Ya know? I’d be surprised if anyone else from the “old days” of The
Liberty Coalition to remembers why I started this site to begin with. It began with a post, then comment, then guest post on another blog about yet another gun grabbing plot. The response was strong enough where I felt the time and political temperature was right to maybe actually accomplish something – like the rollback of just some of the many gun control schemes hatched over the years. I was wrong. Obviously.
Granted in some areas, such as the growing number of states enacting “constitutional carry” laws is encouraging. On the other hand, rabid gun control freaks have unleashed a smorgasbord of anti-liberty, downright unconstitutional bs laws aimed directly at good, honest citizens. So I’m beginning to wonder – when WILL enough be enough? Will the control maniacs have to actually start prying our means of self-defense from our cold, dead hands before those of us still standing will stand up? Some days, it sure seems like it. Just the other day, I was looking at a thread on rimfire topics when someone from my ex-home state of NY said the statists now require semi-automatic rifles to be listed on pistol permits. Got that? Keep in mind, ALL the time I was growing up, or at least for as far as was aware, in order to own a handgun in NY, one had to first obtain a concealed weapon permit and each handgun that person owned was required to be listed on that permit. And now they’ve expanded this to semi-automatic rifles. How long before single shot .22’s will be included in this madness? Wait for it…
Meanwhile, here in Virginia, the democRATS slithered into both houses of the legislature while Dr. “Death” Northam was governor. They promptly enacted a number of malicious anti-liberty legislation, including one of the gun control maniacs brass rings – universal background checks. This insidious and unconstitutional crap requires state approval of both parties who wish to buy, sell, or trade firearms in a private deal. Private? Not anymore. Thinking on this lead to more troublesome thoughts. Like I said before universal background checks, in fact ALL background checks are inherently unconstitutional. Why do I say that?
Think about this – forcing a citizen to prove s/he is NOT a criminal and thus NOT breaking the law when buying a firearm foregoes the assumption of 
innocence. The assumption of innocence is a, or maybe THE primary tenant of our constitution. How can this not be unconstitutional? Beyond that, citizens have the inherent right to go about our business without government intervention. The assumption that MUST be made is as citizens, we are NOT breaking any laws. That is for everyday life. Add into this the Second Amendment expressly guarantees that our right to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED, and my contention doubles down. It doesn’t take a legal scholar, much less an attorney (I am neither) to see this. And it shouldn’t. As WE the People are self-governing citizens, we also have an inherent right to discuss and voice our opinions on the laws of our land – ALL of the laws of our land. But that’s not all…
While I pondered these things, yet another stray thought wandered in and stayed a while. It was a question, really.
WHY are we tolerating this increasingly crushing weight of unconstitutional laws?
Why are these not being challenged? Anyone who has read the landmark novel “Unintended Consequences” by John Ross can relate. There he tells the story of the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 and the subsequent Supreme Court challenge it later entailed. Long story short, this horrendous law was duly declared unconstitutional by a lower court, challenged by the Feds at the SCOTUS level and because of distance, poverty, and such, said challenge had no champion for us citizens and was allowed to stand by FDR’s hand-picked Supreme Court. As far as I know, this statute has not been brought before SCOTUS again and so it stands.
As I see it, this THE major advantage held by the rabid statist gun control freaks. Legislation is typically “assumed” to be within the constrains of the constitution unless specifically overturned. While I can see the reasoning for this – no law would have a modicum of respect unless it was run by the courts – challenging every unconstitutional law puked out by our lawmakers is a time-consuming and expensive process – one most of us cannot afford to do. Not only that, but challenging just the gun laws would likely tie up the Supreme Court for decades – IF they were all heard.
Adding to this problem is the gross instability of legal opinion. We now have more than a century of legal precedents to wade through – enough where almost any legal opinion is likely to be countered by a complete opposite view by a jurist with deist aspirations – i.e. they want to play God.
What would be most helpful is a team of true constitutional literalists dedicated to sifting through current legislation to see what holds to a simple standard: does it line up within the framework of our constitution? I contend at least 80% of our current laws would fail this simple litmus test and 100% of gun legislation. Those words “shall not be infringed” are hard to circumvent once you incorporate the meaning of the the word “infringed” into your soul. Go ahead. Call me intolerant. While you’re at it you can bite me too. It means what it means.
So what is the end all, be all, of this? Unless we decide to get real serious about our constitution, and by “serious”, I mean start insisting on total compliance with the absolute law of our land, we are pretty much toast as a nation. There are only two paths from this point – one leads to liberty under our constitution – the other leads to statist rule, by whoever can seize the power from our hands… and I use the term “seize” loosely because, if history is any gauge, they’ll just take what we hand them.
There IS Another Way
It is a long road for sure but this path could also lead the way for our nation to blossom into some semblance of how it was divinely designed. This road
also requires WE the People stand up and reclaim our birthright as citizens. The good news is, rather than depending on weak, wishy-washy, or worse, “interpretive” jurists, we can clearly mark the “will of the People”. What is this road? It starts with participation – YOUR participation… and mine.
Short and sweet, we roll up our sleeves and get to work on the business of our governance – self-governance that is. Groan all you want to but its time to play grownup. Here’s the outline:
We recruit and elect individuals who are committed to liberty. That means people determined to flat out refuse to allow our government entities to continue to expand beyond reasonable limitations AND to insist we begin the process of cutting back on government overreach.
Part of this, just part mind you, is repealing gun laws. The ultimate goal should be to eliminate all laws that limit liberty beyond constitutional limitations, but that’s not all. The chopping block should be bloodied from cutting off all those government programs that have gained footholds over the decades. Lean and mean should be our new goal. BTW – while the term “lean” is mostly self-explanatory, no doubt the usurpers will want to define “mean” as “rude or uncaring” such is not the intent here. This term “mean” is better defined as “a quality or way of doing something that is in the middle of two completely different qualities or ways of doing something” (courtesy Cambridge Dictionary Online).
We need to find new ways to solve issues. Rather than trying to grab guns from law-abiding citizens to thwart criminals, we should focus on actually thwarting criminal behavior and so on.
In addition to this, I also propose we citizens work towards the idea of removing the “blank checks” from our legislators. Instead they should be required to ask those citizens they represent for approval of all new spending AND taxes. This idea of simply allowing politicians carte blanche to find new ways to extract money from citizens and spend it however they wish is a complete and utter fail. There has to be a better way.
While “Gun Control” is indeed a major issue that should not be an issue at all, it is a symptom of a greater national ill – government gone wild. How did this happen? I hate to be the one to break it to you but WE the People have only ourselves to blame. Surely we were duped, as were our parents and their parents before them. I get that. But this does not excuse us from what we’ve become. It does not excuse those who simply do not vote. It does not excuse is for accepting the excuses of those who do not vote. It does not excuse is from failing to be informed nor from our failure to insist those we elect and those our representatives hire be held accountable.
The bottom line is we can either reclaim our nation – our birthright as citizens or we can do nothing and allow the controllers, the usurpers, to continue to grab our liberties until we have nothing left.
