Friday, September 4, 2009

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.

14 comments:

  1. I don't know about Blair-Holt, but currently in NJ any person 21 or older may obtain a permit to purchase a handgun (recent law passed limiting that to no more than one in 30 days) by filling out an application (which no longer requires a SS #), fingerprinting, two references, a mental health inpatient search, and fees for each thing. Local police do a criminal record search, and the fingerprints are run through state and federal databases. The decision to issue the permit is done by the Police Chief or his subordinate. For a permit to carry, the same is required, plus an approved need, usually for business/employment purpose. A superior court judge approves/disapproves the application.

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  2. Right you are. Other sources for gun owners are the NRA and Gun Owners of America. There are many gun owners who sit idly by on the sidelines allowing the rest of us to foot the costs of fighting the anti-2nd Amendment "defenders of the Constitution". The NRA has about 4.5 million current members. That is a small number when compared to the estimated total numbers of gun owners in the U.S. There are some gun owners who don't like the NRA for an assortment of reasons. Consider that they are the oldest organization in the U.S. that has consistently fought any and all attempts to disarm us. They deserve our support as do the smaller organizations. I belong to so many of them I can't keep track.
    A Japanese general after WWII stated that he did not order an attack on the American mainland because "..there is a gun behind every blade of grass." He was a wise man in that assessment.
    The battle for our 2nd Amendment protected, God given right to keep and bear arms will not end as long as tyrants reside in the halls of government and in the White House.
    Consider the following:
    "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerers who have allowed their subjected people to carry arms have prepared their own fall."
    ADOLF HITLER

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  3. I was a NRA member for several years, but their incessant marketing of this and that became a real nuisance. They literally chase people out of the organization.

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  4. The founding fathers could not foresee the astounding moral decline which virtually guarantees this attempt to abolish our liberties. Edmund Burke warned, "Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without." The banning of guns is no answer; it is only proof that there is a problem. The outward is replacing the inward. The abolition of man's God-given liberty is inevitable wherever man's God-given inward restraints are cast off.

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  5. Another history clip of a people who desired peace with their government is "The Armenians". They negotiated peace with the Ottoman Turks (present day Turkey) and in turn they (The Armenians) would lay down their weapons
    The Turks violated the agreement almost immediately and what resulted was known as The Armenian Genocide.

    A heartbreaking movie to watch about their (the Armenians) genocide is Ararat.

    Gustave Flaubert wrote:

    Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.


    Obama has to create a crisis of sorts to obtain the power to take away or control the guns.
    The Nazis, The Communists and Obama are clearly of the same mold in that they use the 'fear' tactic.

    Bertrand Russell:

    Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

    This is what the Nazis did to the Jews. The Turks to the Armenians.etc.. The Obamanation will truly find a group to blame the nations ills on and take away our 2nd Amendment rights and what follows after that? Read your history!!!

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  6. Alan, they only chase people out who don't want to be there in the first place. It's not easy being armed in this environment, and I am armed every day and every where I go. I ignore the marketing and devote my effort to supporting the fundamentals; fighting off the nuts that want to disarm me. They're a big voice and we need them. It's not mandatory that you buy things or send them money every month. It's still your choice and they are a voice that Schumer, Boxer, Feinstein, Kerry et al can't afford to ignore. I'm a long time Endowment member and I throw a lot of the hype in the trash can, but I know that without them we wouldn't be armed citizens today because they were there at the beginning and they've never left.

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  7. Growing up in Canada, and not being from a family who hunted, I never saw a real gun until I moved to Texas. Guns scared me for a while, and still do, but only because of not understanding enough about them. My husband is and was always very careful about his guns, and came from a family who hunted and also served in the military. I have a great respect for the 2nd Amendment, and believe the Founders knew exactly the reason for putting that in the Constitution. While I may be a lousy shot, I'm pretty wicked with a baseball bat. Unfortunately, if it were between me with a bat and a thug carrying any kind of gun breaking into our property, I wouldn't stand a chance.
    These gun control freaks don't care about safety of the general citizen. They only care about control of the citizen.
    I am grateful that my husband has guns, knows how to use them, and NO one from the govment better take them from us! God Bless you Mr. Caruba.

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  8. I BEG TO DIFFER:

    The Second Amendment does not give me the right to own firearms any more than the lock on my door keeps intruders out of my home. The fact that I and many others own firearms and are prepared to use them in defense of our right to maintain them gives us the right to own firearms. Nothing more nothing less.

    Laws are hogwash to be utilized to settle minor disagreements and keep general social order.

    Force rules the world in the keeping of one's natural rights.

    Force of ARMS.

    DO NOT EVER FORGET IT.

    All of your examples of slaughtered, socialized, and enslaved people believed in laws. Sure did them well, didn't it? Laws are nothing but words scribbled on paper. They change at the whim of people, generally morons willing to trade freedom for pretended security, at that.

    I don't give one God Damn about De Jour.

    De Facto is what is going to win this battle with the stupid sheep or we will just be another UK, Rhodesia, Irish Republic, RSA, Canada, or Australia--just at a later date than they in becoming the miserable excuses of pretend free people that they exist as today.

    III

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  9. Lots of response to this blog post. Since I cannot reply individually, let me quote five points from my Gun Refresher Course.

    1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.

    2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.

    3. Colt: The original point and click interface.

    4. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.

    5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?

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  10. There was a bumper sticker back in the 70s, "When guns are outlawed, I'll be an outlaw."

    The law exists to provide a framework for ordered liberty. Rights are God-given and inalienable (see Declaration of Independence). The rule of law, as expressed by the Founders in the Constitution while sometimes ill-expressed and inefficient, is far preferable to the rule of man.

    The Obamanoids (like Dubya and the Clintonistas before them) are far more interested in the rule of man than the rule of law, hence their tearing up of contract law in the auto "bailout" as well as their thirst for gun control.

    Amish Tom's post above about the law is harshly stated but unfortunately correct, for as Hobbes observed "a contract without swords" is meaningless. Which is why the Founders inserted that pesky Second Amendment.

    Now, the danger here, as it always has been in every trans-tyrannical period in human history, is waiting too long because you're used to doing things "legally" when the tyrant has seized control of the legal system and perverted it to his own ends.

    Hitler was "legally" installed in power and quickly began using the Weimar Republic's legal system against it. Gun registration lists, for example, and police files on specific enemies. (Can you say "PATRIOT Act"?)

    The anti-Nazi Germans, mesmerized by "the law" and waiting for orders that never came, were scooped up one by one without ANY resistance. Everyone was waiting for the next election, which never came, except on the Nazis' own terms.

    (Class, repeat after me: "ACORN." "Amnesty for illegals." "Moving the Census authority into the White House." I think you get the picture.)

    Thus we must not wait for the mis-named "Republican" party to get its act together. It never will. If they sold us out in good times, welshing on their promises after 1994, growing the power and scope of government, not only refusing to reign in the ATF and the FBI BUT GROWING THEIR POWER AND LENGTHENING THEIR LEASHES, what may we expect for them in bad times but ineffectual excuses?

    The Tea Parties did not come from the GOP, as much as the Dems might wish to imagine it. People are flooding into the streets and the public meetings precisely because they have concluded that the "system," as they have understood it, no longer protects them. Thus, they will make their own arrangements.

    Yet the other side cannot see beyond their own world view and assumes that everything is as before and thus, they can order us about and make it stick. This is because they believe in democracy (majority rule, which is three wolves and a sheep sitting down to vote on what to have for dinner) and not the ordered liberty of the Founders' Republic.

    The health care debate, then, is like every other debate we have with them. It is not about access to health care, but about government control. But they think now, because of the election, they have the right to abrogate the Constitution (which is not even a concern for them, because as Amish Tom points out above, the only thing they respect is force) and tell the rest of us what to do.

    In this situation, there is only one thing to do, one message to get across to the other side. It is not polite. It does not rest upon "legality." It is this, and we must tell this to our opponents as often and as loudly as we can:

    "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

    (continued below)

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  11. (from above)

    That IS what we are talking about, isn't it? That is certainly what the Founders said at Lexington and Concord, and later, with the Second Amendment.

    We Three Percenters have tried to make that point, but not quite so brutally, with the Doctrine of the Three Percent:

    "We will not disarm.

    You cannot convince us.

    You cannot intimidate us.

    You can try to kill us, if you think you can.

    But remember, we'll shoot back.

    And we are not going away.

    Your move."

    We must get across to them that ONE TINY BIT MORE OF INFRINGEMENT, and we will NOT obey, hence, when they seek to enforce it and attack those of us who refuse, the bullets begin to fly.

    If we can get them to understand that civil war is possible, that their own miserable hides are on the line if they start it, then perhaps they will back off. It is our only hope, the rule of law being knocked flat by travesties such as the Olofson case.

    The Second Amendment, in and of itself, is no longer credible as a deterrent because we have not insisted upon its enforcement. The failure has been ours, not the Founders. Not even really the other side's, for the Founders foresaw their arrival as inevitable. They counted on us, the armed citizenry, and we have heretofore let them down. We allowed ourselves to be shoved back, grumbling EVEN AS WE HELD THE INSTRUMENTS OF OUR LIBERTY IN OUR OWN HANDS. But, as our enemies understood, they meant nothing without the will to use them.

    The time has come, my fellow armed citizens, to "stick our guns in the tyrant's face" and back him off a step or three. Nothing less will save us, or our children's and grandchildren's liberty, from the tyrant's boot and the long dark night of collectivism.

    We MUST do this.

    Here.

    Now.

    Join us.

    Mike Vanderboegh
    The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters
    sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com

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  12. One small bone to pick there Alan with number 5.

    If guns are outlawed, I'll still use my guns.

    As Mike Vanderboegh reminds us:

    WARNING:
    "We will not disarm.

    You cannot convince us.

    You cannot intimidate us.

    You can try to kill us, if you think you can.

    But remember, we'll shoot back.

    And we are not going away.

    Your move." - The Three Percent
    III

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  13. Interesting: All Americans have the constitutional right to bear arms, but all Americans do not have a right to healthcare; this is the conservative view.

    A gun has one purpose: to kill.

    Does anyone really believe that any weapon, or number of weapons,an American might personally own, would stop the government from doing anything it felt necessary to do? I don't think so.

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  14. Horotio: The next time someone is breaking into your home or apartment and you are desperately dialing 911, you will wish you had a gun.

    Do people think arming themselves against a gangster government? Just check the gun and ammo sales of late. They are off the chart.

    It is doubtful the Founding Fathers gave much thought to universal health insurance in an era when none existed. So far, all experiments with this have ended up rationing healthcare and often killing people.

    Put on your dunce cap.

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