Posted on 02/28/2013 8:07:14 AM PST by marktwain
Long Lines into and out of Arizona Gun Show, 2013
Gun shows are centers of resistance to the nanny state. As resistance to the growing, all pervasive regulations and vague, impossible to decipher federal laws, grows in the heartland of America, gun shows offer a place where freedom is still practiced, and limits to State power are recognized.
At most gun shows, if you are not a gun dealer, you are allowed to sell your personal firearm to another person without special permission from the nanny state. The stranglehold on political speech by the MSM is not so tight, and opinions that are not tolerated on ABC, NBC or the New York Times are tolerated in reasoned discourse. Books that are not found at book stores may be bought, and most people there revere the Constitution.
Gun shows are where the new breed of principled, activist state organizations, dedicated to rolling back decades of unreasoned and illegitimate restrictions on the ownership and carrying of arms, have organized, recruited, and thrived.
Organizations such as the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), the Buckeye Firearms Association, the Arizona Citizens Defense League(AZCDL), and numerous other grass roots organizations have used the freedom of association of gun shows and the concentration of liberty loving Constitutionalists to build strong and effective state organizations. These organizations are staffed with volunteers, unlike the astroturf organizations of the anti-freedom forces, that consist of one or a handful of paid activists.
Volunteers man the table at the gun show where someone who wants to fight back against the nanny state, but who has been told, most of her life, that freedom is an ancient and outdated concept, finds an organization of like minded people who are making a difference at the state level.
It is amazing what the power of this grass roots organizing, with near instant communication through the Internet, and earlier, phone trees, has been able to accomplish. Legislators are realizing that the MSM has, and is, repeatedly lying to them about the popularity of citizen disarmament. They realize that their political careers can be put at risk by the large numbers of freedom fighters who actually vote, campaign, and pay attention. This has been how the concealed carry movement has gone from just a handful of states in the 1980’s to 50 states when Illinois joins (by court order) this summer (2013).
Few of those who wish us to regress toward an all powerful state, who without a hint of irony, call themselves “progressives” attend gun shows. They fear the concentration of freedom activists, and the ability to organize that gun shows offer.
Gun shows are centers for exercise of both the First and Second Amendments, which is why they are despised by the left.
©2013 by Dean Weingarten Permission to share granted as long as this notice is included.
Amen!
Correcto.
Free Men Need Not Ask Permission
Personal weapons, personal wealth, even traditional gender roles all represent personal power. The left loves and honors state power and hates personal power. That’s why they want your guns, they want sky-high taxes and want to destroy distinct male and female roles. They do all this because they imagine themselves as the bureaucrats in charge of state power; a state mandated elite.
Not in Massachusetts. There is essentially no difference between private sale or dealer sale.
Boy oh boy, I think I could give you about a dozen reasons why the left hates gun shows. This is a fabulous topic, IMO, well worth discussing at length.
You stated one of the more important ones; Centers of organizational energy for Constitutionalists. That’s of course a double-—they hate the Constitution, they hate the idea of “the other side” organizing for anything that isn’t what they organize for, since anyone who disagrees with them is a knuckle-dragger. All kinds of fear and revulsion there.
But there are a lot of other reasons, both subtle and profound.
Here are people exchanging their money, the fruit of their labors, for which they have exchanged their time, their finite resource. And they are choosing to trade their money (which isn’t really theirs to spend as they wish, only the highly-educated elites can conceive of societally-justified progressive avenues of spending/directing money) in an exercise of their freedom. Well that’s bordering on a trifecta. Only the elites can know who should get this odd thing called freedom; And it’s God-given...there being no such thing as God, that right simply cannot exist. And so if out of this warped sense of freedom, these folks exercising their freedom (to spend their own money and to bear arms) make the asinine choice to buy a killing tool, then those societal outcasts must be looking to kill something or someone. I mean, nobody buys a screwdriver unless they have screws to turn or paint cans to open, right? Therefore these losers must be looking, desperately, to kill as many things as they can, whenever they want. This has to be stopped at all costs! Society cannot allow this to go on! Nobody needs to kill a sweet little deer when they can 100 times easier go down to Safeway and buy a steak and it’s wrong to eat meat anyway. Why don’t these gun nuts just take their money and go buy their food at Safeway?
I could go on, but I am a little pressed for time at the moment.
Very fruitful nexus of discussion.
The natural bent of all leftists is inevitably towards the all-powerful, totalitarian state. Only approved people in the state will have firearms. The better to control the people who don’t like totalitarian states.
Did not know that, but it is one of many reasons I could not live in Mass.
“Texas is not where you were born, but a State of Heart, Mind and Attitude.” TF
The breath of freedom is terminally addictive.
and Tim McVeigh
Amen to that.
(whoops! Almost brought a religious aspect into the conversation – the Leftists would like to ban that as well)
Let’s be Blunt about it: Leftists HATE Liberty.
Don’t even get me started on the whole “Liberal” thing – the root for which is the word ‘Liberty’.
That is the Left’s first and biggest LIE – but I digress.
Leftists hate that like minded individuals get together at gun shows.
Leftists hate that individuals can buy the means to defend themselves from tyrants and criminals at these shows.
Leftists just plain HATE when people exercise Freedom and Liberty out side of their control.
It’s just what Nanny-Statists do.
Do I really need to explain why the people in such places are polite?
Gun shows have turned into the Best Buy of the firearms world. The prices are becoming so high that you go to the show ,after paying admission, to see what’s out there and to get a feel for the firearm. Then you go to an online auction and make the purchase a lot cheaper and usually sales tax not included in the sale if out of state.
Let’s be Blunt about it: Leftists HATE Liberty.
Leftist extremists hate liberty nearly as much as they hate people who refuse to surrender our freedom.
Q: Can I bring a gun to the show to sell or trade?
A: Yes, and many folks do. Please be sure the gun is unloaded before you enter the building, and take it to our gun check table at the show entry for verification. They will clear it and secure it with a nylon tie to disable the action. No loaded firearms and no loaded magazines are permitted in any Crossroads gun show. Your personal safety is our number one priority while you are at the show.
Q: Can I carry a loaded gun in the gun show? I have a Concealed Carry Permit.
A: We respectfully request that you do not bring any loaded firearm into the gun show. Safety is our Number One Priority, and a safe environment in the show can only be maintained if there are no loaded guns in the show.
They also cannot abide the truth – it almost comes naturally to them to Lie instead of being honest.
Instead of coming out and saying they cannot stand the fact that people can defend from tyrants and criminals, they came up with the ‘Assault Weapon’ Scam and it’s cousin the ‘High Capacity’ fraud to go after that right of the people.
Leftists do not hate liberty. Leftist ideology is not about liberty or freedom. It is about crime and power.
The people we see on a daily basis knocking the constitution are useful idiots. The have no clue. They are fed mush from others who have no clue. They are the sheep, being conditioned over the course of their lives to enter the slaughterhouse without knowing what is going on.
They bleat the words of their handlers because they know no better.
While they do this, the ones with true power steal from the treasury and the populace to further their own wealth and position in the global power structure.
Look at Marxism this way. It is a tool used by the powerful to keep people asleep while they steal everything not nailed down. This is why the Soviet Politburo all had dachas while their supporters fought over a role of toilet paper. Meanwhile those not involved paid for it.
Marxism is nothing more than the oath a mafia member takes.
It's simple, really. They have nothing to compete with gun shows except the possibility of White Flag/Surrender shows and those don't have nearly the same appeal as the Gun Shows!!
And it is one of the many reasons I am desperately trying to get out of this shitehole.
This is true – it’s governmental theft versus private enterprise theft.
But there is the tendency by the left to clamp down on liberty to enforce their edicts.
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