When I’m arguing with my mother about gun control (she, being a stereotypical Westchester county New York Democrat) there’s a normal progression of events. First, she hears something on the news (like Bloomberg pontificating on civilian disarmament) and then asks me how I could possibly be opposed to such “common sense” proposals. Naturally, I reply with a well thought out and rational argument about how taking guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens won’t stop criminals, would probably result in an increase in crime, and is both unconstitutional and immoral. Her natural fall-back position is to snark that “no one is taking your guns” and refuses to hear any arguments to the contrary. But the fact is, whenever she says that, its a complete and total lie . . .
Let’s start with the easy rebuttal to that statement: Dianne Feinstein.
In 1995, Senator Feinstein stated very clearly that she would have liked to require full confiscation of all “assault weapons” in the United States under the provisions of her original AWB.
Dan Agin over at the Huffington Post has a similar opinion on guns. His plan was to have every American turn in all of their guns, not just the scary black ones DiFi has been advocating. No, only complete and total disarmament (except for the sacred police officers) is Dan’s position.
And don’t tell me that’s only one or two people who want to grab my guns. That isn’t good enough. Democrats crucify the entire Republican party whenever a single Republican opens their yap and lets something stupid like “legitimate rape” slip out. But the same logic apparently doesn’t apply for their party. So we need to beat them into submission instead. For the best example of the drive for civilian disarmament, let’s look at New York State.
The Empire State had an “Assault Weapons Ban” in place since the original was enacted in 1994. As a former resident of that awful place, I had fun a terrible time dealing with those laws while attempting to exercise my second amendment rights. And while the law was extremely restrictive to the newer generation of gun owners, the older folks weren’t all that bothered. Their existing guns were grandfathered in — indeed, no one was taking them.
The new law, just enacted, removes the grandfather clause. Every single firearm in the state of New York that meets the extremely broad criteria set forth under the new “SAFE Act” is illegal. And since they are illegal, people who were legal owners of those firearms are being forced to sell them, destroy them or move them out of the state. And those new criteria make just about every popular rifle and shotgun designed and sold in the last 70 years illegal in New York State.
The only exception is that those who register their firearms are exempt from the mandatory disarmament, an exception that was only added to appease the Republicans. The original bill apparently had no such provisions. But even then, the guns cannot be sold within the state, transferred, or otherwise disposed except to be destroyed. While before such commonly available guns would be capable of being handed down to the next generation, the plan appears to be to wait for the owners to die, and then confiscating the firearms.
They literally want to take your gun from your cold dead hands.
And given New York’s history, its not unlikely that such registration is simply a precursor to a complete and total door-to-door confiscation down the road. Since they now have a convenient list of gun owners.
The picture is even worse for shotguns. Since the new law requires ALL guns capable of accepting more than seven rounds to be disposed and prohibits their sale (with NO exemption for pump action shotguns), guns like the Remington 870 and Mossberg 500 are about to become illegal in New York State. Their fixed magazines accept 5 rounds of “normal” sized 12 gauge ammunition, but the commonly available 1.75 inch rounds make the legal capacity of those guns somewhere around 10. Due to the inability of New York State legislators to even read the law before it was passed, no one realized that fact until it was too late.
So yes, the venerable pump action shotgun that “no one wants to ban” is now banned.
In other states, like California, the push is to pass a similar law but without the registration exception. Complete and total disarmament of modern firearms is the stated goal, and those pushing the laws are intent on getting their way.
Here comes the semantic argument. “There’s no door to door inspections right now . . . no one is physically taking away the actual objects.” But the fact remains that the objects are no longer legally in our possession. Through force of law, our guns are indeed being taken away within the state. We can no longer use them, and we can no longer legally possess them. We can neither keep nor bear those arms, which are the most popular firearms in the United States. I’d say that qualifies pretty well as having them “taken away.” To take guns out of law abiding citizens’ hands in the hopes that making everyone a victim will somehow make everyone safer.
The line people like my mother use — that no one is coming for your guns — used to be true. With the 1994 “assault weapons” ban, the Democrats successfully split the gun owners of America down the middle by trying to isolate hunters. Only the “evil black rifles” were being banned, and the traditional hunting rifles of the time were exempt.
“No one is coming for your guns” was used to great effect to pacify hunters and keep them from rising up in opposition to the law. It was a brilliant piece of propoganda, that Democrats seem to have internalized almost as well as “think of the children!” when proposing illogical laws.
But the problem is, it’s no longer true. “Hunting rifles” have evolved to be indistinguishable from so-called “assault weapons.” They have the same features, and use the same designs. And the removal of a grandfather clause from the proposed legislation can only mean that full-scale confiscation is in the offing. They are, indeed, coming to take away our guns. Even the “hunting rifles.” And those who are still trying to pass off that old lie are either too ignorant of the proposed legislation or too entrenched in the party rhetoric to understand the lie they’re spouting.