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 admit it. I bought one for the first time.
I’m trying to by a new 7.62 semi-auto. No luck at all so far.
Vote with your $.
Buy hard goods as inflation hedge.
If bed breaks, mattress won’t hit the ground, but may be a little hard.
It was the corrupt MSM that elected and then floated Bill Clinton. It was the corrupt MSM that prevented information about Obama from causing him political damage and thus enabling him to be elected. It was the corrupt MSM that reelected Obama despite the abject misery.
Coupled with a nation of people who have absolutely no spiritual and moral foundation and you have a people who believe anything pop culture pitches them.
Unless there is a spiritual revival of huge proportions in this land we are doomed.
.....but did not Sandy Hook come along at the most convenient time for this administration?...right on the heels of F&F?....it has to be a coincidence since there is NOBODY who would engineer such a tragedy just to further an agenda......
.....or is there?
When they come for the guns, and that will be sooner, I think, than later, the decision will have been made to sovietize the USA completely and things will move very quickly. The killings and disappearances will begin and targeted famines. George W Kerensky has been followed by Barrack Hussein Lenin. The guns will be confiscated when the military has been satisfactorily neutralized which operation is probably well under weigh.
Seemingly, every department's reason for existence is to expand itself. To finance this expansion, fedgov is borrowing 40 cents of every dollar it spends. Most of this money is borrowed from the Federal Reserve, in essense fedgov borrows from fedgov to finance fedgov. This will not end well. Am I missing something?
The Illinois legislature is poised to take away all modern guns, including those that were grandfathered in, from registered gun owners.
The government plans to seize them one way or the other.
I did my part yesterday.
Subject: thinking on your feet
Tim decided to tie the knot with his long time girlfriend. One evening, after the honeymoon, he was assembling some loads for an upcoming hunt.
His wife was standing there at the bench watching him. After along period of silence she finally speaks. “Honey, I’ve been thinking, now that we are married I think it’s time you quit hunting, shooting, handloading, and fishing. Maybe you should sell your guns and boat.”
Tim gets this horrified look on his face.
She says, “Darling, what’s wrong?”
”There for a minute you were sounding like my ex-wife.”
“Ex wife!” she screams, “I didn’t know you were married before!”
”I wasn’t!
Good for you. Consider it a badge of citizenship.
You have nailed it about the corrupt MSM. The sad thing is that they are exeptionally well versed in “doublethink”. They are very good at lying to themselves.
With the new media, we have a chance, but we have to fight. Giving up is not an option. We have no where to flee.
I held an AR-15 (on sale) in my hands about a week before the school shooting, but I just could not bring myself to buy something so ugly. I am thinking another M1 Garand instead. They still have some at the CMP.
Members of the military I know tell me they will not be part of any confiscations down the road. Gun owners tell me there will be civil insurrection and vigilantism before they give them up. All I know is that our country only functions through voluntary compliance of our laws by the majority. If the majority refuses to comply, it doesn’t matter what Big Ears has to say. We shall see.
So, freepers, if I join the NRA, will that info be published anywhere?
I finally have all the parts on order to build one. Not my original plan, nor my original timing for this purchase, but not much choice. I believe the best we will get is grandfathering in what is currently in your possession. I have a second lower and LPK that I need to figure out what to do with. I really want a .308 but the parts on those are $$$$, and the extra lower wont work for it.
It does not matter. You are on Freerepublic. You are already on a higher priority list than the NRA.
The NRA sends its members print magazines, so the post office already has that list.
I do not think the NRA list is available via google search. I should have read your question more carefully before I posted!
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