For most of my time here at Bearing Arms, I’ve gotten remarkably little criticism. Oh, some comments take issue with stuff I say, which is normal, but very little of it went beyond that. I had some folks who thought I was too hard on the deputy who refused to enter Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, but that’s been about it.

What criticism I did get, though, tended to be respectful and meant to engender discussion rather than just telling me I’m scum.

Until this week.

This week, I wrote a story about a man who sentenced for selling illegal machine guns.

Many people took issue with me over this, including a few that blew up my PMs on Facebook to call me everything but a decent human being. It seems I’m a “libtard snowflake” because I believe laws should be enforced, even if I disagree with those laws.

You see, for all of those disgusting attacks, including a few that may have been alluding to violence, no one bothered to ask why I supported the National Firearms Act and felt it was constitutional. I figured I’d go ahead and address that for anyone who may have wondered, though.

I don’t.

That’s right. I think the NFA is an unconstitutional pile of junk not worth the paper it’s printed on. I want to see the Supreme Court repeal it and all other gun control laws in this country and any decision from the Court short of that regarding guns and gun control is, in my mind, an affront to the Constitution.

Then why am I willing to see a man be sentenced to 18 months in prison for breaking what I believe to be an unconstitutional law?

The answer to that is that I believe the laws on the book need to be enforced, even if they’re wrong. They need to be enforced until they’re no longer on the books. By arguing that unconstitutional laws shouldn’t be followed–an argument I understand completely–you open the door for people to make that same argument about any number of other subjects.

Some might make the case that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly give the federal government power over immigration, only naturalization, so immigration laws should be ignored. The same can be said of drug laws. In fact, you could probably find a whole lot of laws that someone thinks are unconstitutional that you happen to agree with.

By taking a position of believing laws I disagree with should be enforced, I can’t be hit with hypocrisy charges when I blast someone for supporting people ignoring laws they think are unconstitutional. In my line of work, that matters.

Does the fact that we private, law-abiding citizens are essentially barred from owning machine guns without our masters’ permission bother me? Oh, you’d better believe it. I don’t even like having to fill out a Form 4473 to buy a gun, for crying out loud. We are citizens, not subjects, so we should be able to buy any weapon we want. Hell, a law-abiding citizen with a rocket launcher is a threat to no one, but a violent man with a rock is still a danger to everyone. We should be free to buy what we want so long as we have the money.

But I’m not going to cry because someone who built a machine gun in his backyard, knowing it was against the law, went out and tried to sell them and got busted by the ATF. I’m fully capable of being fine with his arrest–that brand of stupid should be penalized anyway–while still wanting the law he’s guilty of breaking repealed. That’s because it’s true.