Sunday, April 14, 2013

ARE YOU TOO CRAZY TO BE ALLOWED TO LIVE?


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.

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

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