The Coming Gun Crisis: “From My Cold Dead Hands”
As many are aware, times are tough not only in the states, but worldwide. What accompanies times of uncertainty and turmoil is usually not pretty and not sane. There are many things that can cause a person to snap, whether it’s a history of psychiatric problems, the unknown, the loss of a loved one, a break-up/divorce, the loss of a job, the loss of tons of money in the market, etc.
Well, with everything that is occuring in and around us, there has been an increase in mass murders, homicides and suicides. Yes, guns were involved in many of these cases, but not all. Guns, also are not the cause of a person snapping or being able to cause harm to people. Guns can also save lives and they save more lives per year than they kill.
We have various states and now congressmen and women jumping the gun, pun intended, to pass more restrictive gun rights. I’m not so sure that would be smart at any time to do, let alone a time when people need more protection, with the possibility of greater turbulence ahead of us. Statistically, when there are economic downturns there is more violence, robberies, burglaries and criminal activity. I wrote previously about the laws that Switzerland has when it comes to national security and every citizen who is able bodied and of a certain age, is required to own a gun and the Swiss have the lowest murder rate in the world. That to me, is no coincidence.
However, Nancy Pelosi has recently come out swinging and she wants guns registered nationwide. She swears that they do not want to confiscate guns from average, responsible citizens, but many gun owners would beg to differ, knowing that this has been a goal of the left for some time. This would just be considered one step closer to achieving that goal.
Many people missed Nancy Pelosi’s statement on Good Morning America last week when she said she wanted all guns registered. People believe that once registered, this will allow the government to have more control over the citizens of the country and ultimately allow the government to track and confiscate guns. Liberals will say that this is just right-wing paranoia, but what they tend to forget is that gun registration was followed by gun confiscation in various countries and in myriad societies before ours. History does in fact repeat itself as it is now with the economic crisis, among other domestic and international policy aims concurrently being reached and attempted.
New Zealand has had some form of firearms registration since 1921. In 1974, all revolvers lawfully held for personal security were confiscated.
In May of 1995, Canada’s Bill C-68 prohibited previously legal and registered small-caliber handguns. Current owners of such guns were “grandfathered,” which means the guns are to be forfeited upon death of the owner. Bill C-68 also authorizes the Canadian government to enact future weapons prohibitions.
On 10 May 1996, Australia banned most semi-automatic rifles and semi-automatic and pump shotguns. Prior to this law, many Australian states and territories had firearms registration. Owners of these newly outlawed firearms were required to surrender them (with some monetary compensation). All such firearms are to be confiscated and destroyed after a 12-month amnesty program. Roughly 600,000 of an estimated 4 million Australian guns have been surrendered to authorities and destroyed.
“Since 1921, all lawfully-owned handguns in Great Britain are registered with the government, so handgun owners have little choice but to surrender their guns in exchange for payment according to government schedule…The handgun ban by no means has satiated the anti-gun appetite in Great Britain.”
Even in the United States, registration has been used to outlaw and confiscate firearms. In New York City, a registration system enacted in 1967 for long guns, was used in the early 1990s to confiscate lawfully owned semiautomatic rifles and shotguns. (Same source as previous paragraph) The New York City Council banned firearms that had been classified by the city as “assault weapons.” This was done despite the testimony of Police Commissioner Lee Brown that no registered “assault weapon” had been used in a violent crime in the city. The 2,340 New Yorkers who had registered their firearms were notified that these firearms had to be surrendered, rendered inoperable, or taken out of the city.
More recently, California revoked a grace period for the registration of certain rifles (SKS Sporters) and declared that any such weapons registered during that period were illegal. (California Penal Code, Chapter 2.3, Roberti-Ross Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989 section 12281(f) ) In addition, California has prohibited certain semi-automatic long-rifles and pistols. Those guns currently owned, must be registered, and upon the death of the owner, either surrendered or moved out of state.
Some faulty reasoning and arguments on behalf of the democrats who want to ban gun rights is the following:
Politicians and bureaucrats routinely claim that registration helps solve crimes. If a registered gun is used in a crime and left at the crime scene, registration supposedly lets the police trace the gun back to the criminal. Though this turn of events might work on fictional TV crime shows, it virtually never occurs in real life. Criminals’ guns are rarely left at crime scenes. When guns are left behind, it usually is because a crook has been seriously injured or killed and the police are poised to catch him anyway.
The few guns left at crime scenes rarely – if ever – are registered to the perpetrator. If they are registered at all, it is to someone else, whose piece was stolen. Despite what Mrs. Pelosi might think, those who use guns to commit major crimes such as robbing and killing are unlikely to respect her request to file paperwork so the government can catalog the tools of their trade.
If Liberals really think that taking guns away will solve the problem and violent crime will decrease, they really need to see someone and work on their delusions. Just like the ban on alcohol during prohibition, there was still plenty of booze to go around, it’s called the black market, and criminals right now use the black market and illegal vendors to obtain guns – what’s to stop them when they ban guns from responsible, law-abiding citizens? It will just make their jobs that much easier.
Gun sales have been on the rise since Obama’s election, and no, it isn’t due to “racists” in the country. The race card needs to be chopped up and thrown away. This has more to do with Liberals (not blue dog Democrats), having the White House, the House and a lot of the Senate, running amok, and knowing that part of their agenda is an eventual gun ban, and that the CIC is a huge proponent of radical gun restrictions per his record.
The leading legislation by which the Democrats in Congress and the White House want to register your guns is HR 45, commonly known as the Blair Holt bill or simply Blair Holt’s. The measure, introduced January 6 by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) (That same Bobby Rush who hailed Fidel Castro as a great man, the same Bobby Rush that just went down to Cuba with other members of the CBC, that same Bobby Rush who was a former member of the Black Panthers) from Michelle Obama’s Real Chicago, includes – but is not limited to – the following restrictions:
* It will be “unlawful” to own a firearm without a license.
* Be required to submit a picture and thumbprint.
* Provide certification that the firearms are properly stored.
* Pass a written firearms exam which tests a persons knowledge of the safe storage of firearms in the presence of children, safe handling of firearms, risks associated with firearms, legal responsibilities of a firearm owner, and anything else the Attorney General deems fit.
* A release of any mental health records.
* Makes private sales illegal.
* Establishes a Federal Record of Sale system which records make, model, serial number, license of the transferee and name and address of the transferor.
* Provides for inspection of your home
* Reporting of lost or stolen firearms
* Notice of change of address
Kiss your constitutional rights goodbye if this type of legislation passes. Gun registration and restriction has already failed in predominantly Liberal areas like D.C.:
DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier inadvertently admitted that the District’s gun registration program was a failure. According to the Chief, “Honestly, there are thousands of handguns that were registered in the city and I don’t know whether those handguns are still in the city.” Of the 41,000 handguns registered, the police department cannot account for 36,000.
The handguns in question were registered back in 1976 when the District’s near-total handgun ban became law. The law grandfathered handguns that already existed in the city, but required the owners to register them. The owners of 41,000 handguns dutifully registered the guns. Yet now, 32 years later, the District does not know where 88% of those handguns are.
The other issue that is conveniently occurring, which is feeding into the fear-mongering and persuasion on the left, to make people believe that guns are bad (based on the most recent gallup poll), is the Mexican ordeal. Mexican Ambassador, Autoro Sarukhan, is stating that 90% of the guns and weapons in Mexico come from the United States. This conveniently works both ways. It allows for an already overly, America blaming, apologetic, progressive, anti-gun administration to agree and kowtow to yet another country to get their agenda through and it also allows for a corrupt government to lay the blame on someone else for their own inability to deal with corrupt police officers, government officials and their own drug problems.
During an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, Sarukhan said on the Arizona and Texas borders with Mexico alone, roughly 7,000 licenses for federal firearms had been granted.
“And a lot of the weapons that are being bought by the drug syndicates, either directly or through proxy purchases, are coming from those gun shops,” he said.
Sarukhan isn’t the only one to cite this myth. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, California Sen. Diane Feinstein and Willliam Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have all said that 90 percent of weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the U.S.
But his statements do not add up and there is a lot of data that counters his argument in a very succinct and comprehensive fashion:
According to the figures obtained from ICE and ATF officials by Fox News, only about 17 percent of the weapons recovered from cartel-related crime scenes in Mexico actually originate in the United States.
Well one reason is, it’s basically the sampling issue. Number one, Mexico is finding guns at the crime scene which may have no markings at all. They may be clearly Chinese or Russian weapons, and so they are not submitting those to the United States for, quote, tracing. A U.S. weapon has a serial number on it, a manufacturer on it, it says where it is made. So clearly, Mexico is not going to give over weapons to the U.S. for tracing which clearly don’t come from here. We had an ICE official, special agent in charge here in Phoenix tell us, and I’m quoting from him, “Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number. Those are not submitted. Only we trace weapons with U.S. markings.
Sarukhan has claimed that Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States, or 730,000 a year. But the official statistic from the Mexico attorney general’s office says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.
Many of these guns are not “personal” guns either, they are guns that would be obtained only by the Mexican government for their defense department. There are grenades, mortars, and AK-47s that have been confiscated in Mexico as of late – those are not guns or weapons that people own. Those are weapons that are being sold on a black market or sold by corruptocrats in their own government.
Join the NRA – I just did – and actually went to my first shooting range a couple of weeks ago! The NRA has some great facts on guns that you will not see reported in the media.
To best sum up what is going on with the gun wars is the following statement:
Sun Tzu was never wiser than when he said “All warfare is based on deception.” So when Ben Tracy (CBS News), Andrea Mitchell (NBC News) and myriad hosts from CNN all claim that the Mexican drug war is the fault of lax gun laws in the United States, you know they’re all reading from the same playbook.
