Posted on 12/07/2008 10:25:32 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
From the prospect of an incoming president and vice president with decidedly anti-gun-rights voting records, to a liberal West Coast mayor determined to ban firearms by "executive order" without benefit of city council or legislative review, American gun owners have good reason to doubt the sincerity of liberal Democrats now in control of Congress and soon to control the Oval Office, who claim to support firearm civil rights.
Far too many red flags are being waved for gun owners to take a benign posture just six months after a landmark Supreme Court ruling confirmed what they had known all along: that the Second Amendment affirms and protects a fundamental individual civil right to keep and bear arms.
President-elect Barack Obama is on record supporting gun registration, permanent renewal of the ban on "assault weapons," slapping an exorbitant increase on the federal excise tax on firearms and ammunition, and banning handguns outright. His vice president-elect, Delaware's Joe Biden, is a veteran gun-control advocate who authored the original "assault weapons" legislation.
Recently, it was revealed that prospective Obama administration employees were being asked this invasive question: "Do you or any members of your immediate family own a gun? If so, provide complete ownership and registration information. Has the registration ever lapsed? Please also describe how and by whom it is used and whether it has been the cause of any personal injuries or property damage."
Aside from demonstrating a serious ignorance of gun laws--only five states require some level of gun registration, and only in New York City and in New York's Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties is there a renewal requirement--this question suggests that gun owners, or kin of gun owners, will face anti-gun discrimination in their job search. Call it guilt by association, either with firearms or with a relative who owns one.
If this is the kind of "change" we can expect under the Obama administration, gun owners have reason to worry. The more some Democrats "change," the more they stay the same. American citizens flocked to gun shops after the election. Many of those people, ironically, were first-time gun buyers or gun owners who voted for the Chicago Democrat.
Obama reinforced gun-owner apprehension by appointing Rahm Emanuel--point man for the Clinton administration on gun-control issues--as his chief of staff. Eric Holder, his nominee for attorney general, signed an amicus brief in support of the Washington, D.C., gun ban, while arguing that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms, positions soundly rejected by the Supreme Court.
Both houses of Congress are controlled by Obama's Democratic Party, and leadership positions are occupied by devoted anti-gunners. As we detailed in our recent book, "These Dogs Don't Hunt: The Democrats' War on Guns," the party excels in pro-Second Amendment rhetoric, but labors to reduce that right to a highly regulated privilege.
This brings us around to Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle. He has promised to ban even legally-carried guns from city--make that public--property, by executive order. Nearly 250,000 Washington State residents are licensed to carry concealed handguns, and it is also legal in the Evergreen State to carry handguns openly, without a license.
Nickels was advised by the state attorney general that he lacks the authority under Washington's model pre-emption law to enact a gun ban, but he has vowed to do it anyway.
Gun owners see this as imperial arrogance, and suspect that if Nickels can ignore his own state's preemption statute, then Congress and a Democratic president might just presume to ignore the Constitution.
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Alan Gottlieb is founder of the Second Amendment Foundation. Dave Workman is senior editor of Gun Week.
The Democrats are the last people on earth to respect individual freedom or reject police excesses.
They know what most instictively understand: our right to be armed is our basic right as equal members of our own society. We are, in effect, members of our own government.
Those that will disarm us want us to have a status beneath our goverment.
People in Arizona face grabbers on one side and Zetas on the other. What does anyone expect them to do, but ruck up and load up?
Don’t count on them doing as ordered . National Guard is not regular army . When they see the resistance makes Iraq look like a tea room, they will start to think twice about weather they want to die fighting their brother Americans .
If the democrats want to go there again and lose the House, the Senate, and the White House in the future, Let the gun grabber clymers proceed.
never met anyone that’s part of the UAW have you?
their union perks tend to be more important that their gun rights.
Imagine a politician sticking his neck out to author repeal legislation, while the Bradys and Bidens crank out TV propaganda saying, "Joe Republican wants to put AK-47s back in the hands of gang members and flood the streets of your city with machine guns for drug dealers."
It will be political suicide to fight for honest Americans' rights. The influence of the MSM will ensure such laws are portrayed as "protecting our police officers" and such.
Hope you didn’t go to the Progressive commies.
And in between a lot of incoherent blathering plus drool on his chin, he said he was going to, and I quote: "Going to fight SCOTUS in court." Got that. He's going to sue the Supreme Court of the United States.
The guy is insane.
Also, the fact that a great many of those resisting (myself included) are prior military who know and understand the same military tactics that the NG would use. Most of us (myself included) possess firearms that are current design and production. It’s not like we are just bunch of farmers with old double-barreled shotguns.
I am picking up tomorrow two more “votes” of no confidence in our country staying peaceful.
“...they’ll try their best to circumvent it...”
you can bet on it.
> It’s not like we are just bunch of farmers with old
> double-barreled shotguns.
The AQ insurgency in iraq was armed with fully automatic weapons, rocket launchers, mortars, grenade launchers, and belt-fed machine guns and were highly trained in military tactics. Furthermore, they were young and suicidally dedicated to their cause.
Nevertheless, they had their heads handed to them by the American military.
Against equipment like armored vehicles, artillery, attack helicopters, close air support, bomber squadrons and predator drones, a domestic insurgency here in the States will be ruthlessly, decisively, and promptly crushed.
The thing that jumps out at me after reading your post is the assumption our military would react in a civil conflict as they do in a war beyond our shores.
They wouldn’t. Big difference between fighting in another land, and fighting among their own homes, neighborhoods, cities and states.
Second thought...there is a huge difference between an Iraqi people beaten down by a brutal dictatorship for three plus decades, that has less than 30 million citizens, and ours.
300 million Americans, more or less. 220 million firearms in private hands - minimum.
A much larger geographical area. A much wider variety of terrain.
Finally, as our Civil War demonstrated, ‘ruthlessly’ yep. But ‘decisively’? Ah, thats not what happened last time around.
‘Promptly’ is the one thats the most amusing, btw.
Then you have to recall 5% of the American population are veterans of the American Military, and all that entails.
There has never been a war like this in world history, if it were to take place, is my point. Predicting how it would be fought is impossible, and your premise is based on how OTHERS have fought against our military.
Interesting exercise when you think of all the factors involved.
I agree with Badeye on this one!!
Be Ever Vigilant!!
Our government is heavily influenced and more or less controlled by old money in Central Banking, mainly in Europe.
It should not be shocking that the American government tows the line of the very few men that control the global money supply and ability to borrow beyond a nations true means.
What may shock those in power is that we do not have to accept lordship over us, even if the cost is much to our citizenship to regain control of our destiney and little pain for these individuals for the attempt to keep us chained.
Old money in Europe has forgotten about the revolutionary war in America and the Bastille events of the French. It is probable that a larger war will be the consequence of rattling such power, with loans from the money changers provided to our national enemies in an attempt to settle us down. Good luck with that... We’re at the end of an age and the dawn of a new one. America will have it’s freedom back, but it won’t come easily.
While you're Thinking Big please remember that the possessive form of the word "it" is "its," not "it's."
Thank you.
Not all of them. Certainly there will be those who will follow those orders.
The true patriots will not.
They bleed, just as we citizens do.
Posse Comitatus or something to that effect forbids the deployment of regular military on US soil in a police action. Coast Guard is exempt but not much use out of the water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
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