by Chad
Gun control is once again politically ascendant in the U.S. Due to the agitation, massive financial backing and coordinated astroturfing efforts of social elites using a few high-profile mass shootings as popular reaction mass, an outbreak of gun control legislation has sprang up at federal, state and local levels.
Sweeping and vaguely defined “assault weapon” bans are the order of the day, along with a smattering of usurious taxation language and unfair and laborious checks and waiting periods.
What are the odds of a gun-grab in the U.S.? Not very good, not right now, but certainly not impossible: In fact, a broad gun ban or even confiscation is more possible than it has been in decades. Gun-control supporters are organized, well-funded, and socially active at the state and federal level.
In 2018, states have passed new gun control legislation as have towns and cities, legislation that curtails the rights of law-abiding citizens. What else may be in store for 2nd Amendment proponents in 2018? Let’s find out.
The Anti-Gun Agenda
Whatever lip service anti-2nd Amendment forces may offer, you should not doubt for a moment that outright abolishment of the 2nd Amendment and confiscation of guns from citizens’ hands is their ultimate goal.
The Far Left is much better than the Right at working incrementally, slowly, over years to achieve their goals, and they are content with that. Our lack of activity and vigor will see our rights stripped by inches.
It will begin with the banning of magazines and semi-automatic firearms with certain arbitrary features or design elements that they have dubbed assault weapons. After that’s done, they’ll move piecemeal or simultaneously for registration, onerous waiting periods and additional taxes on guns and ammo.
Whenever you hear them mention “Common Sense regulation,” “Assault Weapons,” “Semi-fully automatic,” and “No one is trying to take your guns, just the guns that no one has any use for,” you know they are on the march.
Let’s pretend they get what they want, and whole swaths of guns and magazines are not just outlawed, but they somehow find a way to actually account for and confiscate them all. Heck, let’s wave a wizard’s wand and make them all vanish. Poof! Gone. Ok, so all the bad guns are gone. How long before some bloodthirsty or deranged individual uses “ok” guns to commit an atrocity? You cannot legislate evil out of the hearts of evil men and women.
Here they’ll come again, this time after all the remaining rifles, semi-auto shotguns, and handguns. Restrictions on quantity of ammo both when purchasing and keeping in your possession. 90 Day mandatory waits. Moratorium on private sales. Psychiatric review. And then the cycle will repeat. Before too many more cycles there will be nothing left. Appeasement will not suffice, and appeasement is a poor strategy for dealing with the tyrannical at any rate.
Lest you think I am scare-mongering, please take the time to look at current, live bills working through Congress right now. Have a look too at recently enacted or resurrected bans on magazines and guns at state and local levels. You will see the consistency of design and intended outcome among of all of them. Bottom Line: Anti-Gunners would see this enacted on the national level, no doubt about it.
Their ultimate reasons are subject to debate or interpretation, and though it makes no difference whatsoever on the outcome, we can examine some of their professed beliefs briefly. Some, the black rifle-haters and other bandwagoners, will say no one needs an AR-15 for hunting or self defense, and “I’m not against guns, but…”
They know little about guns or self-defense, and have either jumped on the gun-grabbin’ express because some guns look scary or because all their enlightened friends are doing it.
Others will decry the number of gun deaths in the U.S., and blame the easy availability of “military-grade” firepower as the cause.
Given sufficient time to gain steam, they will prattle with worrying hysteria about how American has so many deaths from guns, more deaths than whatever European nation, or Japan or wherever.
They may be motivated by a genuine sense of altruism and empathy, but if you start asking them about specific statistics, such as the number of gun deaths due to suicide, or gang-on-gang violence, and so forth, they will become positively unhinged at your impingement of their mental state. Turns out they don’t feel better if you show them that things aren’t as bad as some statistics make it seem.
Another major type you’ll encounter is akin to an “Old Church Lady,” a nag, a professional scold who takes satisfaction from hassling their fellow man. Gun-Haters belonging to this group are nothing more than a (typically rich) busy-body who knows better than you on how best to run your life and your community and cannot help but interject their blathering into any personal choice or system of values, no matter what it is, but especially if it is dangerous or encourages independence.
The last and most worrisome members of this muck-racking contingent are truly dangerous: those that are plainly power-hungry, ones that crave the subjugation of the lesser citizenry. These elites or aspiring elites are intelligent, educated, and ambitious to a fault. They want power, and lots of it, and history has taught them that armed peasants will always get a vote in the outcomes that concern them, and since that is so they work now to remove that most persistent of roadblocks in their way before there is any cause to put it to the test.
Examples of Gun Control Legislation Today
In addition to the major, landmark pieces of gun control legislation in the U.S., among them The National Firearms Act, Gun Control Act and Brady Law; there are hundreds, or thousands of existing laws already on the books that regulate the possession, acquisition, use and ownership of firearms.
To date, I have not seen a conclusive count of those laws. Never mind that, lately enforcement of these laws has been anywhere from lax to completely ignored. Adding another 10 or 100 to the rolls will not save one single life or prevent any tragedy, but this is not stopping the anti-2A front.
The ugliest federal threat against gun owners today is bill HR 5087, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2018. Some of you readers may recall the Clinton-era 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.
This bill is much like that one, but on steroids. Specific language in the bill would greatly restrict or outright ban semi-auto pistols, shotguns and “assault weapons,” “large capacity ammunition feeding devices,” detachable magazines and more. It will also introduce mandatory requirements for storage of guns and specify new transference requirements. This bill is alive today and currently working through committee in the House of Representatives.
The board of trustees in the town of Deerfield, Illinois unanimously approved a ban on certain “assault weapons” and magazines, giving owners of such guns till June 13th of this year to remove those guns from the village or face fines of up to $1,000 a day.
The town is currently facing lawsuit from state level gun rights organizations and the NRA. It is easy to write them off as a lost cause considering Illinois is something of an anti-gun stronghold, but similar measures are being proposed in towns and cities across America.
The state of Florida just squashed a possible assault weapons ban, but did raise the minimum age to purchase a long gun to 21 years of age, in excess of the federal statute. This goes to show that even historically staunch pro-gun states like Florida are far from immune to the political winds.
Vermont just passed legislation restricting “high-capacity” magazines and bump stocks (S.55-Commonsense Gun Safety Legislation- see the naming, there?), and requiring background checks for private sales as well as the raising of the minimum age to buy any gun to 21.
The bill, if signed by the governor, will take effect on October 1st. This has led to a massive rush on guns, magazines and accessories in that state. There is no evidence that restricting any rights of citizens will make anyone safer or halt the commission of a crime.
California, ever the beacon of potential for anti-2A agitators, pushed forward 10 new gun control bills back in February. The totality of those bills would expand the definition of assault rifles and issuance of gun violence restraining orders, prevent the creation of homemade or “80%” firearms, and lead to an additional 500,000 citizens in that state needing to register another 2,000,000 guns.
There are countless more measures, great and small, being floated all across the country at the state and local level, and who-knows what else that will be drafted in the halls of Congress. This is not a practice run for the other side- they are playing for keeps.
What Would Confiscation Look Like?
I’ll be speculating here, but using other developed, Western nations that have seen their citizens arms seized as our template, we can make an informed guess. After the requisite laws pass and confiscation is initiated, it will likely start with mandatory turn-ins, with or without compensation.
There will be designated locations, at county and state level, where gun owners can go to turn in their guns, have their pertinent info databased, and be issued a receipt of a sort. It is my opinion that the huge majority of citizens will comply, contrary to internet bravado.
Now, America is a humongous country, and we nearly have enough guns for every single man, woman and child. It is a safe assumption that a great number of guns will not be turned in.
After an amnesty period, and increasing volume and frequency of agitation and propaganda broadcast across all forms of media, any gun owner who has decided to keep their arms and had their information compromised, be it from a tip to authorities, data mined from social media, the NICS background check database, or some other method, law enforcement will be dispatched to round up the guns from the non-compliant.
Notice I said round up the guns, not arrest the non-compliant. During this phase, amnesty will in all probability still be extended. The gun owners that did not surrender their guns at a collection station will do so now, when cops are on their porch, in droves. Before you say that most cops are like “us” and would not do such a thing to their neighbors and fellow citizens, that may be true, but practically will make no difference.
There will be many among them that will have no qualms about enforcing the law if that law was enacted according to customs and legislative process of the United States. “Law Enforcement” is in the job description.
There are undoubtedly also many who would have no part of the proceedings, either deliberately whiffing on the task at hand or resigning. In the event of a mass refusal to comply, they will without question be fired or reassigned and replaced with cops who will do the job.
If, during this phase, a gun owner decides he isn’t going to take this crap and go all 1776 on “the Man,” a response team, SWAT, SRT, whatever you want to call it, will be dispatched to bring out the recalcitrant subject and then collect his guns. If he resists or is perceived to be a threat to either officers or public he will be engaged with lethal force. And that’s that.
Then What?
The obvious question here is would enough high-profile standoffs take place, and in enough numbers, to start to have a catalyzing effect on governmental will, or the rest of the public’s stomach to see such seizures carried out until the guns are removed from the land? This is very grim and dark territory, and luckily I think such a scenario is far, far away.
Even luckier, we are in no position to even have to make such a decision, or ponder such an outcome: The Ballot Box is far more effective than the Cartridge Box at this juncture. Make sure you are part of the solution, not part of the problem, by getting active politically on local and federal levels. Join the gun rights organizations of your choice on, again, state and national levels.
Volunteer. Rally. Fundraise. Call every single one of your elected representatives and spell out exactly what you expect from them when a bill on gun control rears its head. After you do that, write them. Have your friends and family do the same. Apathy or blithe self-assurance that “someone” is doing “something” to combat the rabid Leftists and their scheming is tantamount to helping them do it.
Get involved!
Conclusion
A sweeping gun-ban is possible in the U.S., and in some states, probable. Confiscation, while far less likely, has more political capital than it has had in decades, perhaps ever. We as gun owners and citizens cannot sit idly by and watch this political and social maneuvering unfold against us until we are neutralized. Do not trust to anyone else to ensure your rights are being spoken for.
via Modern Survival Online https://ift.tt/2vyCxiD
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