At its core, the anti-gun movement is about controlling what you and I can possess for not just defending ourselves but our nation. Sure, the standing military is the first line of defense, but they’re ultimately beholden to the government itself, and while every man and woman who has served has sworn to defend the Constitution, our Founding Fathers weren’t exactly trusting of a standing army’s ability to adhere to such an oath.
Anti-gunners apparently think that our government not just won’t become tyrannical, but apparently can’t become any such thing. Otherwise, they’d at least admit there are grounds to be concerned.
Yet we know all too well that tyranny is only a generation away if we’re not careful. Look around and see where we are and what a lot of people are quite explicit in their desires to do. They want to restrict not just our gun rights, but all of our rights.
Which brings me back to gun control and anti-gunners.
Right now, they’re targeting the AR-15 and similar rifles. They’re pushing a narrative that it’s essential we ban such weapons if we want to reduce so-called gun violence.
One of the more popular proposals out there is Sen. Angus King’s GOSAFE Act, and over at the NRA’s America’s 1st Freedom, they take a look at the proposal.
Prior attempts to ban “assault weapons” have focused on semi-automatic long guns with detachable magazines and one or more alleged “military-style” features, such as pistol grips, flash suppressors or adjustable stocks. The “innovative” approach taken by the GOSAFE Act, by contrast, is simply to ban “gas-operated semi-automatic firearms” as a class, subject to various (sometimes unintelligible) exceptions. The bill also bans magazines with a capacity of 11 rounds or greater, as well as any part or accessory that could transform a non-banned gun into a banned gun or that “materially increases” a gun’s “rate of fire.”
Because it is impossible to determine the bill’s scope or meaning on its face, it would empower the government (ATF, specifically) to determine not only what guns the bill bans retrospectively, but also what “semi-automatic” firearms could be marketed to “civilians” in the first place. The U.S. government has never claimed such sweeping authority over the private firearms market. But the bill goes even further, allowing gun-control activists to file lawsuits to have even government-approved firearms banned by court decree.
Illustrating the bill’s true priorities, it would additionally allow federal grants that currently fund law-enforcement agencies with crime-fighting efforts to be repurposed into bribing Americans to surrender newly banned guns to the government.
In short, the GOSAFE Act would empower the government, gun-control activists and politically minded judges to determine what sort of repeating firearms could be made, imported, sold and possessed in America, and to imprison anyone who ran afoul of their dictates. That may be an “innovative” gun-control approach, but it serves the same old purpose: banning firearms and punishing otherwise law-abiding people for having them.
Yet here’s the galling thing about this: Anti-gunners think this is a reasonable compromise. They think this is an innovative approach that doesn’t come close to an assault weapon ban.
They’re right that it’s not close to a ban, but that’s because it goes so far beyond what we’ve seen in the past.
The GOSAFE Act would be the most restrictive gun control law in the world to the best of my knowledge. Other nations restrict what civilians can own, but this would restrict what can even be made. It would retroactively ban millions of firearms purchased lawfully and never used for an illegal purpose.
Meanwhile, it would have no real impact on violent crime, which is the real issue in this country as opposed to mass shootings.
It would also permanently set the United States down the road to tyranny.
In almost every other nation, anti-gun restrictions have preceded regulations on things like free speech. Look at the UK, where people are arrested for praying in the wrong place or making dark jokes. While these aren’t the most horrific infringements imaginable–look at Russia, another anti-gun nation, for even more examples–they’re still a lot further down the road of tyranny than we are.
I maintain that the reason is that UK officials don’t really have to worry about the people rising up to resist. So long as they’re targeting the right people, most folks will be happy to see tyranny inflicted on others.
The GOSAFE Act would be the step in that direction, restricting just about everything we currently own with regard to firearms, and it would lay the groundwork for a future where anything more advanced than what we saw at the OK Corral is illegal.
It simply can’t be tolerated and we all know it.
