By Rachel Malone
Last night I read the RW Arms press release describing how they will be turning in 60,000 bumpstocks to be shredded and recycled under the supervision of ATF agents in order to avoid a potential 10-year imprisonment and $250,000 fine per violation.
I felt like I got sucker-punched.
This is horrible. And this is what modern gun confiscation looks like. Let me break down for you what has happened:
1. The President signs an executive order directing a government agency to re-define an item (notwithstanding that that agency has consistently upheld another definition repeatedly for years).
2. The agency writes a new rule re-defining that item to be included in a group of banned items.
3. Anyone currently legally owning that item who has not turned it in to the federal government (without receiving any compensation) will be committing a federal felony offense.
That rule re-defining bump fire stocks as machine guns goes into effect today.
This is what modern gun confiscation looks like.
Maybe you don’t own a bump stock. Maybe it’s easy for you to say “They shouldn’t give them up — I’d never give up my guns!” Or, maybe it’s easy for you to say “Oh, but nobody REALLY NEEDS that — this isn’t a big deal.”
Let me boil this down for you.
When (not if — but when) you are banned from owning or using the firearm, ammunition, or accessory that you do own, you’ll be faced with a choice that probably will boil down to one of these two basic options:
1. Don’t give it up. Do the “Come And Take It” and “Line In The Sand” and “Don’t Tread On Me” and “From My Cold Dead Hands” thing — and maybe go to federal prison for a decade or more. Maybe get shot. Maybe watch your family get shot, too.
2. Give it up. Decide that your life and your family’s lives aren’t worth risking just so you can hold onto your safety tools [guns]. And when you give it up, you’ll be giving up the tool that was up as a last line of defense against a tyrannical government.
What choice would you make?
Do you see how vile this choice is?
How hard will you fight NOW to push back against every despicable reach toward gun control — big or small — so we retain our liberties? So we don’t have to make that choice?
Every bit of push-back matters. We fight — some battles we win, some we don’t, but this fight is about standing up for our liberties.
And what we see happening right now…this is what gun confiscation looks like, and it makes me sick.
Rachel Malone is the Texas Director of Gun Owners of America.