Posted on 09/06/2016 8:27:50 AM PDT by Jed Eckert
I see and hear a lot of talk about how a national gun registration and/or confiscation would be the trigger that would spark a second American Revolution, as patriots rise up to resist the jackbooted thugs who are going door-to-door taking away people’s arms.
I have bad news for everyone who’s waiting for national registration or a mass confiscation so they can get their armed rebellion on: a national database of gun owners already exists, and a national confiscation effort will never happen. Ever. Instead, you’ll hand over your firearms peacefully. All of them, even the ones you paid cash for to some random guy on Armslist in the dead of night.
Here’s a look at how it will play out in our not-too-distant future.
The NSA Knows Who You Are and What You Have
Second Amendment supporters have been so focused on this one little corner of the Bill of Rights that they’ve let the Fourth Amendment, which is supposed to protect citizens against unreasonable search and seizure, turn into dead letter.
The surveillance state that got started under Clinton picked up steam under Bush II, and Obama has expanded it even further. The NSA is tracking everyone, all the time, and they’re hooked into Facebook, Google, Amazon, and every other piece of web-based software that you’ve been using to shop for accessories for that AR you paid cash for (which your wife doesn’t even know you have).
If you don’t believe me, go read this article about just how much detailed info one private company, Facebook, has on you, including your web surfing, shopping, and even your driving and walking habits. Now think about the fact that the NSA is even less constrained by the law (and has way more resources) than Facebook and has access not only to Facebook’s detailed profile of you but to profiles created by many other sources, from your credit card company to your health insurance provider.
Oh sure, you may have gotten your hands on a few guns that would be impossible to trace, even by the NSA. Maybe you inherited a long gun from your grandpa, or maybe you met a guy in a gun show parking lot and paid cash and then never Googled anything related to that gun. So here’s a question for you: how many people like you exist, and how many of those type guns are suitable for urban combat against AR-15s with state-of-the-art optics? I know which of my guns are probably totally “in the black,” and I can’t imagine trying to mount an insurgency with any or all of them.
The fact is, most guys who have the kind of hardware suitable for a Civil War 2.0 have been shopping on Gunbroker or Armslist, and/or have filled out FFL paperwork like law-abiding citizens. I seriously doubt there’s enough firepower totally hidden from the NSA to sustain any kind of real rebellion.
So the registration ship has sailed. They know what you have and where to find you. Now, here’s how they’re going to get you to turn it over without a fight.
Hitting You Where It Hurts
When the government outlaws semi-automatic firearms, they won’t send cops or troops door-to-door to take them. No, first they’ll send out letters saying they know what you have, and that you have to turn it over by a given deadline or face a penalty.
It’ll be up to you to prove that you’re clean, and that you’ve handed over everything. They’ll have a list, and if they think you’re still holding, they’ll hit you with asset freezes.
Imagine not being able to get any money out of your bank account or from your credit cards, because your assets are frozen. The federal and state governments already do this if you owe back taxes–a simple letter to your bank, and all of your cards stop working. (Here’s an account from one of our editors of how this actually happened to him.) The bank doesn’t care about you, and they don’t have the interest or resources to find out if the government’s claim against you is bogus. No, they’ll just freeze your assets until you get things sorted with the government and the government tells them to unfreeze it all.
The other thing they’ll do is take your children.
Do you think Child Protective Services is going to let your children live in a house with potentially dangerous firearms? No way. Your kids will get picked up at school and taken into custody, and a social worker will show up at your door with the cops. Only when a thorough search has been conducted and the authorities are completely satisfied that your property is 100% gun-free will they let you see your little ones again. After all, we have to protect the children.
You’re not going to shoot at those cops, either, because then your kids will just end up in the foster system as wards of the state.
Not Nearly Enough for a Revolution
Oh, I’m sure there are folks reading this who are so off-grid that none of the above can touch them. Their guns are totally invisible to the NSA, their assets are all in the form of cash and physically held precious metals, and their kids are home-schooled on a well-guarded ranch.
But is that blessed group big enough to overthrow a determined US government? No, it ain’t.
The measures outlined above–a de facto gun registration database courtesy of the NSA and its private-sector allies, asset freezes for non-compliance, and the threat of CPS visits that hold your children hostage–will be sufficient to take well over 90% of the lawfully held guns out of civilian hands, all without firing a single shot.
The bitter truth is this:there will be no confiscation shock troops for you and your buddies to shoot back at, and we will discover too late that the rights-defenders’ fantasy–of one, crystal-clear moment when it’s time for everyone to rise up as one and take it all back–has been the establishment’s biggest ally and freedom’s deadliest enemy.
Why do you think they’ve let you have guns for this long? Because those guns have given you a false sense of security and kept you from doing something truly dangerous, like mass-organizing to pull all your money out of the big banks and to vote out the incumbents.
So if you’ve sat idly by, fondling your firearms and watching the surveillance state expand while your paycheck shrinks, relying on your gun stash to bail you out when things hit bottom, then the joke’s on you. You’ve already lost the war, and when you hand over your weapons it’ll be the last (and mostly symbolic) step in a process of total subjugation that slipped up and swallowed you while you were distracted with building your gun collection.
You may hate me and everything I’ve said here, but deep down, you know I’m right.
Update: A number of commenters are misreading this article. The headline doesn’t say I’ll hand them them over — it says you will. And yeah, I’m trolling you a bit with the tone of this piece by saying what you “will” and “won’t” do, but it’s because I’m trying to slap you awake. The main point that’s being made is this: if you’re waiting for a door-to-door confiscation, or even a national gun registry, then you’ll be waiting forever. Folks who like to talk about a causus belli will need get more creative in coming up with a “bright line”, because the ones so many of you are waiting for won’t ever appear. If this article has spurred you to think more clearly about what the end of liberty might actually look like, and about what you’ll do under scenarios other than the classic door-to-door confiscation scenario, then it has done its job.
NY passed the SAFE Act, practically banning all “assault weapons” (current owners grandfathered, but can’t sell or bequeath). Compliance rate is 4%. Beware moving further on an otherwise law-abiding population that has already chosen felony status over compliance.
“You just make the propellants in ammunition a controlled substance requiring all kinds of permits and manufacturers either go out of business or the price goes through the stratosphere.”
I’m suffering some deja vu here...
Never happen.
The information age goes both ways. The common citizen knows the names and whereabouts of agents and govt officials, their children and other family members.
None of this will end well even for the agents family dog. Covert urban warfare is impossible to be clean. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan just for starters.
The govt knows this, it’s been gamed out for decades which is why it will never happen. Also why the founding fathers made this number two in rights.
Never happen because there are too many working in the govt that will cause covert disruption and disinformation so it would most certainly implode.
Some Arkansas Sheriffs have said that they would simply deputize every citizen in the county, starting first those with CCWs, and thus every law abiding citizen would full under LEO exemptions.
Chris Dorner would have been a much bigger problem if he’d just kept his mouth shut.
This article brings out some good points. I don’t believe the gov’t is going to send gun confiscators door to door ( a perilous job at best). All across America gun grabbers and liberals are thinking around the clock how to banish guns from law abiding citizens. They will crack down on bullets, reloading components etc. by either regulations or onerous taxation. They will deny access to our financial systems if we are gun owners. They will deny us employment and bring frivolous lawsuits. They will try these and many other tactics to deprive you of your 2nd amendment rights. This is why we must support the original civil rights organization the NRA!
Appeals court upholds ban on gun sales to medical marijuana card holders
. Try telling this story to the hundred armed Americans on horseback at the Bundy ranch. Let me know how that volantary handover thing works out. Now imagine a million more, five million...
There are LOTS of videos of this including beheadings, and assassinations with suppressors, etc.
Anyways, once ISIS was on a role, the Iraqi Army simply disintegrated and retreated since the officers were either dead, hiding, or fleeing. ....and remember, those were dumbass mooj....wouldn't happen to a bunch of rednecks with good guys on the inside feeding them intel.
Didn’t give it a click. It reeks of the smug contempt we see from the left for people of faith, gun owners, 9-5 working people, `breeders’ etc.
The gun-grabbers will expect law abiding citizens to obey the law.
Even though we law abiding citizens keep telling them that their beef is with law breakers who ignore the law, and the solutions are not more laws or violating natural law.
Here’s the evidence:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/14322-gun-owners-refuse-to-register-under-new-york-law
Americans don’t like prohibitions, especially when they try to prohibit rights guaranteed under the Constitution. And if they try an Australian-type “voluntary” buy back program, we will ignore that as well.
If they’re dead set on prohibiting something, all the tragedies have occurred in “gun-free” zones. Abolish them.
Everyone knows where the NSA is located. They all can’t have a security perimeter of a hundred meters.
Just sayin...
5.56mm
The article’s overall message IS correct, but he makes some laughably stupid statements and generalizations. For example the one on children; by the time they’re actually coming for your children in large numbers specifically for owning guns, that’s pretty much the trigger point (pun intended) for everyone and everyone. Remember the outrage over Elian Gonzalez? Imagine that x100,000 and native-born American children being hauled off. Them’s fightin’ words.
But that said, I do commend him for honestly trying to slap people awake. I’ve lost count of the gun owners who’ve made statements about when they’ll start fighting or had John Wayne fantasies about “sending them running” like they’ll be fighting beat cops or hastily-deputized forces. Or for that matter that lightly-trained and equipped militia (which is mostly what we’ll have) aren’t very likely to get decimated when they have to stand and fight real career soldiers or when their HQ gets spotted on satellite or when someone backtraces a cell phone call.
The asset freeze threat he mentions is very real unless you are the paragon of being off the grid. Do you really have enough cash out of the bank and under the sofa to pay all your bills - mortgage/rent, gas, food, etc. even for one month? It’s not just highly inconvenient, it’s a huge security risk. An increasing number of places will not even TAKE cash for payment because of the theft and logistics headache it comes with - my own apartment complex for one easy example.
So yes the article itself needs a revision or five. But his main point still stands and it merits thought.
"Ceterum censeo Hillary esse delendam."
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
The faceless bureaucrat is difficult to counter by virtue of their obscurity—need specifics. The interconnections could be mapped out for the hierarchy. Party connections important to attain higher postings, and active party activities likely to enter the starter positions.
Many here are or were career soldiers. Don’t discount an armed, free populace, new guy.
And last figure I saw was 88 million armed Americans but if it’s from the same people telling us how many uninvited guests from south of the border we have living among us, I suspect you can prolly double the number.
And welcome to FR.
“The faceless bureaucrat is difficult to counter by virtue of
their obscurity”
Not really once the war of the government vs the people starts anyone still at a government post of any capacity anywhere, their family included are enemies of the people and no quarter should or will be given. History shows the way to win a insurgency is to go after the soft targets that is the families of the party members and their functionary minions. Sun Tzu accurately predicted that once men have nothing to lose and are on deadly ground they are capable of almost super human feats and morality,fear and empathy are gone..GONE. freeze someone assets, take the kids, and come after life and libery well that is deadly ground and total genocidal war can and should be on the table. a team of a few snipers with 50cal rifles could eliminate the key members of the political class in a few minutes given inside intel no amount of personal body armor is effective against the 50bmg round at long distances period not even ceramic plates. That is how this ends with a genocide like the Balkans or currently in Syria.
“Do you really have enough cash out of the bank and under the sofa to pay all your bills - mortgage/rent, gas, food, etc. even for one month? It’s not just highly inconvenient, it’s a huge security risk.”
What do you think will happen to the economy when consumer spending is forcibly cut in half - paying bills, buying groceries, borrowing money for vehicles, paying a mortgage? Do you think businesses and banks will cheer that?
I’m not totally discounting anyone, I’m expressing severe doubts that someone whose training amounts to weekends of “point and shoot” is going to be able to be anything close to combat effective against someone who could outrun them while still carrying 50 pounds of equipment, spot them on IR before they even know they’re targeted, and plant a C4 brick in their getaway vehicle so that when the survivors drive off they can light up whatever hidey-hole they drive to.
We will not be fighting conscripts standing in neat lines with big white bullseyes right over their chests and an effective range of about a football field with their inaccurate single-shot musket. There will be few places to hide from the eyes in the sky; what happens when word gets around that ‘head for the hills’ in the deepest forest still doesn’t save your rebel squad or your family camper from being blown sky high?
And meaning no personal offense, soldier, but I expect that most of you will follow orders because that is what they brutally indoctrinate you to do from your first day in Basic. Even discounting that, would you still sympathize when one of the rebels manages to drill one of your buddies or would you blow him to hamburger just like any other threat like you’ve been trained to do since the day they put an assault rifle in your hands?
Now that part would definitely be a “who blinks first” scenario, the ‘frozen’ or the economy at large. But a hundred thousand people suddenly getting a text and their entire bank assets shut off would make for some serious fear among people wondering if they’re next because they’re seeing Facebook posts and getting calls from someone who was reduced from 1st World status to 3rd World in minutes. And the vast majority of the ‘frozen’ would need to pay the rent and grocery bill and gas for their cars immediately.
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