Gunning For Tyranny
July 31, 2012 by Ben Crystal
Late last week, as Democrats and their media minions jockeyed for position at the front of the macabre post-Aurora-massacre line of people who reflexively oppose the Bill of Rights, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) grabbed his moment in the glare. It’s well known that the space between Schumer and a working camera is far more dangerous than any place frequented by people with firearms, and Schumer’s latest publicly expressed folly was hardly surprising under the circumstances. A tragedy had occurred; and come hell or high water, Schumer was loath to miss a chance to use the coffins of the victims as a soapbox for yet another mind-numbing liberal pronouncement on the dangers of law-abiding citizens owning firearms. Worse yet, Schumer and a number of his fellow Senators were loath to miss an opportunity to force their anti-Constitutional criteria on a citizenry already suffering their presence in the halls of Congress.
Thus did Schumer proclaim:
(The) basic complaint is that the Chuck Schumers of the world want to take away your guns. I think it would be smart for those of us who want rational gun control to make it known that that’s not true at all.
Personally, I think it would be smart for all of us to recognize that the Chuck Schumers of the world have hardly hidden their desire to take away our guns. In fact, the Chuck Schumers of the world are joined by Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) of the world, among others. And they are backed by the Brady Campaign and fellow fringe anti-Bill of Rights groups in their endeavors. That’s how the Chuck Schumers of the world get away with remarks like “rational gun control” while pushing for anything but.
While Schumer took to the floor to once again rail against things he doesn’t understand (which is hardly uncommon), he did so in an effort to throw a rhetorical blanket over an offensively secretive plan to do far more than simply abrogate the right to keep and bear arms. Following the Senate approval for amendments of the abominably invasive Cybersecurity Act of 2012 (itself a redressed version of the similarly appalling Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which Representative Ron Paul rightly identified as “Big Brother writ large”), Schumer and his friends pulled a fast one. They tacked an amendment onto the bill which might as well be known as the “Aurora Amendment.” Rather than try to take on the 2nd Amendment from the front, Schumer and his accomplices pinned their pusillanimous program to ban everything north of your daughter’s pink .22 Crickett onto the Federal cyberspying bill.
If Schumer, et al.’s S.A. 2575 seems familiar to observers of dastardly Democrat deeds, that’s because it is essentially a backdoor attempt to reintroduce the infamous “assault weapons ban” of years past. The new amendment is, in fact, virtually identical to the gun-ban bill introduced by Lautenberg. Feinstein sponsored the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. S.A. 2575 would, without a separate vote, “make it illegal to transfer or possess large capacity feeding devices such as gun magazines, belts, feed stripes and drums of more than 10 rounds of ammunition with the exception of .22 caliber rim fire ammunition,” according to The Hill. It’s worth noting that your current magazines, whether they be the 30-rounders most of us use for our ARs or one of those unwieldy 31 round monsters the Koreans make for the Glock 22 .40 caliber, are “grandfathered in.”
Before you panic and open a new tab on your browser so you can begin ordering replacement magazines for your AR-15, keep in mind that the bill still has to pass the Senate. That means the Senate will actually have to do something proactive — not exactly a strong suit under the listless leadership of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). And even if it does manage to make its way out of that wrinkled group, it’s as likely to pass the House as Chuck Schumer is to win the next 3-gun match at the local range.
The real problem with Schumer’s latest attempted abrogation of our Constitutionally protected rights — his protestations to the contrary be damned — is the same one that has plagued the Nation for decades: The basic premise of gun-ban proponents is fatally flawed. While liberals would ultimately prefer to relieve us all of our weapons, they know that will fly like a stone kite. So they try their usual incrementalist tack. They can’t get the guns, so they’ll limit the magazine capacity.
(Author’s aside: Stop saying “clips.” They’re not clips; they’re magazines. Your use of inaccurate descriptives reveals much more about you than it does about your intended targets. Likewise, weapons like my AR and my 1911 are not “automatic,” they’re semi-automatic: one round per trigger pull. Fully automatic weapons have been illegal in the United States without specialized permits since the early 1930s. Your argument might resonate more if you sounded even vaguely like you knew what the hell you were talking about. Imagine how you would feel if a conservative suggested cutting off taxpayer funding for the liberal twaddle on PBS with references to “Oliver the Grouch” on “Sesame Lane.”)
Some of Schumer’s carrion-feeding compatriots have even attempted to point to Aurora, Colo., suspect James Holmes’s ownership of a 100-round drum as proof of the need to limit magazine capacity. That argument falls apart fairly quickly when you realize the magazine wasn’t used during the shooting. The shooter didn’t need it; he had the advantage of knowing that anti-Bill of Rights activists like Schumer had already disarmed his victims through draconian restrictions that disallow any carry inside the Aurora city limits. It’s also worth noting that anyone who has tried to fire an AR with a 100-round drum magazine has recognized fairly quickly that it’s a fairly miserable experience — and that’s just the drudgery of loading the magazine itself.
For his part, Schumer added another amendment to his defense of the indefensible, suggesting:
We can debate where to draw the line of reasonableness, but we might be able to come to an agreement in the middle…Maybe, maybe, maybe we can pass some laws that might, might, might stop some of the unnecessary casualties.
Pardon my saying so, Senator, but the moment you and your cabal of Brady-backed gun grabbers began discussing limiting my Constitutional rights, you put “reasonableness (sic)” in the rearview mirror. There is absolutely nothing reasonable about agreeing to abrogate the Bill of Rights. There is no middle ground. And perhaps if people like you didn’t consistently focus on guns as opposed to criminals who misuse them, we “might, might, might stop some of the unnecessary casualties.” My suggestion is to arrest the Attorney General. At the very least, you’d be sending a strong message that arming homicidal narcoterrorists is generally frowned upon.
And once anyone offers Schumer and the Democrats “an agreement in the middle,” where does that leave the end? Should we agree to “the middle” on free speech? Perhaps allow some quartering of troops in our homes, but only squad-sized or smaller? Possibly we could compromise on… Come to think of it, the Federal government has already made a practice of doing everything to the Bill of Rights besides murdering it and burying it in Schumer’s backyard. Anyone who has watched as Transportation Security Administration agents have searched a handicapped person’s colostomy bag for explosives can testify that the 4th Amendment is certainly on life support, if it isn’t dead already.
Democratic attempts to institute limitations on the Bill of Rights routinely devolve into the dangerous or the absurd — as often as not, both. S.A. 2575 will have precisely the same prophylactic effect on violent crime as Aurora’s ban: none, at best. Meanwhile, the liberal arguments backing Schumer border on the absurd. Of course the Framers of the Constitution lived in a world with flintlocks and the like. Lest anyone stand on that wobbly rhetorical table, imagine the Framers’ reaction to the liberal argument in favor of Constitutionally protected partial-birth abortion.
The late, great Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) said “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” He was right. But defending liberty against the encroachment of people like Schumer is anything but extreme.
–Ben Crystal
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