Posted on 01/03/2013 7:07:37 AM PST by SeekAndFind
There is a New Year stampede developing that we have not seen for a long time.
Gun stores are swamped with panicking customers. They are looking for handguns, semiautomatic rifles, and as much ammunition as they can afford. But buyers are not just camouflaged hunters, conspiracy theorists, and gun hoarders. Instead, many of those purchasing firearms and ammo are so-called ordinary people, convinced that this administration will soon begin to centrally register — and then ban — far more than assault rifles.
There were probably lots of reasons why Adam Lanza shot 26 innocent children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. But so far the government and media are not focusing much on his prior obsessions with violent video games, on society’s seeming inability to hospitalize the unstable, or on the crude violence peddled in Hollywood and through popular music that portrays shooting people as a sort of cheap fantasy without consequences.
Instead, the administration is zeroing in on the ability of Lanza’s mother to legally buy semiautomatic weapons that her son then stole to murder her and the schoolchildren and employees. The result is a pandemic of fear that the Second Amendment will be reinterpreted and redefined as never before.
With the resolution of the fiscal cliff, taxes on those who make more than $400,000 are going to rise considerably as they will revert to the Clinton-era rates. But this time the landscape is radically different.
There will not be much deficit reduction and certainly no balanced budgets, adding insult to injury for those who must pay the government far more.
The new, higher rates come on top of state-income-tax hikes in much of the country — all in addition to further increases in capital-gains taxes, new Obamacare taxes, and much steeper inheritance taxes. The result is not just a 3 percent to 5 percent increase on the well-off, but for some payers aggregate hikes of 7 percent to 8 percent or even more.
No wonder many companies are rushing to pay dividends now to beat rising capital-gains-tax rates. Likewise, many individuals are considering expensive new life-insurance policies to protect their heirs from losing small farms and businesses to steep new federal estate taxes. Red states will attract even more refugees fleeing high-tax and near-insolvent blue states.
Most Americans are already seeing their health-insurance premiums shoot up in anticipation of the 2014 federal takeover of health care. To pay for the vast Obamacare programs — whose details still remain a mystery for most — money will be raised in all sorts of bizarre ways, from reducing Medicare coverage to taxing new medical devices and some drug makers.
A sense of foreboding hangs over the currently insured. Almost everyone is unsure whether the new federal statutes will still cover currently covered procedures — or whether they will be rationed or curtailed altogether. Expect many people to schedule check-ups and major medical procedures in 2013 before Obamacare kicks in.
There is a common denominator that underlies all this multifaceted uncertainty. Fairly or not, there is a sense that those who played by the rules and did well have instead done something wrong, or at least are under suspicion — and it is now time for their government to seek atonement from them. Worse still is the dread that the government’s new policies and taxes will not solve problems but may make them worse and prompt even more government engineering.
For the law-abiding gun owner, the federal government may make it more difficult to buy legal arms — even though there is little evidence that gun restrictions per se have stopped shootings, and some evidence that states with lots of armed citizens have lower crime rates. If the semiautomatic-rifle ban does not work, what gun will be banned next to stop violence?
Most well-off taxpayers add up their local, state, federal, payroll, and capital-gains taxes and feel they really have paid their “fair share.” They all know that handing over more won’t solve the fiscal crisis, but instead will only empower more government deficit spending. If new taxes won’t stop deficits, what’s next?
Finally, those who budgeted and provided their own health insurance feel that the new restrictions and higher taxes on their coverage are the costs of subsidizing many who could have bought, but chose not to buy, their own health insurance.
The ability of citizens to protect their households, to keep at least half their earnings safe from various government taxes, and to use their own judgment in making health-care decisions is central to a free people. No wonder the fear that a radically growing government will infringe on such traditional freedoms is stampeding millions of panicky Americans in all directions.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta.
I could be very wrong on this matter, but I don't look for a near repeat of the Waco Siege of FEB-APR 1993 by the ATF, FBI, and Texas National Guard. Of course, all that ammo Uncle Sugar bought in 2012 makes me very suspicious.
How did the Aussies, Brits, and Canucks oversee their firearm surrenders during the mid-1990s?
More than likely it will be decreed by the federal government that any/all privately-owned firearms must be surrendered by a declared date. After that, the federal government would identify gun owners by …
1. referring to the 1934 National Firearm Act (NFA) registry to find those who legally own machine guns.
2. referring to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to identify those who legally purchased any firearm.
3. using the U.S. Postal Service to identify NRA members by the mailing labels on their monthly magazines.
4. encouraging journalists to search the public data bases for concealed-carry pistol permit holders and divulging them for the public good (like those a__-holes from The News Journal up in Westchester County, NY, did in DEC 2012 after the Newtown Massacre).
5. mandating physicians to divulge the medical records of patients who voluntarily listed on their personal data forms that they have a firearm(s) in the house.
6. utilize the Patriot Act and Executive Orders decreed by BHO to control/search/shut down the internet to identify firearm owners just like they hunt Islamic terrorists.
7. implement a program where-by citizens can report their known gun-owner neighbors.
Simultaneously the federals will …
1. revoke all federal firearm licenses (FFL) to lawfully terminate firearm and ammunition transactions.
2. close all public shooting ranges on federal properties and terminate the right to hunt on all federal properties.
Immediate federal enforcement methods which would be applied to those identified firearm owners who have not complied with the turn-in date would include methods currently in use by the IRS when it pursues delinquent tax-payers …
1. freezing of bank accounts
2. seizing any employer health insurance benefits
3. suspension of ObamaCare access
4. denial of access to your 401-k/ IRA assets
5. suspension of Social Security benefits
Subsequent federal enforcement pressure will be applied to the states by threatening state governments (and in particular county sheriff departments) with suspension of federal subsidies, e.g. Medicaid, road maintenance funds, etc. There are 30 Republican governors entering 2013. It remains to be seen how many, if any, would stand up against BHO should he get his gun ban.
Methods by the federals to further identify firearm owners would include …
1. mandating that state licensing authorities, e.g., county sheriff’s department, submit their concealed-carry pistol permit registries to the federal government.
2. mandating state licensing authorities, e.g., agricultural department, submit their hunting license registries to the federal government.
Methods by the federals to force non-compliers would include …
1. lien on your properties, e.g., home, automobile, etc.
2. suspension of credit cards
3. suspension of driver’s license
4. suspension of any work license, e.g., contractors, doctors, etc.
What else? It appears to me Uncle Sugar can put the financial squeeze on a majority of citizens to force them to surrender their firearms without sending federal brownshirts door-to-door.
Because they might be bored. Why do you think?
I emailed Armalite yesterday and they replied that they couldn’t give me a definitive date on when it would be in. I talked to Bushmaster about an MOE .308 and they said 2-3 months. I think I would prefer an Armalite AR10 carbine but that MOE .308 looks to be very well made as well and they seem to have a better feel for lead times. I’ve never had any problems with guns from either manufacturer either.
I meant to ask if in this age of cynicism if there COULD be some in our government or other Americans who would stoop to engineering a tragedy of killing very young childern just to further an agenda.
..we absolutely know that they will do a F&F "operation" where only several hundred Mexicans and only ONE American(that we know of) were killed. Out of the several hundred Mexicans, nobody knows how many children were caught up in the killing.
....so if Holder's AG people seem to have no problem with killing Mexicans AND one American Border agent, how long of a step would it be for a real ideological, agenda driven lunatic to take to raise the level of outrage to the roof?
God, I would hope no one would even think of such a thing in our Country.
But you know that all thru history there have been such lunatics. In some of our lifetimes, Mr. Hitler, Mr Stalin, Mr. Pol Pot and the Chechnyan rebels(who killed school children in Russia) comes to mind. They all did the equivalent and exact act of barging into a school and killing children...every one to further their agenda.
As I said God, please not make it so.....especially here in America..
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