Spokesman-Review editorialist Shawn Vestal published an opinion piece today, entitled, “Study: Criminals easily skirt law buying guns online.”

Like most firearms-related pieces in the progressive media, it was editorially dishonest. Vestal’s “study” came from Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown, which has been nailed time and again for fabrication and exaggeration by even left-aligned sources such as CNN and Politifact.

Vestal fabricates a “black market”—a simple term he either simply doesn’t understand how to use, or is intentionally using dishonestly—within the relatively transparent world of online gun sales, asserting that if Washington’s Initiative 594 passes, crimes with firearms will somehow diminish the ability of determined criminals to acquire firearms.

I-594 will not affect violent criminals, but it will assault the rights of law abiding citizens… by design.

I wrote a response in the comments of the article to Mr. Vestal’s piece that capture my thoughts on I-594, and what it really represents.

262 million people were slaughtered by their own governments in the 20th century alone. The term for this is “democide.”

In each and every one of these instances of democide, the citizenry was first required to register their firearms. The registration inevitably led to confiscation, and after the party in power had removed the citizenry’s means of resisting government force–their firearms–there was no way to stop the slaughter of the groups that the party then in power felt were “undesirable.”

Think about that for a moment. 262 million people murdered by their own governments in just a century. This doesn’t include wars between nations. These were mass murders of citizens by their governments.

I’m sure that you think, “but it can’t happen here.”

If you volunteer to give up your arms, what is to stop it?

I-594 is part of a national push by aligned progressive groups that would like to see “universal background checks” mandated nationwide to serve as a de facto national gun registry. Historically speaking, gun registries have almost always been used within a generation–often within the same decade–for the confiscation of some or all firearms. This is the goal of these groups, and some have been honest enough in unguarded moments to admit this openly.

When the Founders agitated for the Bill of Rights to constrain the power of the federal government, they insisted on documenting the existing natural right of citizens to own weapons of contemporary military utility for self-defense against enemies foreign and domestic. This documentation of that existing natural right is the Second Amendment.

Even in their time, citizens had unlimited access to hand grenades, rockets, cannon, mortars, howitzers, auto-cannon, early machine guns (George Washington tried convince Congress to purchase them for the army) and rifles with 21-round detachable magazines (Thomas Jefferson purchased two of these, and sent one west with Lewis & Clark). The only people disarmed were the slaves and the mentally ill.

Supporters of I-594 would like to see Americans disarmed like slaves yet again, and it is no accident that the richest and the most powerful are spending millions to strip you of your rights, “for your safety.”

An old kite-flyer one remarked that, “Those who give up essential liberty to gain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty, nor safety.”

Mr. Franklin was a smart man.

Another Founder, Samuel Adams, once remarked,

“If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

Choose to live as free men, or choose to live as willing slaves.

The choice is yours. Posterity will either praise you or curse you for what you have chosen to do with their liberty.

In contrast to I-594 is Initiative 591, which protects gun rights, and which supported by law enforcement instead of meddling billionaires that would like to disarm you even as they buy Nazi tanks.

Make your choice wisely, Washington.