“I don’t believe people should to be able to own guns.”
– Comrade Barack Obama (during conversation with economist and author John Lott Jr. at the University of Chicago Law School in the 1990s)
“When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly …. When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.”
– Comrade Bill Clinton
Happy New Year.
I often hear my collectivist friends on both the left and right either complain about the absence of weapons laws or the lack of compliance at some satrap level below the Federal government to enforce the nonsense already on the books.
The lion’s share of all laws on the books in the West are malum prohibitum laws which benefit the state and its umbilicaled corporate clients.
I’ve written on the rule of law before and the very notion that its existence is always compromised by the state’s monopoly as the sole interlocutor.
I once worked as a firearms instructor in north Idaho and the proprietor of the establishment I contracted to had a sign at the front of his gun store and range that read “no loaded firearms in store”; the sign served the dual purpose of erasing liability for firearms malpractice on the part of any customers and another charge to stack on anyone who ended up charged with something else.
The prosecutor complex in America stacks charges like hotcakes on the unwitting victims of the “just-us” system in the USSA. The majority of all crimes in the US find that the state is the sole victim especially in the Federal system where over 90% of cases are pled and the juries convict over 90% of the defendants who have the temerity to request a jury trial.
The state has a natural inclination to criminalize anything that interferes with its presumed right to rule.
Like drunk driving laws, weapons charges are a preferment created out of whole cloth to stack charges, conduct pre-crime sweeps and most importantly, demonize the private ownership of weapons.
You’ll note you will not find a single local to national disarmament entity in the US that voices concerns over the government ownership of small arms. The NRA, the nation’s most powerful gun control lobby, routinely coddles and fellates the state when they try to impose any restrictions or prohibitions on the private ownership of small arms. Scratch the surface of any firearms law in the US and examine its legislative history and you will find NRA intrigue in the drafting of the bill by the violence brokers in the halls of government.
The NRA has never sponsored a single proposal to limit the government ownership of weapons but has done so to infringe private small arms ownership again and again.
The Grand Old Politburo has fought this same fight against private small arms ownership that the Democrats have. Since that essay was published we have seen the GOP fail to pass suppressor deregulation and endorse the nonsensical notion of banning bump stocks, among other things.
I would also ager that like national socialist healthcare, the GOP only votes to diminsh or destroy national weapons control laws when there is zero chance of passage.
And no, a Federal national reciprocity law for discreet carry is not in the interest of private small arms ownership. Even the JPFO is getting this wrong. Whatever the FedGod grants, it can take away. The states rights issue alone is frightful.
No law is. Ever.
There are a variety of reasons all states despise the private ownership of small arms. [I employ the term small arms to include all weapons that can be employed to include shoulder-fired munitions, grenades and other destructive devices].
Many government supremacists are simply uncomfortable with the notion of human self-defense at the atomistic level absent state permission to do so. Like the government school system, learned helplessness creates permanent statist clients. We see this in everything from the lowest economic strata to the corporate boardroom.
Conservatives tend to be instinctive “rule of law” sycophants who are a curious hybrid of Romans 13 idolaters and Constitutional fetishists who believe that no parchment can be indecorous enough to enable larger government. The history proves them violently wrong.
Criminals break laws for a living and in the two-tier “just-us” system in the US, the nomenklatura has special dispensation to quite literally get away with mass corruption and murder, witness the Clinton kakocratic crime cabal and its FBI posse.
The edifice of “pre-crime law” in America has a storied past and sordid results for all who care to examine it.
Weapons laws no more deter criminals of every stripe than any of the other laws on the books. The more economically disadvantaged the “criminal” ensnared in the gulag system the more likely it will end up in dire straits. Even the JFA Institute, an anti-incarceration advocacy group, estimates 3 percent of violent or property crimes offenders end up in prison. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), in 2004 only 1.6 percent of burglars were in prison.
So if the government coproach has no duty to protect the individual, isn’t a prohibition or restriction on private small arms ownership a Catch-22 proposition? The state steps in and indemnifies its uniformed thugs against any obligation to protect the Helots it exsanguinates to pay for the protection and then strips the subjects of most means of effective self-protection?
And now we see case after case where the American coproach will shoot anyone on sight who either has a gun or appears to have a weapon.
Think about that; in the land of the free, your possession of a weapon in hand when answering the door to your house can be a death penalty imposed by the government agent at the door. The ease with which the state thug can deal maiming and death with not so much as a day in a cage is at severe odds with any non-badged American who dares to defend themselves in a genuine life or death situation.
And the death of a cop as far as a case closure rate far exceeds the 3% mentioned above. Even if the alleged malefactor is innocent.
So my point is elegantly simple, the next time you hear a government supremacist claim not only should there be a law but there should be a prohibition, remember the violence this individual is visiting upon you.
There is no body of legitimate weapons law that recognizes a concomitant absolute private ownership standard. Remember that the usual suspects are always looking for the magic bullet through legislation, administrative fiat or judicial usurpation to limit or eliminate private weapons ownership.
Parity with the governing body’s ability to employ small arms should not be less in the private sector.
If you give a dime to any “gun rights” organization doing special pleading with the owners of the tax plantation and they help craft legislation and not eliminate laws and statutes, they are the king’s men and don’t give a rat’s ass about individual and private small arms ownership.
Exhibit A is the 1934 NFA, 1938 FFA, 1939 US v. Miller, 1967 Mulford Act (CA), 1968 OCC & SSA and GCA, 1986 FOPA, Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, Gun-Free School Zones Act (1990), Brady Act (1993), AWB (1994), on and on and on.
Every one of these infringements is legally stamped and approved by the Federal government tentacled agencies and robed government employees.
Every one of these infringements is an abridgement of your de jour and de facto right to defend you and yours.
Every one of these would have been a sufficient causus belli for the festivities at Lexington Green on 19 April 1775 and every one of these is a violation of the intent and spirit of the Declaration of Independence for which the Constitution was the tombstone.
All of them.
“The Declaration of Independence, whether penned by Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine, is as elegant a jeremiad against tyranny as has been written. The relationship between the Declaration and the Constitution is the same as the one between the crucifix and the vampire. One cannot be consonant with the other because their aspirations are antithetical to the opposing aspirant. As the brilliant Lysander Spooner would opine: “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”
Resist, Rinse. Repeat.
“The measures adopted to restore public order are: First of all, the elimination of the so-called subversive elements …. They were elements of disorder and subversion. On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind. This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results.”
– Benito Mussolini
“Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”
– Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC
*Yes, that is Jack HInson in the photo above.
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If I feel the need to carry – open or concealed – I am the only one to make that decision. I take no advice or so called law into account.
Please expand on the idea of ‘Romans 13 idolatry’ As a Lutheran Christian I am interested on your take on Romans 13. The Apostle Peter in 1Peter 2:13 urges submission to ‘every authority instituted by men’ Am interested on your take on that Scripture
Patrick,
Read Romans 12 first as a preamble.
We also have to ask ourselves, does God endorse all governments no matter how murderous and unjust [I repeat myself]? Does this mean the divorce from the UK in 1775 was disobedience to God?
I am not a Christian but I find Engel’s analysis compelling. As pro-life from conception, my being forced to fund infanticide can’t be any loving God’s imperative.
The Bible never gives the role of government a right to monopolize its own function and yet the State by definition monopolizes the role of government and declares itself to be the final arbitrator of all conflicts, even conflicts involving itself. This is absurd. Natural (God’s) laws must be enforced, and yet this does not necessarily lead to the existence of a Federal Government no more than it leads to the existence of a world government. There is no Biblical reason to say that the Constitution was a better system than the Articles of Confederation; and empirically, it turns out that the anti-federalists like Patrick Henry were right to prefer a looser confederation over a more centralized Union. Is a State-level government too big? Depends on whether the counties, and subsequently towns, want to secede. God has given no government, at any level, the right of monopoly. The beauty of the free market is that it provides a check and balance. If a government body becomes the enemy of free property rights, another governing body may challenge it. This principle is even consistent with a property-rights order (absence of a State –but note the difference between a role [government] and an institution [the State]) as developed by Murray Rothbard in his later years and Hans-Hermann Hoppe in his obliteration of democracy and “public” (socialized) government services.
https://reformedlibertarian.com/articles/theology/romans-13/
Patrick, I have often pondered God’s intent as per Rom 13, but find that in the Bible we are taught to suffer injustice, but that He will lead us out of oppression. It is ours to reflect and pray for guidance to know who shall be our Moses.
Bill, TL, thanks for your thoughtful replies. As a Christian I have long struggled with the tension between yearning for freedom and a just society and submitting myself to obviously crooked and evil ‘authorities.’ It doesn’t take a degree in Astrophysics to see there is a fight coming, and some ugly days ahead. Keep up the good work , gentlemen. Thanks for what you guys do.
Is that the same Jack Hinson from between the rivers? He’s a legend ’round these parts. 600 yard kills with a muzzle loader. He had entire troop ships attempt to surrender to just himself.
DixieDennis
Happy New Year, Bill.
Thank you for speaking truth to power!
Tom 762
The desire/compulsion to control the lives and property of others is the root of all evil. It is the root of all non-voluntary government, all aggression.
Unfortunately, far too many individuals (not just politicians and bureaucrats) think that they can control the lives of others, either by direct action or via the non-voluntary government. This, ultimately, has to change before individual liberty can flourish. I don’t know how to do that…
Great write up. One of the best I have ever read! Thank you!
It is New Years Day. I need a dose of reality and truth. Thanks Bill. You never disappoint.
“Weapons no more deter criminals of every stripe than any of the other laws on the books.”
I think that should read “Weapons LAWS…”
The D of I comparison to CONstitution – to whom would that be attributed?
thanks!
Fixed! Thanks, itor…
I did a good bit of pro-gun letter writing during the 1966/1967 run-up to the 1968 GCA. After watching for results for a few years I began asking, “What gun control law has ever helped to reduce the rate of violent crimes where firearms were involved?”
I’ve yet to hear any sort of rational answer, and not even a few irrational screeds.
I want to state up front that I understand the wording I am posting below….but I also asked 27 people at a meeting this afternoon to read your article….i printed it out….and asked each one what these words meant and no one had a clue! They all felt like the content was pertinent and well written that they were being talk down to and less likely to read anything else you published!
Do you use a litany of unfamiliar rarely used words to stroke your ego? There is no good reason to do this when the English language has a sufficient pool of options to make your point clear to everyone.
I could, at this time, easily add a few words that I am certain you would have to look up to know what they meant but to what gain would that be….you know that you are seriously stretching the use of uncommon language to make yourself look a bit smarter that your followers!
This is only the major list as you also used a few others that could be a smaller stretch for some of your readers but this list is totally uncalled for in this simple article you wrote!
Satrap, interlocutor, temerity, fellates, ager, atomistic, indecorous, kakocratic, exsanguinates, concomitant, causus belli
That does not work, it makes you look a bit small as you talk down to the masses!
Mr. Tetreault
Yea it was way too complicated for a government educated idiot like me to read. I too will go polish my yoke and then go back to sleep in the more comfortable arms of my masters. This author should understand that the average American subject wants the low hanging fruit. I too felt the author was condescending to the stupid people. As a stupid American I will cut my face off to spite my nose so don’t tempt me.
You should understand when someone is truly stupid everything seems like it’s condescending. I would do more like “run spot run see how spot runs”.
Mr. Tetreault,
If the full use of the English language at our disposal offends you, then why bother reading it?
My blog bears the same price for you as the value of your comment.
To quote the great Dr. Richard Feynman:
Doubting the great Descartes … was a reaction I learned from my father: Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, “Is it reasonable?”
Cordially,
Bill Buppert
One of the joys i take away from Bill’s writing is his full use of the english language. Some words express complete ideas better than others. Learn another language and you’ll find words/inflection we simply don’t have in english. Of course, the worst case scenario is that i may have to break out the dictionary and learn something. Keep up the good work!
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