The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.Now, I know some perfectly good and reasonable people who are uncomforatable with guns in concept and practice and would be much happier if guns were not widely available in our country.
However the author of this article (who is apparently an ex US diplomat) is downright scarry. I can think of no objective that would be worth submitting our society to this kind of total police state. This man is a totalitarian at heart, and a rather brutal one at that.
There is no end which could possibly justify such means.
First his "how" has to pass the Constitutionality test. Second, he needs to find a way to remove access to guns from those that would use them to perpetrate a crime. Third, gun control is using both hands.
ReplyDeleteTruthfully, the man is off his rocker.
This is why everyone should be required to read one or more works of dystopian literature during their formative years.
ReplyDeleteYikes!
ReplyDeleteNever owned a gun myself--never felt the need.
That guy makes me wonder whether it might not be good idea after all.
Might come in handy when they cordon off my neighborhood and kick down my door.
I read that article at Jay's the other day, but didn't have time to comment. There is nothing new about this at all. Criminalizing personal firearm possession is one of the first steps of any tyrannical government - and it's always done under the auspices of the "greater good of society". Elements of this guy's plan are reminiscent of some European policies, like the we'll still let hunters hunt thing, but the state will possess the gun. Handling a gun becomes a privilege of a privileged class of people and the whole purpose of such a gesture is to make the whole plan seem reasonable - but it only seems reasonable to the idea's proponents and to non-thinking individuals.
ReplyDeleteThis guys thinking was making a lot of headway in the early 90's. Articles like this were popping up fairly regularly. The Billary Clinton propaganda machine (the MSM) were working the anti-gun angle very hard. Billary and his boys in the Senate were working on what would become the 1993 Crime Bill (Chucky Schumer was a very aggressive supporter - having made some remarks that could only be considered advocating using the military to disarm the population). They weren't able to get everything they wanted in that law, but they got plenty enough. Things like the "assault weapon" ban, even bans on accessories. Note too, those of you who are too young to have known what things were like before then and have grown up with the words, "assault weapon" in your vocabulary...Before that disarmament campaign there was no such classification of arms. In fact it's quite illogical. There are assault rifles - a very specific classification of arms and with a particular tactic in mind for their use. An assault weapon I suppose could be any object you use to assault someone. But what the gun-grabbers and their willing accomplices in the media did was to affix that label to a wide range of firearms, there was no rhyme or reason to what they were calling an assault weapon. To us concerned observers it seemed as if any weapon that was semi-automatic or used recently by a gang-banger or nut-job in a shooting. Thing is, they needed a very specific set of attributes to make this new classification in the 93 crime bill, so they came up with things like semiautomatic, a handle grip (the AR-15 and AK-47), etc. Oh, and the media ALWAYS referred to semi-automatic weapons as "automatic" and "easily obtainable" and with terms like "killing machines", etc.
You've probably heard about the militias and such; they were a response to the political atmosphere at the time. But they weren't the only people reading the writing on the wall. The gun shows were packed with people from every walk of life buying weapons that they normally wouldn't have. Unfortunately, Billary and Schumer made a great leap in restricting the citizens ability to protect itself from criminals and tyrants, but what they stirred up at the grass-roots level was enough for them to have to table any further advances for a while. Bush is in now, and he's at least not hostile to gun ownership, and the Dems in congress a few years ago didn't have the stones to take a political stand on gun control, but mark my words: Time has passed, the tyrants (mostly Dems) are gaining some power and quite possibly take the White House in '08. With the VT thing, we're seeing the MSM starting to do their thing again. They'll make these sorts of things into a crisis that only comprehensive gun-control can stop and when the masses start fearing guns rather than criminals, the legislative game will be on again. Within 10 years - tops - but most likely by 2010.
Oh and if that was long enough for you, I forgot to mention something else. Taking place in the context of the above things were the Ruby Ridge assault and Waco Siege. Not that the Branch Davidians or Randy Weaver were peaches, but both events had two characteristics that should have sent a chill down everyone's spine: vilifying gun owners and religious adherents...and entwining the two things. We still see the result of which in the MSM and from the mouths of leftist ideologues...remember this recent story that Michelle Malkin wrote about?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the realization of just how fast we were moving toward a police state was not just a thought held by "religious nuts", white supremacists and other assorted "whackos". My congressman at the time was John Dingell, still a very powerful man on the Hill who has never had any real competition for his seat. He's a liberal, but usually didn't tote the gun-grabber line. He ended up supporting the 93 crime bill and because of it came closest to losing an election (the Republican Party gave no help at all to his GOP challenger because they thought it would be a waste of money...it's a shame, because Dingell could have very well been ousted). But I digress, what I meant to get to was this op-ed that was written by Dingell's son.
I wonder if the author of that editorial would endorse the same kick-the-door-down tactics in service of drug enforcement laws or the war on terror.
ReplyDelete"I read that article at Jay's the other day, but didn't have time to comment."
ReplyDeleteWell Rick, at least you "have time" to comment on some people's blog, if not others.
;-)
LOL Jay. Obviously I couldn't keep my commentary on this story to a respectable volume...for crying out loud, I think I typed enough words to compete with some of Darwin's posts. Something I can only manage early on a Sunday morning lately. ;)
ReplyDelete