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.
