Monday, January 19, 2009

"But the government would never actually BAN guns"

Got this comment on the 'mind of an Only One' post:
Do you really think there's any possibility that the federal government will one day want to confiscate your guns? I definitely do not. I think this discussion is used by you and your friends to aggrandize your situation by painting a picture of yourselves fearlessly fighting against incredible odds, all for your principles.

What is likely is that there will be some increase in gun control laws because many people believe as I do that the greater the availability of guns there is the more problems we have as a result.

Well, no, I don't think it's a 'possibility'; I think it's a reality. I think that because a bunch of politicians and activists have said flat-out that that is their intention.

Diane Feinstein stated that if she thought she could get the votes in the Senate, she'd pass a bill ordering the ban of ownership of all handguns. She also, when mayor of San Francisco, pushed a total ban on handgun ownership.

Sen. John Chafee: I shortly will introduce legislation banning the sale, manufacture or possession of handguns (with exceptions for law enforcement and licensed target clubs). . . . It is time to act. We cannot go on like this. Ban them!

Rep. Major Owens: Mr. Speaker, my bill prohibits the importation, exportation, manufacture, sale, purchase, transfer, receipt, possession, or transportation of handguns and handgun ammunition. It establishes a 6-month grace period for the turning in of handguns. It provides many exceptions for gun clubs, hunting clubs, gun collectors, and other people of that kind. (Don't you just love being one of 'that kind'?)

Rep. William Clay said the Brady Bill is "the minimum step" that Congress should take to control handguns. "We need much stricter gun control, and eventually we should bar the ownership of handguns except in a few cases," Clay said.

Mayor Barbara Fass of Stockton, CA: I think you have to do it a step at a time and I think that is what the NRA is most concerned about, is that it will happen one very small step at a time, so that by the time people have "woken up" -- quote -- to what's happened, it's gone farther than what they feel the consensus of American citizens would be. But it does have to go one step at a time and the beginning of the banning of semi-assault military weapons, that are military weapons, not "household" weapons, is the first step.

Michael Gartner, when president of CBS News: There is no reason for anyone in this country, anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use a handgun.

I used to think handguns could be controlled by laws about registration, by laws requiring waiting periods for purchasers, by laws making sellers check out the past of buyers.

I now think the only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns. And the only way to do that is to change the Constitution.

Barack Obama, about to be sworn in as President, has in the past called for
a ban on all handguns,
a ban on all semi-auto firearms,
a national ban on concealed carry.
You want a list of his various ban/restriction words and actions, look here.

Charles T. Morgan, at the time Director of the Washington office of the ACLU said in Senate testimony in 1975 when asked about gun registration:
What the administation's and Congressman McClory's bills . . . call for is a whole new set of Federal records. . . .

I have not one doubt, even if I am in agreement with the National Rifle Association, that that kind of a record-keeping procedure is the first step to eventual confiscation under one administration or another.


These notes are from this article at GOA:
In 1989, New Jersey State Senator Frank Graves introduced a bill which defined an assault weapon as any rifle or semi-automatic shotgun with a magazine capacity of 7 or more rounds or any semi-automatic handgun of 18 or more rounds. Any firearm which uses a detachable magazine technically has a "magazine capacity" of these large sounding numbers because it can accept a magazine of any capacity that fits that firearm. (Please note that in New Jersey, a Marlin Model 60 .22 is considered an 'assault weapon' and banned because it can hold 17 rounds.)

In 1994, the U.S. Congress voted to ban scores of semi-automatic firearms. While the author of this ban, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), claimed the law would only ban 19 types of firearms, other government officials dispute this claim.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has admitted the law bans at least 45 guns. (12) And firearms experts have concluded that the law, which uses generic definitions to ban even more weapons, will actually cover more than 180 guns, thus affecting 50% of the gun owners in the country. (13)

This means that if a person fails to register a common hunting shotgun or rifle (not realizing that their gun is covered by the generic definitions in the bill) they will become a criminal and could lose their gun rights forever.

Sen. Ted Kennedy and Charles Schumer have called for outright bans, though in public they more often tend to speak of 'registration' and 'limits' and they save what they really think for friendly audiences.

And the UN, which many of these people practically worship at the altar of, does NOT like the idea of peasants with arms:
* "To prevent conflict and violence from undermining development, effective disarmament programmes are vital..."
* "Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) is one precursor to the establishment of a stable and secure environment..."
* "[Small arms] are fundamentally dangerous and their removal from the equation either by control, neutralisation or removal is essential. The first step is to gain information on their numbers and whereabouts."
...
"I must … express my disappointment over the Conference’s inability to agree ... on language recognizing the need to establish and maintain controls over private ownership of these deadly weapons and the need for preventing sales of such arms to non-State groups."
[2]
'Non-State groups' meaning anyone except military and police, i.e. the peasants. That's us.

Got news for you, guy, I'm not 'fighting fearlessly'; this scares the crap out of me. But it's a choice of being quiet and hoping to avoid notice, or making noise and trying to stop this garbage; and a bunch of us have decided to make some noise. As to your comment about 'the more guns, the more problems', I'd suggest you hop over to Smallest Minority(here's a good place to start) and browse around. Check the left sidebar, he's got links to some good ones. Or Alphecca. Hell, just check Kevin's blogroll, you can find a lot of places with a lot of information debunking the 'more guns, more crime' idea.


By the way, the 'Disarmament idiocy' category isn't aimed at you, it's aimed at the policians & fellow-travellers.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

In the light of all those quotes, I admit my comments sounds naive, to say the least.

Don't you think some of those guys are axaggerating, though, just because they figure some of you guys are? The old fight fire with fire thing that you mentioned?

Bob S. said...

Mike,

It is not an exaggeration to introduce bills into the governmental body to restrict a fundamental right. It is an attack on our natural rights of self defense.

When I read your comment I could only think of the quote "Those who don't know history are bound to repeat it"....and be ran over by those who do.

20,000 gun control laws on the books at the local, county, state and federal level....and still more being introduced in each legislative session.

Show my where any of those quotes, where any of those bills are in line with respect to the Bill of Rights?

Would you support any gun control law if it required it being applied equally to any of your other rights under the Constitution?

Free Speech, Freedom to Assemble, Search and Seizure?

the pistolero said...

I was thinking Feinswine meant all guns, not just the handguns.

Firehand said...

Mike, for most of the people pushing this stuff, the politicians and the activists, they're dead serious: they don't think us commoners should be allowed to own ANY arms; a good many, over time, have pretty much admitted anything other than light target bows and such should be banned from private posession.

The head of the Brady Ban The Guns group, when the 'assault weapons' ban sunsetted, admitted that they'd never expected it to have any effect on crime; that the real value in it was getting the public used to the idea of some types of guns being banned 'just because', so as to prepare the way for further bans. And a lot of these people have stated that registration and licensing is simply a stepping stone to eventual confiscation.

We're dealing with True Believers here, and the fact that licensing/registration/banning has never worked, as Kevin put it, just means "Do it more, only harder, and THIS time it'll work!"

Pistolero, she's been, as I recall, one of the 'moderate' types; just ban handguns and semi-autos and assault weapons(by her definition) and she'll be happy. For now.

Bob S. said...

Mike,

Also consider that in spite of all the evidence pointing out the ineffectiveness of gun control, the infringement of innocent people's rights, etc; that you still call for the more control of firearms.

Given your beliefs, wouldn't it be strange to think the politicians are just spouting off hyperbole?