The Gun-Grabbers are on the Move Again

By Alan Caruba

Every despotic regime in the last century favored gun control laws. Today, the gun-grabbers are on the move again and are being led by the Obama regime.

During last year’s campaign both Hillary Clinton and John McCain tore into Barack Obama for saying that residents of small-town America "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them out of bitterness over lost jobs.”

Obama quickly retreated from that statement, but it revealed his real thinking and real feelings about people who own guns for any reason, as well as his contempt for people whose religious values are an important part of their lives. In both cases he was condemning large segments of the nation’s population.

In America today, the figure I hear most often is an estimated ninety million people who own guns. No matter the source one cites, there is no question that most Americans have no qualms about owning guns for hunting, sport shooting, or for protection. It is no coincidence that, since Obama’s election last year, gun and ammo sales have been off the chart.

Look back at what history teaches us regarding the right to bear arms. The Soviet Union established gun control in 1929. Unable to defend themselves, the regime killed an estimated twenty million Russian dissidents.

Turkey established gun control in 1911 and, from 1915 to 1917, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were rounded up and killed.

Germany established gun control in 1938. Prior to and throughout World War II, the Nazis systematically murdered an estimated six million Jews and another five million others deemed “enemies of the state.” This pattern was repeated in China which outlawed gun ownership in 1935. Gun ownership was outlawed in Guatemala, Uganda, and Cambodia.

It is estimated that 56 million people were killed by their own governments in the last century. Despite that, both England and Australia passed laws prohibiting gun ownership. The result has been a surge in deaths of people who were killed because they were left defenseless against criminals. In Australia, armed robberies increased 44 percent.

As this is being written, there are proposed laws in the House and Senate that would strip Americans of their Second Amendment right to “to keep and bear arms.” A right the Constitution says “shall not be infringed.”

Recently, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced S.1317 that would give the Attorney General the discretion to block gun sales to people on terror watch lists. The government’s consolidated watch list, used to identify people suspected of links to terrorists, has now grown to more than a million names since 9/11.

In Lautenberg’s New Jersey, one must have a government issued certificate to purchase a firearm and undergo a difficult process to secure the right to carry a weapon, concealed or otherwise.

A similar law, the Blair Holt Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009 would make it illegal to own a firearm unless you are fingerprinted and can provide a current driver’s license along with your Social Security number. It requires people to submit to a physical and mental evaluation each and every time a firearm is purchased.

In addition, Blair-Holt would require that guns must be locked away and inaccessible to any child under age 18. It would empower law enforcement officers to come into your home to inspect whether or not you are in compliance. Failure to comply includes a fine and incarceration up to five years in prison. In a case of criminal home invasion this law renders the gun owner defenseless.

This replicates the 1938 German Weapons Act that restricted ownership of firearms to “persons whose trustworthyness is not in question and who can show a need for a (gun) permit.”

These proposed laws also abrogate the Fourth Amendment that says “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures” shall not be violated without a warrant.

To learn more about these “under the radar” efforts to restrict gun ownership and the right to carry firearms, visit http://www.saf.org/, the website of the Second Amendment Foundation and http://www.ccrkba.org/, the website of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

What I have described are incremental steps taken to ultimately render the Second Amendment null and void.

If you oppose these efforts, you need to write your representatives in Congress and let them know. A donation to the Second Amendment Foundation and/or the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms will assist their efforts on your behalf.

Despite the anti-gun attitude of the current White House I have always found it incongruous that the President is surrounded by men and women in the Secret Service, all of whom carry firearms to protect whoever holds that office. Members of Congress are protected by a Capitol Hill police force, all of whom are armed. We all know that a gun is an essential part of what every police officer wears daily while enforcing the law.

When writing the Constitution, the Founding Fathers first protected free speech, freedom of the press, and the freedom of citizens to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The Second Amendment gave priority to the right to own and bear arms because you cannot have the freedoms enumerated in the First Amendment without those protected in the Second.