- I cannot accept so-called "reasonable compromises" that would limit my right to own a gun, because I firmly believe that there is no limit to the compromises that I will be asked to accept in the future. History has shown conclusively that gun control leads to gun registration and finally to gun confiscation, in nearly every country that it has been adopted. Each time the gun control advocates push their restrictive proposals forward in the US Congress, we are assured, even promised, that if we will only go along 'this time,' we won't be asked to give up any more of our rights. Each time, that promise is abrogated almost immediately. To me, this is simple historical fact. If I 'compromise' today, tomorrow I will be asked to 'compromise' again, and my right to own a gun will slowly be whittled down to nothing.
Some liberals, whom I term "gun-grabbers," know this, because it is their agenda. HCI, for example, despite protestations to the contrary, has always been and will always be in favor of banning all guns everywhere. They are truly liars, as they have done enough research to know that the facts do not bear them out, but they have chosen to ignore those facts to support their unreasonable fear of guns.
Other liberals, perhaps the majority, honestly believe that I'm being paranoid when I say that they'll never stop with so-called 'reasonable' gun laws. That's not because they're being dishonest or because they're stupid.
Rather, I believe it is because they don't pay attention to what is happening. They don't own guns, and until tragedies happen, they don't pay attention to the slow erosion of gun ownership rights. Besides, just from a quick glance, it 'seems right' that we should ban "Saturday Night Specials," or "Assault Rifles," or whatever the gun-du-jour is today. After all, they're scary! They've heard of how some of them have been used to commit heinous crimes. Banning them seems like a reasonable solution, assuming that they don't dig any deeper into the facts.
- I can't see that no one wants to take away my gun rights, because it is clear that some people do. Yes, they are concerned about gun violence in our society, and they may even believe that banning classes of guns will make the situation better (despite the facts), but they also have an irrational fear of other people being armed, even people who would never harm them in any way. It bothers them deeply, and banning ALL guns is their eventual goal.
- I can't accept that so-called 'reasonable' gun ownership restrictions save lives because the facts do not bear that out, and neither does common sense. Criminals will do as they please, they always have. Nature, it is said, abhors a vacuum. Where there is a demand for any banned or proscribed item, people will step in to supply it. Drugs are a perfect example -illegal, but easily available. I can't buy cocaine at the corner drugstore, but I can send a kid down to downtown Denver to get me a big bag of crack, anytime, day or night. Prohibition was another prime example. People wanted booze, the law banning it was unpopular, so of course, the booze flowed copiously. Our own Kennedy family has their patriarch to thank for their finances, their empire was built on bootleg whiskey. History does not even dispute that fact. Explosives are tightly controlled, so now domestic terrorists blow things up with fertilizer and racing fuel bombs. The precursors to illegal drugs are often controlled substances themselves, so now we have new classes of mind-altering substances that are made from things like baking soda and No-Doze.
How can any reasonable and intelligent human being think that restricting legal purchases of guns will stop criminals from getting them, based on what I've just said? Can anyone give me an example of a prohibition that has stopped criminals from getting their hands on what they wanted, or a workable substitute?
We can't even stop PEOPLE from crossing our borders pretty much at will. How then will we stop illegal shipments of guns from reaching criminals?
The answer, surely, must be that we cannot. Criminals will continue to have "easy access to guns," while citizens who obey the laws will not. Does this seem like a reasonable solution to anyone?
- I can't accept that "reasonable" gun restrictions save lives because even our own FBI crime statistics tell us that this is not so. Crime rates drop more in communities that have enacted liberal ownership and concealed-carry laws - despite truly transparent attempts by some to make this not seem to be true.
- I can't understand why no one "needs" to own an AK47 because it isn't the point, and never was. The true gun-grabbers know that the AK47 is not in common use criminally, as reflected in FBI crime statistics. They don't care; their agenda calls for frightening people, and that makes "scary" guns a safe target. It does not matter to me whether my neighbor owns an old H&R break-top .22 revolver or a closet full of SKS' and AK47's. What matters to me is that he or she is law-abiding and a decent member of society.
And it is truly no one else's business what kind or number of guns *I* own. If the question were about toasters instead of guns, no one would consider it appropriate to ask, "Who needs to own 32 toasters? Let's ban them!"
Would anyone consider it appropriate to say, "Who needs to have a copy of the Koran in their house?" We see all the violence done in the world today by extremist Muslims, so why not ban the Koran? The answer is that we treasure our right to read and believe what we wish. We don't punish people for reading objectionable material (except for porn, let's not get into that one right now), or for kneeling to "inappropriate" Gods, and we'd mostly be aghast if it were suggested that we do so. Yet some of us feel it is appropriate to determine for others what type, number, and classification of gun they may own.
I don't "need" the car I drive. I could get by just fine with an econo-box. But society respects my choice to buy and drive whatever type of car I want. I see no difference between my choice of car and my choice of firearm.
- And finally, I have the "extremist" attitude that I have because I know the gun-grabbers better than my liberal anti-gun friends do. I know that their ultimate goal is to strip our entire law-abiding society of our gun ownership rights. I'm not sure why they want to do that, other than their often visible pathological fear of guns, but I know that they do. If I give in to so-called "reasonable" gun control restrictions, I have opened the door to more, and more, and yet more restrictions, all in the name of being "reasonable."
Therefore, I am, by definition, an extremist. I accept that label; it is accurate in my case. I will not support any gun control laws whatsoever. I will obey the repressive laws already in place, precisely because I am a law-abiding citizen, not the gun-crazed lunatic that the gun-grabbers would portray me as. However, I will not give up my guns. Not now, not ever.
We need to come together as a nation and as individual communities to address our problems, which are being exemplified by the recent tragedy just down the road from my house. I am willing to be a part of the dialog, to help find out what's broken about our society and to try to fix it.
Certainly, private gun ownership seems like a convenient scapegoat right now, and I forgive my fellow Americans who, in their grief and sadness, grasp hold of the gun-control bandwagon as an "obvious" problem that needs solving by banning guns. I would ask them to use their eyes and minds as well as their hearts, however. Our society is deeply ill, but banning guns won't fix it.
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