Guns have been in the news again and again lately. The guns I am writing about are the privately owned guns of our citizens. Sadly, these patriotic men and women have not glorified for the millions of lives they save every year, usually without firing a shot. Rather, the entire institution of gun-ownership has been demonized by the media and the lowlifes of the political class based on a tiny number of sensationalized murder cases. This phenomenon happens from time to time and is always accompanied by a call for more gun control.
Before I get to control and its history, I want to address the most dangerous guns in America and elsewhere – publically owned or government guns. These weapons pose a true threat to the health and security of our citizens and potentially pose a dire threat to our civil liberties and freedom. Governments throughout history have proven themselves to be the least trustworthy possessors of weaponry. In the 20th century alone governments murdered more than 200 million innocent victims with their military weapons. I cannot speak for the rest of the world, but in America we need to seriously confront this lethal problem.
The Founder’s were naturally distrustful of an armed government, particularly a standing government army. That is why they placed stringent restrictions on the army and, at the same time, embedded the right of the people to possess arms as a check against government tyranny. I am working on a series of columns along these lines which will compliment my previous article Posse Comitatus, https://perrinlovett.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/posse-comitatus/.
Ultimately, I will reach the conclusions that we need to abolish all control laws which are directed against private citizens, we need to return to the militia model of defense, we should abolish our standing armies (this is a rather unpopular idea, for all the wrong reasons), and we need to disband or disarm the most of the police forces in America. Those remaining law enforcement officers which might survive should return to their Natural Law function – protecting the rights of the people, as opposed to carrying out the edicts of the state. For now, I will concern myself with giving you a brief education about gun control in the United States.
Where did the idea of gun control come from? I’m not sure when and where it first originated, though I have an idea the concept has been around longer than firearms themselves. A few gun control advocates are earnestly interested in stopping crime and helping people. Most are not. Essentially, the majority of gun controllers are the same breed of would-be tyrants who have plagued mankind for eons. First I imagine they demanded rock control, then sword control and now, gun control. It is really all a scheme to deprive people of their natural rights of self-defense and self-preservation. Tyrants do not like armed people. Armed people are dangerous to tyrants. Personally, I like the idea of endangered tyrants. Perhaps we could, in the near future, save a couple and place them on display at zoos. To hell with the rest. “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson.
Gun control was present during the colonial period of American history. White Europeans attempted to limit the availability of firearms to groups like slaves and native American indians. Just before and during the Revolutionary War, the British attempted to disarm the entire rebellious population. Their theory was that unarmed people would have a much harder time ousting the red-coat armies.
Independent American gun control first began after the nation was freed of King George. In early America gun control was first initiated in against blacks, both slaves and free men. Racist tyrannical whites did not want the downtrodden slaves or free blacks to defend themselves. Armed slaves might just free themselves, after all. This process derived from various State laws which outright forbid blacks from owning guns. The KKK was an early gun-control advocacy organization (a fomer-day Brady campaign, if you will). The injustice was nominally cured by the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1868). I say nominally, because the States found clever ways to circumvent the new Acts. The favored trick was to tax gun sales so as to price the poor (which usually included blacks) out of the gun market. As I will demonstrate shortly, rather than stamp out this hideous policy, the feds later adopted it.
So far in our history gun control has only affected “undesirable” populations – slaves, blacks, and the poor. In the late 19th Century New York City enacted a ban on the concealed carry of firearms by just about everyone. This new law was designed to protect pick-pockets and thieves, key constituents of Tammany Hall and the Democrats of the city (birds of a feather…). It seems Boss Tweed’s cronies got too many complaints from their thieving electorate about people with concealed weapons thwarting robberies. As far as I know, this was the first color-blind ban on concealed weapons. New York has ever been a nest of nobility.
In the early 20th Century most Americans (except blacks and the poor here and there) were free to own whatever type of weapons they both desired and could afford to purchase. I have read the true statement that any child who wanted one and had the money to pay for it, could mail-order a Browning .50-caliber machine gun and have it delivered to their home. Yet, mysteriously, there was little crime in this far away “wild west” America. Crime seemed to come along later with heavy federal regulation of firearms. Numerous studies have definitively linked the two.
As I noted earlier, the federal government enacted legislation which imposed a tax and registration on the ownership of certain types of firearms. This first occurred with the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934, 26 U.S.C. 53. This law was part of the overall scheme to deprive Americans of fundamental civil liberties. I have previously noted the dread year of 1913, with the creation of the Federal Reserve and the ratification of the 16th and 17th Amendments. Like plantation slaves, tax slaves with weapons pose a risk to their masters. Americans may have seen a rise in violent crime through the 20th Century because their “leaders” emulated the gun laws of well-known criminals.
“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.” – Adolph Hitler.
(Adolph Hitler, gun control proponent. Google Images.)
On November 11, 1938 Hitler and his government enacted sweeping gun-control legislation, the Weapons Act of 1938. This Act was aimed at a particular subject “race” – jews. “Jews … are prohibited from acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons. Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority.” 1938 Nazi Act, Section One. The rest of the Act made possession of weapons by jews criminal, with proscribed punishments.
On October 22, 1968 President Lyndon “Bane of Freedom” Johnson signed into law the National Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968, 18 U.S.C. 44. This Act imposed additional infringements on the ownership of guns. It was allegedly imposed as a crime-fighting measure however, it was obviously intended to further limit the availability of weapons to the law-abiding members of society. Crime exploded in tis aftermath. Many scholars have properly analogized the GCA to the Nazi Act of 1938, with “Jews” being removed. The GCA was also pushed into law by racists who wanted to further discriminate against blacks. By this time, the bigots knew better than to simply switch the word “black” in place of “jew.” The result was the same – more disarmed Americans.
Both the NFA and the GCA are policed by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (the AFT). Both are blatant violations of the Second Amendment. Every year, when not supplying military weapons to the Mexican drug cartels, the ATF wasted millions or billions of taxpayer dollars setting up sting operations in order to oppress otherwise innocent Americans through enforcement of these illegal laws. I have represented several of these poor persons in court.
Of course, gun control has grown by leaps and bounds in and out of the federal government in the ensuing decades. There has been a great deal of push-back against these laws, but the main pillars of disarmament still stand. Things keep getting worse. In 1986, arch-“conservative” Ronald Reagan signed into law a tax reform bill which, among other things, capped the supply of “class III” firearms. Class III weapons are those such as fully automatic guns and destructive devises (military-grade weapons). This, again, has had the effect of pricing these weapons beyond the means of most people. It also deprives us access to modern weaponry. It is virtually impossible to obtain a post-1986 weapon without spending hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars (one must become a dealer or a manufacturer to do so).
Thus, Americans are denied access to the very weapons we need the most, those which can be effectively used to thwart government aggression, including mis-use of the standing army. The Founders were on to something.
(The Second Amendment is not about duck hunting. Google Images.)
I could run on for another 1500 words or more with this subject. Instead I will stop here and provide more information in my upcoming columns on the Second Amendment and related articles. In the meantime, do not heed the siren’s call for more gun controll, we need a good deal less. Guns Up!
