The discussion of target shooting, hunting, and “sporting purposes” is moot. There is no debate about taking away someone’s single shot trap gun or little double barrel dove gun. Anyone can look at the U.K., where firearms are not an acceptable form of self defense. Yet, they are allowed to break pieces of clay and kill released pheasants despite the lack of a 2nd Amendment. Some of the most oppressive regimes of the world grant scatter-gun privileges.
It is a foolish discussion, as breaking pieces of clay needs no protection. It is the same with the 1st Amendment, for non-controversial speech needs no protection. It is only the controversial, perhaps unsavory, perhaps troubling to some type of speech that needs protection. You may be disgusted with flag-burning, but that is protected free speech.
The way rights are constrained and taken away is not hard to figure out; history shows exactly how it happens over and over again. A classic method is to covert a Right to a Privilege. Once that is accomplished, it opens up the hoary “what do you NEED it for” dialogue. If compelled to show a need, it is no longer a Right. The correct answer to “What Do You Need it For?” is called nobody’s business.
Gutting the 2nd Amendment takes time, the most crazed anti-gunners know this. Unable to directly void the 2nd Amendment, they are clever enough to chip away at it, gobble up the perimeters, and divide the U.S. gun-owner. Knowing that Americans are a selfish lot and largely care only about the rights that they choose to personally exercise, it is throw bones and false assurances to hunters and target shooters so they are sheeped into inaction, feeling good that their little part of the firearm world is not imperiled.
Now, the standard fare is to relabel, mislabel, and recast that which they wish to ban. Self-loading rifles are now “assault weapons” as are some pistols, weapons of war, weapons of mass destruction, the scourge of Mankind. Sheep a mindless population into believing repeating rifles and pistols are the same as Armed Predator Drones, landmines, booby traps, and rocket-propelled grenades and you are well on your way.
Also, soft pedal and dumb down the actual facts: gun crime has declined in the United States by over 50% in the last twenty years. Gun crime declines year after year, according to the FBI, but the facts don’t mess with the emotional “we have to do something” shrill mantra of the uninformed. Standard technique: over-report gun crime, sensationalize it, don’t mention that gun control was a massive failure in Canada and that Mexico has some of the most radical gun laws in the world– but extremely high crime. Also, never report that over 2,000,000 times every year, crimes are thwarted by U.S. private citizens with guns. That needs to be kept hush-hush, for it doesn’t not work with the gun-grabster dialogue.
Beyond that, lie. Lie like crazy, lie on Capitol Hill. Sit there with a straight face and tell people that 40% of the nasty crime guns come from gun shows. Lie, lie, lie. Don’t let the sheep of America ever know that according to the FBI data from 1997, 2% of the firearms acquired by Federal inmates came from gun shows.
We know that Federal inmates, those convicted of crime, get 2% of their firearms from gun shows. 2%, yet recently in the Senate hearings 40% was stated as fact. It is a factual lie, but that doesn’t matter . . . for the gunshow has been re-branded as a “loophole” and if you cry “loophole” loud and long enough, some people will actually start to believe it. Overstating gun shows as a source of firearms for criminals by TWENTY TIMES is no accounting error: it is an amazingly bold, easily discernible lie.
One can only hope that the American public will grow weary of being lied to and treated like sea-slug stupid sheep, not constituents. We should vote for candidates to actually protect rights, not steal them away.
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