Gun Control Goes Underground 08/29/2010 @ 9:43am

http://mjm.luckygunner.com/2010/08/29/gun-control-goes-underground/

Brady's Paul Helmke revealed the new gun control strategy in a post-McDonald v Chicago interview with a local talk show host. Not overtly. Not intentionally, but the strategy is easily inferred from the group’s new position.

This post does what Helmke would not: it states that strategy.

First, the Marxists have long fought gun control on the field of conventional battle.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 marked the highest success of their invasion and occupation. Since then, using similar authoritarian state legislation, they deprived the citizen of the right to keep and bear arms using a wicked little war chest of tricks, such as “open carry only” laws.

States and cities were essentially unfettered by federal law to harass citizens with their own flavor of gun control. But, something began to change.

About forty years ago now, states began passing handgun carry liberty legislation. The fortress walls of gun control at state level had appeared solid and unassailable. Instead, they were rotten and they began falling.

It has taken decades and hard political work.

Consider that the five-justice majority in Heller and McDonald owe their appointments to Presidents Reagan and the two Presidents Bush. President Clinton, often touted as “moderate” or “centrist” gave us Supreme Court justices of Marxist philosophy who see no limit to the government’s power to disarm the citizenry.

Thanks to the many conservative Americans who applied noise and pressure, and to the three Republican presidents who responded and guarded the Supreme Court from creeping Marxism, the Left was finally, finally confronted by Mr. Heller and Mr. McDonald.

Their court battles were dramatic, decisive, and conventional in that the plaintiffs used existing judicial doctrine and the language of the 2nd and 14th Amendments to declare local gun ban laws unconstitutional. Having lost the epic conventional battles of Heller and McDonald, the Marxist Committee to Disarm Free Americans (my name for gun controllers collectively) are in retreat, hard pressed and outflanked by the host of other suits by gun owners, exemplified here and here.

Swiftly growing numbers of grassroots gun owners have demoralized their forces, turned their bastion of activist federal law against them, and left them being mopped up on fronts all across the country. So, what does a dedicated Marxist gun control maniac do?

The Comrade goes underground, that’s what. See what I mean by clicking on “Read the rest….” What does gun control going underground look and sound like? Paul Helmke, with Brady, illustrates the strategy. The watchword now for them is “reasonable.” Yes, they will continue to appear to us as absurdly delusional. For example, Comrade Lenin himself would be proud of their revisionist history, proclaiming about McDonald that “U.S. Supreme Court Affirms Gun Regulations.”

But, now, Helmke cautions his followers to avoid the usual inflammatory, over-reaching claims and epithets insulting gun owners. You will not hear Helmke echo the ravings of Brady supporters who are “against guns.” Indeed, in the interview, Helmke said he is “not against guns.”

Not against guns. Paul Helmke is not against guns. The poster-child bad example now “shhhuusshhed” by Paul Helmke would be some forum poster echoing 1988 Democrat presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis’s, infamous proclamation–splashed in dramatic black and white across the cover of The American Rifleman, that “Only the police and military should have guns.”

Shh! Quiet! You can’t win that one right now! Instead, dig in, wait for a more liberal Supreme Court, wait for a Congress not falling apart, and make nice “reasonable” sounds.

The new strategy theme is found in their interpretation of McDonald.

In full retreat on gun confiscation–which means throwing into jail every American citizen who would persist in exercising the right to keep and bear arms–they explore themes of “sensible” and “reasonable” regulation. In that admonition, they reveal the new strategy.

In the minds of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, and the Americans dedicated to gun control, all government measures to disarm citizens are “reasonable.”

The true question is, “Which can you sell?” In America today, you won’t sell gun bans and confiscation.

New Orleans got spanked for confiscation.

You won’t sell arresting law-abiding citizens who keep a handgun for personal protection. McDonald just applied for his Chicago permit.

But, you may recover some of your lost ground by picking off issues where you can major on your “reasonable” argument. It’s just that so many gun control measures are “reasonable” to them.

Where to start? While their other thrusts fail to get traction, they think they are on to something with the “gun show loophole.” More precisely, they are out to make it a crime for you to sell a gun.

They are out to make it as difficult as possible for you to swap, trade, or give away a gun.

You and I know there is no such thing as a gun show loophole; they call it that because they can use the specter of a criminal blue light special; they are, in truth, zeroing in on the private sale.

Here is MJM’s summary. In a country where the mass of us still treasured freedom, we might be safe to accept more regulation.

We are not in that country. In a country under a government lusting for power, and urged on by about 40% who embrace socialist authoritarianism, free people should dig in and fight.

Yes, bitterly cling to your freedom or they will wrest it from you. That is what we have learned. And, couching creeping Marxism as “reasonable” is how our government has gotten us where we are today.

Gun control has gone underground. They now must be the very picture of “reasonable.” They are “not against guns.” They will raid, ambush, and harass the actual, practical exercise of the right to keep and bear arms at the village, neighborhood and rifle squad level, but they are warned to sound “reasonable.”

Unable to repeal handgun carry rights, they will try to claim gun ban zones, carving out a patchwork of spots across your city where you will become a criminal if you carry.

They will impede the sale of ammunition where possible. They will try to limit the number of guns you can buy.

They will continue to try to establish registration schemes, like Chicago’s registration requirement. How else would the government confiscate weapons in a made-up time of crisis without a list of subversive gun-owning citizens?

Fight them all. If you don’t, your new-found individual right to keep and bear arms will be eaten one small bite at a time.

“Gun violence?” How do you answer their purported concern about crime?

Easily. Do they lobby for capital punishment? I thought not. Unless they are for bringing back capital punishment in their state, and for public executions, they are not serious about stopping the horror of murder.

Accidents? What about reducing negligent discharges? The answer to that safety problem is always the same: better equipment and more training.

Guns and accessories made now are the best ever so what about training?

Are they for inviting Eddie Eagle into public school health classes to teach “Stop. Don’t touch. Leave the room. Tell and adult.”?

Would they tell the ACLU to leave the Boy Scouts alone?

Would they support junior high, and high school shooting teams?

I thought not. Until they clamor at school board meetings for broad, age-appropriate, firearms safety training, they are not serious about their purported concern for child safety.

So fight crime and ignorance, but also fight gun control.

Gun control in America today is not about finding those constitutional limits on individual freedom marked by “reasonable” regulations.

In a libertarian America where a consensus agree to hold government at bay, we could do that.

In America today, gun control remains what it has always been about: tyranny.

Yes, the constitution would permit states and cities reasonable infringements on the right (although “shall not be infringed” reads pretty blunt) but we are not tricked by their clever deployment of the R word.