Hand over your weapons the incendiary headline at bostonglobe.com demands. “Ultimately, if gun-control advocates really want to stanch the blood, there’s no way around it,” David Scharfenberg concludes. “They’ll have to persuade more people of the need to confiscate millions of those firearms, as radical as that idea may now seem.” Only that’s not what they’re doing, is it? Oh sure . . .
There are government sponsored “gun buybacks.” But these are “no questions asked” events. Questions like “do you want to sell us your gun or go to jail?”
I’m not saying it couldn’t happen. Look at Australia. But I am saying it isn’t happening here in the U.S.
Or is it? New York’s “emergency” middle-of-the-night post-Newtown SAFE Act is de facto confiscation. scopeny.org:
Once registered, the person who registered it may keep the assault weapon for life, but may not transfer it to another unless the person he or she transfers it to is exempt from the law. There are no exceptions that allow a person to transfer an Assault Weapon to an immediate family member. Therefore, the owner of a registered assault weapon may only transfer it to a police officer, a firearms dealer or to a person in another state where possession of the weapon would be lawful.
So, while gun control advocates pay lip service to the Second Amendment’s protection against government infringement on the right to keep and bear arms, they’re constantly looking for ways to deny and/or remove firearms from American citizens.
Ban “assault weapons”! Remove guns from veterans with PTSD! Remove guns from accused domestic abusers! Remove guns from people the police deem a danger to society!
The majority of Americans subject to existing unconstitutional firearms prohibitions (e.g., modern sporting rifle owners in New York and Connecticut) are simply refusing to comply. They’re practicing Irish democracy: ignoring the gun laws on the DL.
The question is: do you believe there will come a time when the local, state or federal government will “get serious” about gun owning scofflaws — and others they may create — and literally come for their guns? Could you see a time when they’d come for your guns?