Playing for Keeps on Gun Control


The inordinate backlash over the push for new, more stringent gun control laws in the United States is only “inordinate” to those who either understand nothing about the nation’s founding, the Constitution, and the Second Amendment, or those who wish to subvert same. Interestingly, the state of Colorado (where I happen to live) has become ground zero for the gun control discussion.

On February 22, 42-year-old Franklin Sain was arrested on suspicion of harassing Colorado state Rep. Rhonda Fields relating to alleged threats he’d made over frustration with the legislator's efforts to tighten state gun laws. Fields, whose son was shot and killed in 2005 as he waited to testify against a gang member, sponsored two of Colorado's new gun control bills. Her district also includes Aurora, Colorado, where gunman James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 58 others in a theater on July 20, 2012. While I sympathize with Ms. Fields’ loss, it occurs to me that her kid should’ve been packing… On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan had just delivered a luncheon address at a Washington hotel. As he was leaving, a lone gunman (later identified as the deranged John Hinckley) fired at the President six times. President Reagan and three others were shot, among them White House Press Secretary James Brady. Brady was seriously wounded and became permanently disabled.

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Despite Reagan having been a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, Brady and his wife Sarah later became leading advocates of gun control. They also became active in the lobbying organization Handgun Control, Inc., which was renamed the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. They also founded the non-profit Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was passed in 1993 as a result of their work, and the name Brady has become practically synonymous with gun control advocacy. It might be of interest to gun control advocates that all of this was the upshot of an attack carried out with one 22 caliber six shot revolver – not a large caliber handgun or military weapon with a 30 round magazine. It was also carried out at a distance from which Hinckley might have been able to stab or club the President rather than shoot him, had he been so inclined. I say this to underscore the fact that logic, statistics, and common sense have little value in this controversy over firearms in America. While many Americans have been entreated to focus on “protecting the children” and have bought into the infantile notion that guns can somehow be universally eradicated, it is clear to others that the entire campaign is an effort on the part of the Obama administration to capitalize on recent high-profile gun crimes (also perpetrated by mentally unbalanced people) in order to achieve citizen disarmament. As usual, the administration frames the argument, the press repeats it, and those who have not yet figured out that they need to turn off the television numbly agree. In the case of Colorado, the controversy has reached a fevered pitch, as legislators continue to advance draconian, wholly unconstitutional measures concocted by New York’s fascist Mayor Bloomberg and his Demand a Plan organization. Last month, Vice-President Biden personally leaned on Colorado legislators to get these bills passed. So, with sanction from the White House itself, these legislators forged ahead in typical autocratic progressive fashion. The Colorado measures have not been popular, not that this matters to liberal Democrats. During the hearings this week, porcine Colorado senator Evie Hudak had the temerity to chastise Amanda Collins, a 27-year-old rape survivor who offered testimony regarding a bill to prohibit concealed carry permit holders from bringing handguns onto college campuses. Collins, a second-degree black belt in karate and a concealed carry permit holder, was raped because she was on a college campus that prohibited concealed carry permit holders from bringing handguns onto the campus. Senator Hudak was popularly excoriated as a result and was forced into issuing an apology to Ms. Collins. Progressives may manage to kill two birds with one stone in Colorado via the new gun control measures. Magpul, a Colorado manufacturer of firearms accessories (high-capacity magazines chief among them) has issued lawmakers an ultimatum potentially worth millions to the state: Pass their bill restricting magazine capacity, and the business will move out of state. The company is itself a great success story; started in an ex-Marine's basement in 1999, it now employs some 200 people and supports about 400 jobs through subcontractors. They expect to contribute nearly $85 million to Colorado’s economy in 2013. But while Magpul’s threat to leave the state might seem grave given the potential in loss of jobs and revenue, it is actually gravy for the progressive agenda. Perhaps I should have said that progressives get to kill three birds with one stone here: Hurting a small business, increasing government dependency through furloughed Magpul workers, and further diluting the Second Amendment. The bottom line is that people in states struggling against infringement of their Second Amendment rights need to understand that they can no longer suffer the folly of the well-intentioned vis-à-vis gun control issues. It is time to play for keeps, because the Marxist in the White House in exercising undue influence over their legislative process in order to compromise their liberty. We are currently being ruled (not governed) by spoiled, conceited, and otherwise inconsequential malcontents who, by justification of nothing but their empty conceit, are seeking absolute authority in America. They are seducing Americans’ liberties out from under them on the pretext of protecting them in order to accomplish this.