Have
you noticed the new emphasis on mental health in the gun control debate? It’s usually framed as something like, “…common
sense approach, such as keeping guns out of the hands of mentally unstable
people.” Sometimes, they substitute “bipartisan”
in place of “common sense,” but the bottom line is the same: anyone the government thinks is crazy can’t
have guns.
Does
my phrasing in that last sentence give away my position? As much as anyone, I am against lunatics
having guns, but like all other government programs, one must ask how would it
be accomplished, and what difference would it really make?
I
have never really trusted the government to make such decisions, and the
present government is orders of magnitude less worthy of our trust. (For the record, I lump most Republicans in
with the Obama administration. This is
not a matter of party affiliation.) We
have seen directives to doctors to report any patient who has guns. We have seen schools asking children to fill
out questionnaires about their parents’ habits, including guns in the home. We have seen “assault weapon” registration
rolls in California used to put ambulances to the curb while SWAT teams went
ahead and cleared the home of weapons, while an injured child lay under the
tree from which he’d fallen. We’ve seen the VA
reporting veterans who have gone there for help with feelings of alienation,
anger, or depression, and those same veterans being denied purchase of
firearms. We have seen parents arrested
for posting photos on Facebook of themselves with their children holding guns.
Let
us not make the mistake of selling short the impact of such rules. There are certain circumstances under which a
person’s only hope of survival is the skillful and timely deployment of a
firearm, and a firearm with sufficient power and capacity to do the job. While most citizens will never find themselves
in that position, the odds of it happening to any of us are increasing,
especially among those in the border states, where foreign gangs – “armies” is
not too strong a term – grow increasingly bold.
To deny any citizen access to an appropriate firearm is to say,
literally, “If that ever happens to you, you’re screwed. You and everyone you might wish to protect
are hereby declared nonessential. We’ll
bury whatever pieces we find.” Liberals
have chanted, “If it only saves one child…” but are willing to say, in the most
flagrantly callous way, “…except for the children of people of whom we don’t
approve.”
Under
certain circumstances, being unarmed is a death sentence. Period.
This is what we are talking about.
Not hunting. Not sport
shooting. Not gun collection. The right to live. Period.
Yes,
if an armed person chooses to commit murder, others may die unless they are
armed and prepared, as well, but – BUT – are we qualified to say who lives and
who dies, based on... what? On the opinion
of some graduate school hack who is up to his eyeballs in debt to the government?
Not
I.
There is absolutely no way in the world I trust our government or anyone under their control to make valid, objective psychological evaluations of any citizen’s worthiness to defend himself. Why, I’d bet you a dollar to a donut there are liberals right now thinking, “That crazy sonofabitch Rodgers needs to be at the top of our crazy list!” Now, I may be crazy, but I’m not keen on being so judged by people with a political axe to grind. I see horrendous potential for abuse of power and the 4th and 5th Amendments, at least, and it concerns me deeply.
There is absolutely no way in the world I trust our government or anyone under their control to make valid, objective psychological evaluations of any citizen’s worthiness to defend himself. Why, I’d bet you a dollar to a donut there are liberals right now thinking, “That crazy sonofabitch Rodgers needs to be at the top of our crazy list!” Now, I may be crazy, but I’m not keen on being so judged by people with a political axe to grind. I see horrendous potential for abuse of power and the 4th and 5th Amendments, at least, and it concerns me deeply.
Obamacare
has established unprecedented governmental control over all aspects of the health
care system. There is no way any doctor
will stay in business while refusing to comply with the rules, and the rules
are so vaguely-written as to practically demand abuse.
So much for
the “how.”
Would
such a law do any good? I don’t think
so. It's been proven beyond any doubt that it is impossible to keep known felons
from getting guns. It would be equally
impossible to keep “unstable” persons from getting them. If there are guns in America, felons and
wackos will get them. There’s no way to
prevent it. This, of course, leads one to the inescapable conclusion that the
ultimate Federal goal is the total disarmament of the American people, but even
that won’t work. The genie is out of the
bottle. The gun is just too useful to
fade away. Take the guns we’ve got, and
by the time you bury your dead, we’ll have more. Guns are easy to make, and I’m not talking
about zip guns; I’m talking about high-powered repeating arms capable of
battlefield accuracy.
So,
in point of fact, the idea of keeping guns out of ANYone’s hands is a myth – a warm,
fuzzy, incredibly dangerous delusion.
Add to that the fact that, especially in the case of “mental health,”
our criteria are so pathetically vague and primitive, and you have what amounts
to a scenario right out of the movie, “Minority Report.” We are talking about prior restraint –
antecedent judgment (called “prejudice” in some circles) – being found guilty,
not merely before being tried, but before a crime has been committed!
Are
you really prepared to live in a nation in which the government can deprive you
of your right to own anything based on what you MIGHT do at some point in the
future? It doesn’t matter whether we
talk about guns or bubble gum, the principle is the same. And if you like the Obama administration,
remember that you are not giving this power to Saint Barack; you are giving it
to the presidency. Would you be
comfortable giving this power to George Bush?
I wouldn’t be, and I liked him up until the last two years of his second
term.
When
considering these questions, consider how they’d be implemented, and what it
would take to make them effective. In the
case of the proposed mental health standards for firearms ownership, there is
no way to make them work, at all, under any circumstances, and most certainly
not without gutting the Bill of Rights like a carp.
Obama
and the fascist leadership are fully aware of what I have warned you of. The Republicans who have sold their souls and
support the fascists are probably too stupid to understand it.
Rebsarge
