Saturday, January 26, 2013

 

Fabian Gun Control

Although Brit jerk Piers Morgan was less successful at bullying the former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (Piers and Newt? what's with first names nowadays?) than he was with the pro-AR 15 young women, he has revealed his and what we fear is the federal government's plan for overcoming the Heller and McDonald cases and rendering the 2nd Amendment as useless as the 9th and 10th have become. It's based on the Fabian Socialists. No, not the 50s singer, Fabian Maximus of the Roman republic. I mean the Fabian Society, socialists who wanted to change the British semi-capitalist market system into full blown socialism through incrementally small changes over time. This has been the blueprint of the successful leftward bending of the political trajectory in the United States. So it should work with gun control/increased federal government power. In a way, it already has.

Piers Morgan's tactic, in the larger strategy, is to ask if you're OK with the ban on fully automatic weapons. It's a bullshit question, because there is no such ban for 70,000 grandfathered weapons and an unknown number of "dealer samples," but I'm already too deep in the regulatory weeds here. The 1934 law (the National Firearms Act) required a $200 transfer stamp for legal ownership of a full auto weapon, etc., and a background check and, with personal not corporate ownership, the OK of the local police authority. When the law was passed $200 exceeded the value of nearly every gun the act regulated. This restriction, not ban, was followed up with a 1968 ban on importing any more foreign full auto guns; and then in 1986, the private ownership of any full auto weapon was banned unless grandfathered. Of course the police and sheriffs departments and apparently any branch of the federal government, can have as many new full auto guns as they (that is, we) can afford. That series of laws created a set number of ownable, transferable full auto weapons and the law of supply and demand has caused the price of these weapons to outperform gold, because the supply was limited but the demand, not so much.

So, there is no full ban. I'm OK with the '34 law now (there have been but two crimes committed with a transferable full auto weapon in the 77 plus years of the act--a successful program under anyone's definition of success); but I hate and wish they would repeal the '68 and '86 laws or declare them unconstitutional, which they are. But back to Piers and Newt. So Piers then sets the hook with a concession that the historical series of laws was OK because the weapons (the full autos--not the short shotguns and rifles, etc.) were so dangerous they needed controlling. And they were dangerous he asserts because of the rate of fire full auto weapons can achieve--between 4 and 20 rounds a second, and more than that with the M 61Vulcan and other modern Gatling style guns. Then Piers equates to the full auto weapons the semi auto weapons with large magazines which he says can achieve a one and 2/3s round per second rate of fire, a hundred rounds in a minute. The semi auto guns can have that rate of fire, but it is not only the mean looking military styled tame version of the actual military assault rifles that can do so, nearly all semi-auto weapons can do it. I'm not sure but I believe I can get off 100 non-aimed rounds from a Glock 17 (which would require 5 magazine changes) in a minute. I might be able to do it with a Walther PPK (which would require 14 magazine changes), one of the few semi auto pistols still legal in New York. Oops, once more in the weeds. So you have to be OK, says Piers, with banning that rate of fire because it is nearly the same as the OK-to-ban full auto weapons and besides you don't need that rate of fire for anything the 2nd Amendment actually protects. Not so, but this is getting long already.

But, as Newt points out to Piers, there is no logical reason to ban some semi-auto weapons for a 1.67 rounds per second rate of fire when nearly all semi auto weapons can achieve that same rate of fire. But Piers says semi auto pistols are OK, but the mean looking rifles are not OK. Newt suspects, as do all Patriots, that the proposed, illogical gun ban is merely a Fabian first incremental step, which it nearly certainly has to be.

Which is why we gun owners oppose any further banning, any further registering, any more bureaucratic an asking for permission of the government to exercise our 2nd Amendment rights and God given right to self defense. We've see the left use the Fabian strategy before. We know what's next.

My fervent hope is that this gun control nonsense causes another decimation of Senate and House Democrats in the next midterm elections, just as it did in 1994. Then gun ownership will be safe from further infringement for another generation.

UPDATE: Diomedes sent me an article praising the tête-à-tête between Newt and Piers as reasonable line drawing on both sides. D thinks I am costing the Republicans votes (like the pro-lifers) by being so rigid in my support of the true purpose of the Second Amendment (I think "being necessary to the security of a free state" is the real purpose, not sport shooting (as the President claims to do often) or self defense from criminals). D argues no reasonable person could countenance the private ownership of an atomic bomb (yeah, like the governments have been super good with their monopolies) and once you admit that, or any infringement, such as background checks (as I do), then it is merely a matter of where to draw the line between military only and civilian use. This line drawing he says is a political matter which can change with the times. I say no. Political decisions to alter our God given rights, or more particularly the Bill of Rights limits on the government, are unconstitutional and profoundly unAmerican. The rights cannot exist only at the emotional whim of the mob through their representatives. 

The First Amendment uses the word "abridge" regarding freedom of speech and the press. The Second Amendment uses the word "infringe." Which word carries the harsher prohibition? "Abridge" I submit, means to substantially change, as the abridged version of a book or article has been substantially changed, usually merely shortened, but censored in some way even if its only for the politically neutral effect of making it fit a time frame or fit on a set number of paper pages. "Infringe" on the other hand as a prohibition means don't even touch it, and it conveys the subtext that even the slightest change is an infringement. Funny how, historically, the First Amendment short list of speech and the press gets the kid gloves treatment while, until Heller, it was apparently OK completely to neuter the right of the people to keep and bear arms through outright bans on gun ownership. Well, maybe not so funny.

I'm with Barry Goldwater that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. If that makes me and the party I belong to unpopular (as it appears to have made Goldwater unpopular), then we'll be unpopular. I, however, seek to serve the truth--hang popularity. The federal government cannot prevent in any way my ownership and use of any firearm (not Atomic Bomb) I choose to own, because it is citizen ownership of the weapons we choose that is necessary to the security of a free state, that is the counterbalance to government oppression the framers included in the Constitution because of an unfounded (thank God) fear of the danger to liberty a large, standing military force historically presented.

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