Opinion: From my cold dead hands
Thursday, March 12, 2009
By Bob Stuart
“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
– Edward Abbey
The anticipated assault on our Second Amendment rights by the Obama administration and its fellow travelers in Congress is coming. It’s an attack not only on our inalienable right to self-defense, but also on the very foundation of freedom.
Attorney General Eric Holder recently announced the administration’s intent to ban so-called “assault weapons” – a politically charged misnomer that demonizes a class of semiautomatic rifles that thousands of Americans use for plinking, hunting and self-defense.
Unbelievably, his excuse for banning them is to reduce violence – in Mexico. So, American citizens must be disarmed to curb the violence of Mexican drug lords. Preposterous!
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Holder also supported the handgun ban in Washington, D.C. Residents there were defenseless in the face of violent crime until the ban was overturned by a federal appeals court in 2007. The case came before the Supreme Court in 2008, which upheld the federal appeals court ruling, finding the ban unconstitutional.
If Holder wanted all handguns banned in D.C., it’s reasonable to conclude he’d like to see them banned nationwide. But unlike the D.C. ban, the attacks on our gun rights will be more subtle and piecemeal.
These include licensing handgun owners, federal gun registration, a BATF record of every firearm sale, and checking prospective gun buyers against secret “watch lists.” Holder supports all these measures, as do certain members of Congress.
In January, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) introduced H.R. 45: Blair Holt’s Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009. This legislation would make purchasing a firearm a nightmare. Lawrence G. Keane, Senior Vice-President/General Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation complained, “This bill treats citizens who exercise their civil liberties like criminals.”
“Several provisions in this bill would make compliance nearly impossible. For instance, the bill spells out that if a firearm license holder fails to notify the Attorney General of an address change within 60 days, that person would be subject to a 5-year prison term and a fine up to $250,000,” said NRA spokesperson Rachel Parsons.
Let’s get something straight. These gun control measures are not aimed at criminals, but at law-abiding citizens. Criminals, by definition, don’t obey the law. They obtain their guns illegally, and could give a damn about registering them. No, these laws will only leave honest citizens defenseless and at the mercy of violent criminals. They strike at the heart of our inalienable right to self-defense.
Our Founding Fathers warned of more pernicious motives for disarming the populace. They were well aware of the threat of government tyranny – they had recently fought a revolution to escape it. They knew the greatest threat to freedom was government itself, and that only an armed populace (and the chains of the Constitution) could restrain it.
They wrote voluminously on the subject, and their words of warning echo through history. I quote Thomas Jefferson: “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
Unfortunately, we’ve been conditioned to believe that government is benign and has our best interests at heart. We’ve forgotten that liberty must be jealously guarded and government power constrained.
Many of our freedoms and civil liberties were violated by the Bush regime, and there’s no end in sight under Obama. The power and scope of government will continue to grow under his administration.
It’s time to draw a line in the sand. The Second Amendment states: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The line must be drawn there. PJH
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