when the 'Assault Weapons Ban' was passed, I didn't have much free cash(hell, NO free cash) to do so, or I'd have done what a lot of people did: buy an EEEEEVille Assault Weapon. In the days that mess was being debated every shop in town that carried them, and ammo and magazines, was selling more than before. In the thirty-day period between Clinton signing it and it going into effect, more yet. One local shop said(in a newspaper article about a week before it took effect) they sold more in that period than ever before, and if there'd been a supply they could've sold at least that many more. And one telling note was a comment from one man: "I never wanted one of these, but if the government is going to tell me I can't be trusted with one, then I'll buy one". Lot of other people said the same thing(but in more profane terms) and bought.
At the time I primarily thought of it as a way of saying "Fuck you" to the politicians; over time I started thinking of it as 'putting together stores'. And I started considering a lot of things I'd never really given serious thought to before. I had kids, and the idea of not being able to take them shooting and hunting like my father & grandfather had... it really, really pissed me off.
All of which leads to this piece at RNS leading to this at The War on Guns. Referring to the first paragraph above:
The Law of Unintended Consequences decreed that there would be two unexpected results of this Clintonista constitutional misbehavior. The first was the importation and sale within a few months of several millions of semi-auto rifles (principally SKS and AK-variants) into the U.S. This was in anticipation of, and defiance of, the so-called "Assault Weapons Ban." Indeed, this was more rifles of these types than had been sold in the previous TWENTY YEARS. And it was in a political climate where it was fully expected that the next law would call for the confiscation of such weapons. Why, then, did this massive arming take place? Were we buying these rifles merely to turn them over later? When the Clintonistas realized that we were not buying these rifles to turn them in, but to turn ON THEM if they became even more threatening to our liberties, it gave them considerable pause. I am told the analysts in the bowels of the J. Edgar Hoover building were particularly impressed.
Well, they should have been.
You see, what impressed us gunnies the most was the fact that under what we came to know as "Waco Rules", Catch 22 was in full swing. It was as if the Clintonistas were shouting, "We can do anything you can't stop us from doing." The constitutional militia movement, despised by the administration, caricatured by the media (and professional liars for money like Morris Dees of the Southern "Poverty" Law Center), and unjustly vilified after the Oklahoma City bombing, began to explore the question of just what could be done to stop such unconstitutional conduct on the part of the government. We realized that another way to express Catch 22 is to say, "You can do only what we let you get away with."
I'd been around law enforcement most of my life, and I'd grown up thinking of the men with badges as Good Guys. Time went by, and I discovered that there were some Jerks mixed in, and(this was the real shock to me) some first-class Bad Guys. And that, due to the conditions/pressures of the job, the Good Guys tended to protect the Jerks and Bad Guys from being thrown out/prosecuted. And if you couldn't trust the Good Guys to stand against the Bad Guys, then what the hell DO you do?
I flat detest the idea of civil war with the cops- Good Guys and Bad- on the other side. No, let me rephrase that: I HATE it. You know what makes it less of a detestable idea? Kathryn Johnston. All the victims of SWAT (or Tactical Teams or Special Operations teams or whatever the hell they're called locally) teams being misused and getting away with it, over and over. And all that video from New Orleans of cops and National Guard troops holding people at gunpoint- sometimes after beating hell out of them- so they could steal their firearms.
(side note: the fact that most of the major media flat ignored this garbage didn't help matters, either)
Note to law enforcement types who haven't figured this out: if you do crap like the above, people do not look on you as Officer Friendly anymore; they look on you as Jackass in a Ninja Outfit Who Abuses People. And you're seen- rightly- as thinking yourself above the law and not to be trusted.
Hell, I've said this before in one form or another. Go read at TWOG, it's much worth it.
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