Search 10 Years of Articles
Subverting the Second Amendment: The Subtle Road to Injustice
Antigun proponents and zealots are quick to qualify their remarks about guns so as not to openly disparage American citizens who cherish their Bill of Rights – all ten of them. “Yes,” the antigun proponents and zealots chant over and over again: “we need ‘commonsense’ gun laws, and of course we respect the Second Amendment.” The obligatory parenthetical remark, “of course we respect the Second Amendment,” hangs at the end of the phrase, “commonsense gun laws,” like a puppy dog’s tail. The gun grabbers “wag it” in our faces as if to suggest that American citizens who wish to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms should be “sensible about guns” – as if we aren’t and, so, must be made to be. Antigun proponents and zealots always have the Second Amendment in the cross-hairs, ready to wound it, eventually to kill it, even as they proclaim no such intention to do so.The fact of the matter is that the antigun movement seeks to end civilian ownership of firearms. The movement’s entire reason for being is focused on that end. Second Amendment adherents know or should know that more “commonsense gun laws” mean, ultimately, nothing more than “total gun confiscation,” except for those individuals who happen to fall into some “small, select, special, trusted, elite class.” The goal of all antigun proponents and zealots is omnipresent; it never changes even as it remains tacit, unspoken. The American public should be under no illusion about that. The antigun mantra – “commonsense gun laws,” – is ultimately meaningless, senseless, and even nonsensical. It echoes hollowly in the void.The gun grabbers use that meaningless, senseless, nonsensical slogan, “commonsense gun laws,” every chance they get. Just recently, as reported by The Associated Press through The New York Times newspaper, President Barack Obama – a staunch advocate for dispossessing Americans of their firearms – also used that familiar, wearisome, tiresome refrain when he spoke to the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation). Obama apparently does not understand, or simply chooses not to understand or, perhaps, is utterly incapable of understanding the import of the Second Amendment to Americans, which the founders of the Republic bequeathed to Americans, to us – to cherish, to treasure, to hold most dear. The issue of gun control, President Obama says, has left him “the most stymied” . . . [and, he] “tells the BBC he is ‘frustrated’ that the U.S. does not have ‘commonsense gun safety laws,’ even in the face of repeated mass killings.”The BBC is, as most people know, a major British news outlet. Great Britain does not have anything comparable to our Second Amendment. Indeed, Great Britain doesn’t even have one specific document that might be considered a written Constitution, let alone anything remotely like America’s “Bill of Rights.” In a land whose social structure is grounded on class distinctions, well-honed and solidified after hundreds of years of existence, the British royalty and nobility would not trust, and never have trusted the British commonalty, with possession of firearms. Apparently, the British commonalty doesn’t see anything wrong with that. True Americans, however, do. So, Obama preaches to the choir over there. And that choir would like to sing Obama’s praises over here. “What is the problem with Americans, the British ask?” “Why must Americans own and possess firearms at all?” And, if they must possess firearms, what do they have against “commonsense gun safety laws.” The British might reflect on American history before suggesting answers to those questions. And, President Obama, for his part, would have done better to reflect on the import of and impact of his ‘commonsense gun safety laws’ message on Americans before he conveyed that message, strangely as he did, to the British.Without firearms, America would still be under British rule, subservient to and paying homage, today, to the Queen of England; pledging allegiance to the United Kingdom of Great Britain, under the Union Jack, rather than to an independent Democratic Republic under the Stars and Stripes – having nothing to do with the United Kingdom.Clearly, Americans do not need another set of so-called “commonsense” gun laws. And the inclusion, now, of the word, ‘safety,’ into the phrase, doesn’t alter that fact. Thousands of federal and State gun “safety” laws already exist. Why have another slew of them? What does it even mean to think we need more? Indeed, what must it mean to even suggest the need for more restrictive, oppressive, so-called “commonsense” gun “safety” laws but that the Obama Administration and like-minded individuals both inside and outside Government – and like-minded individuals and groups both inside and outside this Country – seek to divest average, law-abiding Americans of their natural right to own and possess firearms as guaranteed to them under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?Lest there be any mistake about the intention of the antigun groups in this Country and those abroad, an article in a recent Sunday Review Section of The New York Times, makes plain the agenda of these groups. Mike McIntire, a reporter for The New York Times, asks, “What Makes a Shooter Do It?” That question – the title of McIntire’s op-ed – is rhetorical. McIntire answers his own question, when, toward the end of his article, he says: “What makes someone seek solace in a spasm of bloodshed is perhaps unknowable.” Because no one knows for certain – because no one can ever really know for certain – who might resort to violence, McIntire is making a not so subtle suggestion that the better approach is to get rid of the guns now, from as many Americans as possible – namely, and particularly, from law-abiding Americans – so that any temptation to commit violence with guns in the future – the mere possibility that a law-abiding American might, even if improbably, commit violence with guns in the future – is substantially lessened, if not altogether removed.What McIntire and those like him are opting for, then, is a “Minority Report” type of society in America.In the film, “Minority Report,” starring Tom Cruise, a police force called “PreCrime” arrests citizens before they commit their crimes of murder. “PreCrime” uses three “Precogs,” quasi-human beings whose dreams predict murders to come, along with the individuals who ostensibly commit them. “PreCrime” then locates, arrests, charges, and sentences those people for crimes of murder they never committed – and, at the time of their arrest, had no inkling they would ever form an intention to commit them – but, apparently, according to the “Precogs,” would have committed murder if they weren’t prevented from doing so in the first place. The people, so apprehended by PreCrime police, are duly and brutally punished, and in a novel and most bizarre fashion, even though they never actually committed crimes of murder.Notwithstanding the problematical philosophical and legal issues of arresting, charging, convicting, and sentencing an individual for a crime before a person develops the very intention to commit the crime, the true import of the film has less to do with drawing attention to the legal and philosophical implications and ramifications of damning a person for commission of a crime before the fact, which is simply a plot device, and more to do with the oppressive control exerted by the Security State over the individual, presumably for the sake of preemption and prevention of violence.Yet, as bad as a “Minority Report” society is, what McIntire and other antigun zealots envision for Americans is just as bad if not worse than a “Minority Report.” Consider: A call for an eventual, total civilian gun ban, which, for gun proponents and zealots is on the horizon, is based on the notion that a person does not ever have to commit an actual crime with a gun to be, in a sense, guilty of having committed a crime with a gun. That is to say, the mere possibility that a sane, rational, responsible, honest, law-abiding American citizen may – at some indefinable point in the future – commit a crime with a gun becomes the justification – the Cause Cèlébre of the antigun proponent and zealot – for denying a person access to a gun in the present. Antigun proponents and zealots seek to remove the logical possibility of a crime ever being committed with a gun. They seek to accomplish that feat by banning, outright, the mechanism for that violence from the vast majority of honest, sane, rational, law-abiding American citizens – millions of average American citizens – who have never acted out a violent crime with a gun and who never would do so.The rationale implicit in the antigun proponents’ and zealots’ call for ever more restrictive gun laws is that every American – including and notably, the average, sane, rational, responsible, honest, trustworthy, law-abiding American citizen – is essentially, mystifyingly, bafflingly, ultimately, a cipher. Since no one can know for certain “who will go off the deep-end” at some indefinable point in the future – so their argument goes – it behooves the Government to suspect everyone of eventually resorting to violence. That, apparently, is the “safer” practice: the Government protecting people from people, themselves, and the Government protecting itself from the people.So, if one can harbor the intention to commit a crime, then one can feasibly act on that intention: preemption and prevention of even the possibility – however remote the possibility – of gun violence demand seizure of all weapons from virtually everyone. This is what the antigun proponents and zealots would decree; what they would ordain. And, this is the misguided philosophy of ethical consequential utilitarianism. The American citizenry would see ever more restrictions and controls placed on its movements, upon its actions. Surveillance becomes ubiquitous. The Government begins the process of dispossessing the American commonalty of its guns. The Government, through the mainstream media, controls the citizen’s thought processes. The mainstream media broadcasts, the same messages over and over again, in a hypnotic tone: “Guns are bad for you!” “You will hurt yourself with a gun!” If you see a gun report that immediately to the police!” If you see a family member or neighbor acting oddly, report that person’s actions immediately to the police!” “Stay tuned as we happily provide you with more commonsense safety laws.” This is a portrait of the “Minority Report” society that the antigun proponents and zealots seek to bring to fruition. This is the kind of society that the antigun proponents and zealots are working day and night on to manifest into Reality. If they succeed, the Bill of Rights, itself, becomes meaningless. It begins to crumble. One Amendment after another is formally repealed. The first Amendment to go is actually the Second, followed by the First. Everything the antigun movement seeks to accomplish in America is illustrative of totalitarianism. What they seek to do is the hallmark of the Security State, and it all boils down to suspicion of and paranoid preoccupation with an entire class of citizenry, virtually the entire citizen population, the commonalty of America. The apparent single-minded quest to quell gun violence hides, then, an insidious agenda: the alteration of our society – converting a free, Democratic Republic into a component of a unified international Socialist World Order. And, it all begins through subtle steps to dispossess the average, rational, sane, responsible, honest, trustworthy, law-abiding American citizen of that citizen’s firearms.But such massive undertaking cannot get traction – nor should it ever get traction in a Democratic Republic such as the United States. And it won’t gain traction, so long as this Country remains a Democratic Republic – a Democratic Republic in fact, not merely in name.At present millions of American citizens own firearms. They are sane, rational, responsible, honest, trustworthy, law-abiding members of society. The number of people who actually resort to violence with guns – who are not, otherwise, from the get-go, either hardened, career criminals on the one hand, or psychopathic or psychotic killers, on the other – is virtually negligible. Yet, the antigun zealots, and the antigun Globalists, and the International Socialist elites – who see no saving grace for Americans’ Second Amendment in a future Socialist World Government – seek to impose ever more restrictive gun laws on millions of sane, rational, responsible, honest, trustworthy law-abiding American citizens. And, if the antigun proponents and zealots, and like-minded groups and individuals such as antigun Globalists and International Socialist elites succeed, the Bill of Rights would be at its end.The Second Amendment is particularly problematic and vexing to antigun proponents and zealots, to antigun Globalists, and to International Socialist elites – to such people and groups both inside this Country and outside it. As they see it, the average, sane, rational, responsible, honest, trustworthy, law-abiding American citizen must be controlled – just as much as the career criminal or the raving lunatic must be controlled if, for no reason, than that there exists millions of them. And, who knows when any one or more of those millions “will turn.”And, so, it is seen as necessary to remove the gun from that average, sane, rational, responsible, honest, trustworthy, law-abiding American citizen American citizen before the fact so that the mere possibility of “acting out” a delusional violent fantasy with a gun – however remote that might be – will be impossible. And, as nothing remotely like America’s Second Amendment exists anywhere in the World today – nothing remotely like it exists that cedes such power to the average, sane, rational, responsible, honest, trustworthy, law-abiding American citizen – that power must be constrained. The Second Amendment must be dismantled. Further, all memory of the Second Amendment must eventually be erased. That Amendment must be consigned to the dustbin of history. And the history behind it must be rewritten.Make no mistake. The dream of the antigun zealots in this Country and their many counterparts elsewhere in this Country and in the world at large would be a nightmare for Americans. If there is anything the law-abiding American citizen ought, rationally, to fear more than hardened criminals getting their hands on guns and harming someone or, if there is anything the law-abiding American citizen ought to fear more than a few paranoid lunatics getting their hands on guns and harming anyone, it is the presence of a powerful, paranoid Government operating without Constitutional restraint, clamping down on an individual’s every thought, action, and deed, imposing its will on everyone.[separator type="medium" style="normal" align="left"margin-bottom="25" margin_top="5"] Copyright © 2015 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) and Vincent L. Pacifico (Orca) All Rights Reserved.