Why is it that the libtarded Obamabots and their compliant mediots are sooooo anxious to paint the Chosen One ™ as no threat to our Second Amendment rights? 

The paranoid loon in me says that they want Americans complacent and convinced that their rights are safe and secure under our new socialist overlord, and as few people as possible to stock up on weapons.  That way, when gun grabbing Congressvermin initiate the latest round of draconian gun controls meant to make subjects out of a free people, there won’t be enough guns out there to mount an effective resistance.

The other part of me – the part not wearing the tinfoil hat and thong – says they’re simply ignorant.

I report, you decide.


Otherwise sensible people seem to completely lose their marbles when it
comes to the loaded question of handgun ownership, and what rules ought
to apply. I’m not sure why that is.

Maybe it’s because we actually treasure our rights and are sick and tired of statist scum infringing upon them?  Just a guess.  Feel free to postulate on your own, though.

Oh… you’ve got more.

The latest example of mass paranoia at work for no discernable reason
is a rush to gun shops across the country to buy sidearms. The
rationale, or vague impetus, is that with the election of Barack Obama
as president, we’re heading for the confiscation of our guns, for sure.
The National Rifle Association is promoting this sort of irrationality,
and I’ve even heard my good friend Brian Oleson, who owns a number of
gun stores in the region, say roughly the same thing.

Is it paranoia if they’re really after you?  I mean, if our new president supports the DC handgun ban, endorsed the handgun ban in Illinois, claims to respect the Second Amendment, but thinks localities have the right to ban handguns if they so choose, and screw the Constitution, wanted to license your right to keep and bear arms, limit your purchase of your tools of self defense to one per month, and decided that semi-automatic guns were too eeeeeeeeeeeevil to keep legal (which would effectively ban nearly every handgun), is that mass paranoia, or justified fear of statism?

Just curious…

Well, if it’s true, why in the world would you go out and buy something
the government is going to take away from you anyway?

Perhaps because most of us understand that previously-purchased guns would likely be exempt, and that unless the Statist Messiah dispatched jackbooted thugs to search each home, there would be no way to effectively ban weapons that were purchased before the law was passed.

Of course, the
idea of confiscating our legally owned and permitted handguns is
totally insane and flies in the face of where we’re at nationally.

re: “permitted handguns”

1 – Getting government permission to purchase a tool of self defense is absurd.
2 – Asking the nanny state for permission to exercise a right negates the very concept of a right

re: confiscations

1 – Impractical.  They wouldn’t want to cause outrage by overtly acting like festering fascist turds! 
2 – Stupid.  We’d resist.

So while confiscations are unlikely… at least for the time being, a ban is not out of the realm of possibility, given Obambi’s abysmal record on gun rights.  After all, domestic terrorists should not only be forgiven, but given a special place in the hearts of the new White House resident, while the rest of us should be deprived of our constitutional rights.  Gee, and I wonder why people are going out and buying guns!

/sarcasm

We’ve never had a more conservative, pro-gun judiciary out there in the
history of this country. Last summer’s affirmation by the very
conservative U.S. Supreme Court that gun ownership is a personal as
well as collective right apparently didn’t sink in. I don’t care who’s
elected president; our guns are safe. And I for one say amen to that.
I’m a handgun owner, and rifle and shotgun owner, and an avid hunter.

And here I thought this guy was a gun banner!  He’s simply a Fuddite!  You know the type.  The Second Amendment protects the rights of hunters during duck season.  We need reasonable restrictions. 

We’ve never had a more conservative, pro-gun judiciary?  The Heller decision was split 5-4!  This guy makes it sound like Heller spanked gun control!  It did not.  And it certainly didn’t affirm a personal AND a collective right to own guns.  What the hell is that?  We’re allowed to own guns both as individuals and in groups?  It affirmed that the Second Amendment protected an individual right, albeit subject to “reasonable” government regulation.

I care who’s elected president.  When you have a damn near supermajority of gun-grabbing, Democrat party line-toeing Congressvermin, supplemented by traitorous RINOs on Capitol Hill and supported by a gun banning White House, chances are some sort of ban will pass!

Sorry, dude!  Oh, I did backslashie sarcasm, didn’t I?  Oops?  Oh well.  Can’t get away from the snark.

I’m speaking of legally owned guns, keep in mind. I have absolutely no
use for protecting those trafficking in illegal guns. Even those who
would do so on principle. Street guns, slithering from state to state,
do too much harm.

Wow, man!  Love the guns/snakes metaphor!  Makes them sound so biblically evil!  They slither and do harm.  Do they give women apples and make them take bites from the tree of knowledge too? 

And frankly, one simple law can magically transform a previously legal sale to an eeeeeevil illegal one, so I have no use for those who would hide behind unreasonable laws in order to support tyranny.


Nor is there any real clue that Barack Obama has been secretly waiting
for the moment to sneak into your den and make off with your weapons.
Obama. and Congress, have to stand for re-election, and the gun-toting
lobby is so strong that anything like confiscation as a serious issue
is way off the scale of possibilities.

But there is ample evidence that Barack Obama, combined with statist shitstains such as Boxer, Pelosi, McCarthy and the others, could prove to be a death sentence to the freedoms we treasure.  Again.  There are confiscations, which are unlikely, and then there are bans, which are likely to make any weapon that makes statists shit their pants illegal.  Hence the “let’s buy them before they become illegal” idea.  DUH!

Now, of itself, a flood of new gun buys, even driven irrational
fears, is no big deal. It’s commerce, and we approve of that. But there
is a public policy implication that does pose a huge problem for us,
and it is this:

For the first time since 1935, with an
all-Democratic national government, we are in a position to finally
institute some meaningful and sensible gun control measures that will
help mightily in regaining our cities from gun terror, street by
street. Gun control doesn’t have to be a dirty word.

See?  Told ya he’s a Fuddite!

Yeah.  Gun control is a dirty word.  Actually only the control part.  Because it’s all about the control, and not about guns.  We have thousands of gun control laws on the books, which ones aren’t “reasonable” enough for you?  Which ones aren’t meaningful enough?  Oh the ones that do nothing to prevent CRIMINALS from obtaining guns?  Gee.  I would have thought that as a writer, this guy would be familiar with the definition of the word “criminal.”

The centerpiece has to be a national identification system for
handguns. A computerized system that would be accessible to all law
enforcement agencies, and that would standardize the requirements for
handgun ownership coast to coast. I am not suggesting anything radical
in the slightest. In essence, it would be the system we have here in
New York taken nationally, only with less waiting time for handgun
permits. Right now, it can take six months or more, and that’s idiotic.
If the Supreme Court decision should have done one thing, it is speed
the process for those who qualify.

Um.  How many crimes has this identification system solved?

Not a whole lot.

I would say that implementing an expensive, ineffective system of gun control nationwide is a pretty radical waste of money.  But then again, I’m not a socialist fuckstick who needs to control everyone and spend other people’s money doing it.

It is also true that last summer’s Second Amendment decision
underscored that states have the right to impose reasonable
restrictions and requirements, and I’m not suggesting those should
disappear. But the number one hold-up in tracing and stopping the
illegal gun traffic in this country — which is huge along the east
coast — is the hodge-podge of gun laws state by state that in effect
block communication of basic information. Only a federal system
overlaying the state laws could give us the needed checks and balances
on each gun, where and when a purchase originated, and everybody who
owned it along the way.

Oh, I’m all about freedom and the Second Amendment.  I just don’t thousands of state laws are enough.  Obviously criminals don’t abide by them.  Maybe if we get the feds involved…

Speaking of insane, consider this: If you buy a motor vehicle anywhere
in America, there is no problem in moving and registering it in another
state, no matter how different the motor vehicle laws are otherwise.
Every vehicle has an identification number. Keeping track of that
vehicle right to the junkyard and beyond is everybody’s business, and
we don’t even question it.

Speaking of stupid, consider this: the right to keep and bear arms is specifically enumerated in the constitution.  The right to own a car is not.  Registering a car is a way to keep track of a high-priced item, which, by the way, you are not required to register if you keep it on your private property – merely own it, instead of driving it.

Every gun manufactured anywhere in the world has a unique
identification number as well, yet we have no national system for
keeping track of handgun ownership. Some states are good at it, many
are not. I’d say it is totally irrational that we should keep closer
tabs on a Chevy than a Glock.

Irrational?  Not when you consider the number of people killed in motor vehicle crashes in 2005 (45,520, according to the CDC) vice the number of people killed by the use of firearms in 2005 (30,694), and that includes all instances of legal intervention, where the shooting was justified.  But here’s something more irrational.  Billions spent in fees, taxes, manhours, etc. to keep the car registration scheme alive, and we STILL have more than 45,000 deaths in motor vehicle crashes every year.  So what, exactly, will registering a Glock accomplish other than inconveniencing law-abiding citizens and sucking yet more money out of them to run an inept bureaucracy?  Do we honestly think criminals will bother registering their guns?

Where the current wackiness about gun confiscation gets in the way of a
sensible national identification policy is this: If paranoia takes hold
when there is not a clue to support the view that confiscation is on
anybody’s agenda, consider what the reaction will be to a national
system, which will touch off all manner of slippery slope imaginings
about confiscation and bans.

Imaginings?  Think it’s never happened before, Fred?

The Canadian handgun registration law of 1934 is the source was being used to confiscate (without compensation) over ½ of the handguns in 2001 in Canada.

The German 1928 Law on Firearms and Ammunition (before the Nazis came to power) required all firearms to be registered. When Hitler came to power, the existing lists were used for confiscating weapons. While I’m not thrilled about Godwining my argument, this one is actually appropriate.

In 1996, the Australian government confiscated over 660,000 previously legal weapons from their citizens… after registering them first.

The 1989 Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act in California required firearms registration. Due to changing definitions of “assault weapons”, many legal firearms were confiscated by the California government.

In 1967, New York City passed an ordinance requiring a permit and registration in order to own a rifle or shotgun.  In 1991, the city passed a ban on the private possession of some semi-automatic rifles and shotguns and “registered” owners were told that those firearms had to be surrendered, rendered inoperable, or taken out of the city.

Right.  It doesn’t happen.

Here’s Fred’s contact info.  Someone want to explain this to him?

Fred Lebrun can be reached at 454-5453, or by email at flebrun@timesunion.com.

UPDATE: Having just read what New Yorkers have to go through to get “permission” to exercise their constitutional rights, is it any wonder Fred wants some common sense, reasonable gun control?  There’s just not enough!

/sarcasm