'immediate destruction of all (gun buyer) information in any form whatsoever.' Another is to allow aggrieved citizens to sue the agency and collect damages and attorneys' fees. He needs to hear from lots of people that he is supported in his stand. Please take the time to e-mail or fax a letter to him."
I've actually been lobbied on the phone by some gun rights advocates I respect, this week, ensuring me Sen. Smith is the closest thing to a friend freedom-lovers have in the Senate, and insisting his proposal could indeed strike a solid blow for the Second Amendment, by giving citizens some standing to get into court and challenge the coming national background checks (and resultant national gun registration -- precursor to confiscation in Nazi Germany, in Australia, everywhere it's been tried.)
Maybe Sen. Smith means well. I don't know.
Regardless, I've had enough of this game. I replied to my well-meaning correspondents:
# # # Hi, guys --
Pardon me, but I grow tired of running first one way, then another, on treadmills erected by others.
"Requiring immediate destruction of all (gun buyer) information in any form whatsoever" is too ridiculous for even a child to fall for.
Let's say these national background checks for ALL gun sales go into effect Dec. 1, as scheduled. But the FBI is absolutely forbidden by law to keep any such records, ironclad, cross our hearts and hope to die.
Now, a weapon is found at a crime scene. (Notice the careful phrasing. Most "weapons found at crime scenes" are stolen and thus untraceable. Few were actually used in any crime, since shooters tend to carry their guns away with them, rather than dropping these expensive tools like candy wrappers. If your loser brother-in-law is rousted out of bed at 3 a.m. and the cops find a bag of marijuana in his cereal box, then your grandfather's First World War souvenir Mauser in the attic becomes a "weapon found at a crime scene.")
Using the national gun registration computer data bank which they have illegally established in West Virginia, the FBI traces the owner -- you -- and you admit the weapon was "borrowed" by your loser brother-in-law. You are then arrested along with him, on charges you "allowed a deadly weapon to fall into unauthorized hands ..."
What happens? The suspects are set free -- the evidence and all subsequent confessions disallowed under the "exclusionary rule" -- because the G-men violated the "no gun registration data-bank" law, while the G-men (up to and including Louis Freeh) are indicted, tried, convicted, and locked up in small cells with roommates named Butch. Right?
Oh, sure. And if you believe this, I can also sell you an address where you can send care packages at the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, where Lon Horiuchi and everyone up the 1992 FBI chain of command are now doing their 30-year sentences for the murder of Vicki Weaver.
No, I am not going to express any support for a suit who claims he is "shocked, shocked to learn" that the FBI and BATF are proposing to violate our Second Amendment rights ... while snickering behind his hand that any attempt to DISBAND the FBI and BATF, and to REPEAL the Brady Bill (along with the Firearms Acts of 1934 and 1968) would be "extreme, counterproductive, and politically unfeasible."
The simpering Tories. Let our GOP senators filibuster any bills that come before the Senate, until they win a straight up-and-down recorded voice vote on REPEAL OF THE BRADY ACT. Nothing else will draw any "fan letters" from me.
We're being played like a wheezing calliope, here. We're being set up to "thank" our masters when they "reluctantly" agree that our gunsmiths won't have to do a $16 background check on us when they return our repaired hunting rifles ... THIS year. And this process has now been going on for 65 YEARS! My CAT can figure out there's no way to get the little bell out of the cat toy faster than that.
What to do.
The "bad cop" half of the Incumbent Republicrat Party propose 10 new infringements on our Second Amendment rights, and pass three, and our "heroes" get our campaign contributions and our votes for "fighting the good fight" and "turning back the worst seven parts of that darned, terrible gun-grabbers' package" ... which only turn up again next year, in a NEW set of 10 insults to the Bill of Rights, of which only three MORE will subsequently be endorsed by the lying GOP and their gun club affiliate, the NRA, as "the best compromise we're likely to get this year ..."
Meantime, folks on our side run themselves ragged until they finally lie, motionless, stupefied, and resigned, in a fetal position, like the rat who's been shocked the past 10 times he tried to eat the food.
I'm already hearing it: "Don't bother fighting the Moynihan 1000 percent ammo tax. I'm told that one's going nowhere." Just go to sleep, little ones. The bogeyman will never REALLY come. They wouldn't dare add THAT as a rider to some highway bill in the final hours of the session ...
Duh.
The "pro-gun-rights" Republican party has been in charge of both houses of the United States Congress for three-and-a-half years. In the so-called Contract with America, Newt Gingrich promised a straight up-or-down voice vote on repeal of the Brady Bill. It's the only promise he never even (start ital)tried(end ital) to keep. Why? Because he knows all gun owners will reflexively vote Republican in 1998, regardless. So why endanger the support of any marginal, socialist, pro-big-government, urban voters to please us? We're not "in play." We can safely be ignored.
# # #
Haven't you ever wondered why the "good guys" never submit a bill which would repeal 10 bad gun control laws, and then "settle for a compromise" in which the Democrats and Handgun Control endorse three of the 10 as the "least harmful," whereupon the next year the forces of freedom re-integrate the seven remaining steps toward restored Secopnd Amendment freedom in a NEW list of 10 bad gun laws to be repealed, making the OTHER side scramble around trying to block seven out of 10?
With all the money the National Rifle Association has raised, and all the "B-plus and better" rated "pro-gun congressmen" we've elected, how come we never see Handgun Control on the defensive, running around firing off desperate e-mails to (start ital)their(end ital) members, going "Ohmygosh, 34 different bills have been introduced this session, attempting to close down the BATF and effectively re-legalize the public carry of machine guns without a permit ... even in federal courthouses and airports! Help! Help! They keep slipping in funding for free distribution of surplus machine guns as riders on farm bills! The DCM is now authorized to sell surplus full-auto M-14s, BARs, and water-cooled 30-caliber Brownings for $100 to anyone who sends in a postcard, with an automatic waiver of the $200 'transfer tax.' And we didn't even know about it; turns out it was buried at page 666 of the Equal Rights for Blind Ambulance Drivers bill. Oh, what ever shall we do?!"
How come it never works THAT way?
Unless, maybe, there AREN'T any good guys.
Duh.
Gun owners -- anyone who cherishes the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights -- have to stop running this treadmill, immediately. Just step off. Stop donating to Republicans or to the NRA (sponsor of both the Brady Bill and the Gun Control Act of 1968). Let them know your vote isn't "a given." When you can, give your money and your votes to radically pro-Bill-of-Rights Libertarians, and to the Milwaukee-based Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (414-769-0760.)
Failing that, fund and vote for a DEMOCRAT (at least they're reliably pro-choice on ONE issue), while advising the GOP candidate (and the local newspaper) in writing that you are doing so to punish the Republican party for not repealing the Brady Bill, and the National Firearms Acts of 1968 and 1934, which they have the votes to do, TODAY.
Tell them: "I'd rather vote for an honest gun-grabbing socialist, than for a lying Nerf Republican who won't even stay bought."
Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at http://www.lvrj.com/columnists/Vin_Suprynowicz.html. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127. *** Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com "The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." -- Henry St. George Tucker, in Blackstone's 1768 "Commentaries on the Laws of England."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowicz/suprynowicz-arch.html
