====================
Compromised
In addition to trashing habeas corpus and posse
comitatus, in addition to
authorizing warrantless searches
and mandatory health insurance, Congress is considering another
outrageous gun law. This one not only disregards the Second and Fifth
Amendments at least, it relies heavily on ex-post facto provisions.
They're crossing the line, again. The central government is charged with
defending the people's rights and civil liberties, not to diminish them and demand the people show cause why they shouldn't.
A right requires no justification, no
demonstration of need, it merely is. The people do and should have the
right to keep and bear arms of their own choosing, the same small arms
police officers or light infantry have, if they wish, including fully
automatic weapons. There's no such thing as common sense infringement,
or reasonable infringement. Infringement is infringement. It's
specifically forbidden.
The only
difference between a police officer and a private citizen is that the
former has the authority and duty to intervene in situations that the
ordinary citizen should, or even must, avoid. If either needs a firearm
for any non-sporting purpose, though, he or she needs it for exactly the
same reason. The definition of a weapon that is "reasonable" for
legitimate self-defense is therefore, "Any weapon that is routinely
available to law enforcement agencies."
William Levinson at americanthinker.com
The "not one more inch" position is necessary but
insufficient. It assumes and accepts infringement already in place. Nor
can we vote for
or against a right and continue to call it a
right, as when we vote for candidates who conditionally support the
Second Amendment. Doing so implies we've obliged ourselves to additional
infringement when they compromise, which they will
.
Defending gun rights with arguments about
self-defense and sporting use are not so much wrong as irrelevant, as
are notions about wider gun ownership suppressing crime. The Second
Amendment isn't conditional on the crime rate. As a practical matter,
murder will continue to be illegal whether the victim is shot with a gun
or beaten to death with a can of tomato juice. Defenders of gun rights
are unwise to use these arguments, the fundamental issue was settled
definitively in 1789. It's not useful to reargue black letter law which
defines and defends a right, there's nothing to gain.
All federal gun control acts, all state and
municipal gun laws and all their enforcement provisions are illegal on
their face. They are non-laws, indefensible and of no standing.
Proposing and passing them into law was illegal, their ongoing
enforcement is illegal. Legislation to mend parts of them is illegal
because it concedes and endorses the illegal laws it seeks to modify.
The only legitimate stance is complete repeal, root and branch, to
be followed by indictments of those who broadened and extended them,
and severance with prejudice for those prosecutors who enforced them,
down to and including the Attorney General.
Appeals to the Supreme Court are also wrong, the
court awarded itself the authority to rule on the Constitutionality of
laws, it's a power it does not have other than by acquiescence.
The Bill of Rights was written by the people, in plain language. The
Supreme Court can't legitimately presume to speak in its place,
rights which predate the republic don't exist now only as they define
them, they were recognized as-is by the same document that brought the
court into existence, and of the two, the court is the lesser. Rights
are the purpose of governance, the court is only part of the plumbing.
Nor is trust in the good faith of the Supreme
Court warranted. For one egregious example of their malfeasance,
outright betrayal to be plain, it is they who elevated the Commerce
Clause above our civil liberties. It's a clause intended to make
commerce regular from one state to any other state, to keep
Connecticut from imposing a surcharge on peanuts from Virginia for
instance. By knowingly expanding this into an enabling act to disarm
the people, the court placed itself above the law and, therefore,
outside the law.
This is a bare bones history:
The National Firearms Act of 1934 specifies
minimum barrel lengths and other mandatory features, criminalizes the
possession of silencers and fully automatic firearms.
The Federal Firearms Act of 1938 regulates sales of guns and ammunition
The Gun Control Act of 1968 introduces the FFL
system, ends buying guns by mail order, limits importing military arms,
and creates a 'sporting use' requirement for civilian firearms. It has
since been disclosed the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 was used as a template
.
Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, modifies
some abuses of the 1968 Act, adds the Domestic Violence Offender Gun
Ban and a total ban of fully auto weapons not registered as of 1986.
The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, creates the federal background check system.
The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, known as the "assault weapons ban". It sunsetted in 2004.
The HUD/Smith
and Wesson agreement of 2000, in which Smith & Wesson
"voluntarily" changed the design, distribution and marketing of their
guns.
These gun laws are what comes from being
"reasonable". This is what comes of one-way "compromises". It's no
accident. A year or two may be tactics, but three quarters of a century
is strategy. Sadly, nominal gun rights organizations have been
accomplices every step of the way, starting with the
NRA's support for the taproot of all gun control laws in 1934. The
NRA also supported
the 1968 Gun Control Act in exchange for a gift bag of "feel good"
exceptions. Having been rolled again, yet learning nothing from it, the
NRA assured its members in 1990 it was "reasonable" to support
the Gun-Free School Zones idea. Now 'sporting arms' they thought were
exempt from the worst sanctions of the 1968 Act have been reclassified
as assault weapons, no surprise, and guns in schools is the
NRA's new best idea.
The huge body of federal, state and local law
would seem enough for anti-gun partisans to high-five, declare victory
and go away, and it would be if there weren't a truly tyrannical end
being served, namely: total disarmament. They all but say as much. Their
catch-phrase "moving us forward" means exactly that. It's an all-in
effort. Opponents of civil liberties aren't the witless clowns their
public statements would lead us to believe. To them, existing laws are
watering tables at a marathon:
It is time to sit down and have a sensible,
reasonable debate about gun control, and express an openness to banning
assault weapons.
Rep. Tompson of California
The status quo isn't acceptable. There's got to
be a way to put reasonable restrictions, particularly as we look at
assault weapons.
Sen. Blumenthal of Connecticut.
Although rights aren't conditional on
consequences, in a truly "sensible, reasonable debate" the facts would
embarrass the anti-gun side out of the room, if they were
embarrassable. Gun control doesn't control the bad guy's guns, it cuts
down the return fire. Look at Chicago in its Al Capone days before gun
control, and now with "common sense" gun laws tightly in place—the
current body count is approaching 200% of 1929's. Their answer is more gun laws. These are the same people who insist on borrowing more to pay the national debt.
Chicago - The
city is worse off now in the category of murder than at the height of
the era that has driven Chicago's reputation for almost a century,
Capone's "gangland" Chicago... Forty-two people were killed in Chicago
last month, the most in January since 2002, and far worse than the
city's most notorious crime era at the end of the Roaring Twenties. In
January 1929 there were 26 killings.
Chuck Goudie at abclocal.go.com
Meanwhile, the NRA's
leadership conducts itself as if we held the weak hand at the table. We
don't. They're our cards and it's our table. Our forefathers wouldn't
have agreed to a limit on the amount of ball and powder they could
carry, or to a list of muskets they were forbidden to own, or an
outright ban on ownership of newfangled lever-action repeaters. Their
righteous outrage and uncompromising defiance would have been immediate,
unstoppable and the stuff of legend.
Full disclosure: Remus is a greybeard NRA
member and considers all this a family squabble. Further, he admits
capture by the classic school as seen in ancient ads featuring canoes
and tall pines. Yes, this is suspiciously convenient given he's far too
old for running gunfights using ARs
and the like. The principle doesn't concern itself with this however.
It concerns itself with accepting nonsense "solutions" such as
background checks, which in its basic form says one man decides if it's
acceptable to him for another man to have a firearm. Background
checks are just another gatekeeper for what is a non-negotiable right,
and one that's already being abused.
Combat veterans are being denied arms because they're combat veterans. And good people are being disarmed
when their spouse gets an order of protection—which is often nothing
more than a lunge at drama during a falling out, so the fundamental
method is at work once again: one person may have the arms of another
taken away based on what they imagine may occur, the basis of
all gun laws. Notice no gun need even be displayed, much less does a
crime involving a gun need occur, save their confiscation, nor a
likelihood of their use be demonstrated. One city is proposing everyone
be required to notify their school district when purchasing a gun,
reporting all specifics to them including the serial number. How long
until this idea is folded into the background checks? How long before
such notification is required before purchasing a gun? How long until the school staff has a veto too?
Background checks reveal themselves in who is to
decide eligibility for gun ownership. The proposed legislation requires
mental health—excuse the expression—professionals report
persons they deem ineligible, and so we have one answer, the
ever-reliable medicalization law-gadget. Yes, the same people who see
gun possession as dangerous antisocial behavior by itself are to be
yet another gatekeeper. But it gets worse. "Universal background checks"
means no gun shall change hands without DC's
full knowledge and prior approval. "Universal" is a cloying term
typical of them. Compliance by Responsible Citizens anxious to
demonstrate they have nothing to hide is likely to meet their
expectations, but compliance by thuggas is just likely to be less
than "universal". Zero is a close approximation.
"Universal background checks" is indefensible, it
means you may not, for instance, trade guns with your neighbor if an
otherwise unemployable clerk in DC
declines to approve it, even if using misinformation from some
busybody you may not even know. Perhaps said busybody sees you in New
York City with a high-capacity soft drink container and, being of the
opinion there's no demonstrable need for more than seven ounces of soft
drink, turns you in to the Star Chamber on false but plausible grounds.
Or perhaps said busybody is your family doctor to whom you unwisely
spoke frankly, not knowing he was more anti-gun than Mrs. Brady, or you
imprudently confided in your counselor, not understanding he was
looking to denounce you to meet his monthly quota to the Keepers of
the List, cc: his credentials committee.
Once on their list of unworthies, how do you get
off it? And if the disqualifying information is plainly bogus, or if
you're on their list in error, to whom shall you appeal? Would you
expect the news media to interrupt their anti-gun telethon to champion
your cause?
Sir, if you persist in this I shall be forced to write an angry letter to The Times.
Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, 20th Century Fox 1965
Despite a decades-long record of pratfalls, the NRA
leadership says they've changed, that it's different this time. No, it
isn't different this time. Not yet. The gate is down and the lights are
flashing, but nobody sees a train coming. It's looking like the NRA
leadership is being rolled again. They contend more laws aren't
necessary, that rigorous enforcement of existing laws is the way to go.
They're talking about the almost nonexistent prosecution of thuggas of
course. It doesn't matter what they mean. It matters what DC means. Rigorous enforcement is taken by DC to mean shutting down an FFL
holder if he fails to cross a "t", for one. It means rigorous
prosecution under regulations they interpret in ways we wouldn't
imagine. It means damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't sting
operations. It means arrested on page one, charges dismissed on page 28,
but you're broke, good name gone and have a felony record. This has
been ongoing for decades. As one apparently well-informed reader
commented in a Milwaukee newspaper:
The ATF have never
been the good guys. These are the psychos who murdered a man's wife and
son because he missed a court date. These are the jerks who wait for
home based gun dealers to leave, then kick in their door, ransack the
house, leave the guns in a pile then leave the door open. ATF
is filled from top to bottom with trigger happy cowboys who have no
respect for the law, no respect for citizens or their rights. They force
gun shop owners to participate in strawman stings, then leave them
swinging in the wind when the operations implode.
The ATF is a blot
on the US law enforcement community. They are despised and ridiculed by
FBI, Marshals and other legitimate LEO's. Real cops are terrified of
doing joint operations with them that may involve a weapon leaving the
ATF holster.
Andylit, comment, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel news article about ATF debacle, at jsonline.com
Pumping for fence-to-fence enforcement says the NRA
leadership is bumbling into complicity with enemies of the Second
Amendment once again. They can't seem to help themselves. The suspicion
is growing they're already sorting through the babies for one to throw
to the wolves. We have to wonder, if a person is chained to a post and
whipped unjustly, how grateful should he be to the nice man who limits
the strokes to twenty instead of thirty, yet fully endorses the
whipping? That said, the NRA is not
the problem, in fact, they've faced withering incoming fire with panache
in recent weeks. Whether they'll follow through is to be seen.
Testicular fortitude is easily displayed, not so easily acted upon:
Law-abiding gun
owners will not accept blame for the acts of violent or deranged
criminals, nor do we believe that government should dictate what we can
lawfully own and use to protect our families.
Wayne LaPierre, NRA Exec. Vice Pres, to Congressional Hearing, via Tom Foreman at cnn.com
This country's gun laws are an international
embarrassment, a blotch on the nation's honor and an insult to our
history. The problem is, we the people didn't stop them when it was
easily done. Restoring the status quo to what it was before the National
Firearms Act of 1934 is now said to be unthinkable, a radical notion.
It isn't. Al Capone seems safely dead. No, the radical notion is the
status quo after the National Firearms Act of 1934.
There need be no ambiguity about this. Nor is it
farfetched. Notice the slave laws are no longer in force, even though
they had Supreme Court approval for seventy years. Is it reasonable a
Constitutional Amendment invalidated the slave laws, yet another, older
Amendment doesn't invalidate the gun laws? Who today would support a
"reasonable compromise" that allows owning slaves with some "common
sense" conditions? Nobody. Non-negotiable is non-negotiable. And so is
the right to keep and bear arms.
The enemies of gun rights are playing for
absolute victory. They're confident we won't do the same. They've been
misinformed. The tide is turning. It's apparent the gun laws are beyond
fixing. Anything less than throwing them out altogether amounts to a
restart from some point still within their grip. Reform won't work,
it isn't enough, not nearly. Only a clean break followed by serious
fumigation is enough. It's not only doable, it's doable in such a way no
governing body will ever again challenge this or any other right.
