obama's daughters attend a private school with armed guards and Secret Service agents both. Arthur Sulzberger, New York Times publisher and Brady Campaign board member, has a concealed carry permit . Rabid anti-gun Senators Diane Feinstein and Charles Schumer have concealed carry permits, or did and may still. They're hypocrites, pathological liars actually, who believe they're entitled to a level of protection those they "represent" are not.

If I could've gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them—Mr. and Mrs. America turn 'em all in—I would have done it. I could not do that.  The votes weren't here.
Sen. Feinstein, CBS's 60 Minutes 1995, via americanthinker.com

They and their supporters would be pleased if the populace willingly turned all guns over to them. They claim this is a reasonable, common sense interpretation of the Second Amendment. Of course, if we persist in being inflexible, if we continue to disappoint them, they do have a Plan B. See the Bolshevik poster and Senator Feinstein's druthers, above. Alas, the tide turned against them a generation ago, now runs the other way and, relying on gun sales and polls , anti-gun sentiment is still dwindling. There will be trouble over this, but not because there has to be. 

A reasonable, common sense and durable settlement has always been available, and formerly practiced. Those who believe guns are a self-animating evil are free to neither keep nor bear arms. They are not however free to deny others their right to keep and bear arms. Nor may they make keeping and bearing arms conditional on their permission, as if their judgment were a fair substitute for our civil rights. 

Gun control laws are specifically and plainly forbidden by the Constitution. The Second Amendment assumed the populace would possess and be well practiced with the ordinary arms of light infantry. In fact, the NRA was formed and led by Civil War Generals Burnside and Wingate to keep civilians—the unorganized militia—proficient with the rapidly modernizing military arms of that era. Yes, there came a time when the NRA read the Second Amendment as the right to keep and bear sporting equipment, and yes, they were clubby go-along accomplices that knowingly provided curb appeal to the most treacherous gun control laws from the early 1930s through the 1960s, sometimes actually drafting parts of them it's said, but late in the last century the NRA became peripherally aware of its own first principles and reassembled a functioning backbone, albeit from parts found elsewhere. Their far less patrician membership was pleased to be addressed as something other than a dues-paying form of dysentery.

The New Orleans Confiscations seem to have awaken them more fully, yet it's right to be suspicious of any organization that eats where the federals defecate, DC-Land to be specific, an estate once held by the Sixth Lord Fairfax of Cameron dontcha know, which may account for the leadership's "riding to the hounds" view of themselves. But the collectivists have blown their dog whistle now and they're yapping on yonder rise. In the upcoming assault it's results that count, not pedigree, so the alpha dog now has a main chance to redeem himself in the eyes of mutts with bleeding gums. If they blow this one it's back to the club room and talk of bespoke Purdeys forever. They'll be less than irrelevant, they'll be a liability. 

Collectivist believe in collective guilt, unsurprisingly. They believe this as deeply and unquestioningly as any Bolshevik commissar or medieval inquisitor. They reveal themselves when they say the NRA "refuses to accept blame for the Sandy Hook massacre." The people manning the solar observatory at Sacramento Peak also refuse to accept blame, or would if asked, and rightly so. Absent evidence the perp had accomplices, or was under direct and actual control of others, blame attaches to the shooter alone. The proposition is simple and of unassailable provenance. As with all crime, guilt lay with the perpetrator. Hence the term, perpetrator. What would those who blame "society" for crime have us do instead, arrest cab drivers in Toledo and call it a good start? 

As for AR-platform guns and similar, anti-gun partisans claim their only purpose is to kill people in large numbers, that they belong on the battlefield, not "on our streets." Police respond to an 'active shooter' with AR-platform guns or equivalent and don't kill people in large numbers. If police have determined such a weapon is well suited for taking down an armed bad guy, shall we insist they use a lesser weapon lest they mow down the whole neighborhood and declare victory over Smallville? If not, why would we reserve such a suspicion for ourselves? 

If law enforcement endorses the AR-platform as appropriate for taking down a bad guy, does this not recommend it even if the good guy is wearing something other than an official getup? Or does our occupation and sartorial inclination now determine whether we get to live? Shall gun owners also be required to drive ancient crank-start cars with tiny engines lest they exceed the speed limit and drive through a playground? And speaking of reason and common sense, at four-figure prices and legendary scarcity, it's apparent to all but the determinedly unschooled they're not "on our streets," much as the impecunious wish they were. 

Murder has always been a punishable offence. Let it go at that. We don't punish the bystanders too, much less the totally uninvolved. Not rightly. Not even a little bit.