Thursday, January 10, 2013

Response to an Australian friend regarding gun control.

This is an Australian government publication: http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/0/B/6/%7B0B619F44-B18B-47B4-9B59-F87BA643CBAA%7Dfacts11.pdf
 
You have to decide whether it's correct but part of that decision is whether you trust your fellow citizens to be rational, and whether you trust your government to protect you from the ones who become unhinged. 

You have to decide whether the government has the capability to protect everyone from everything, or whether they are willing to accept huge collateral damage in order to disarm the majority of law abiding citizens.  In the US, they can already 'disappear' you with no warrant and no charges.  They can already listen to all your calls and read all your email without warrants.  They can already track every cell phone to within 150 feet without a warrant.  They know who you are and where you are, even if you carry NO electronics and use NO credit or debit cards.  There are cameras on almost every traffic light which reads your license plate and immediately compares it to a national database. Many of them can identify you by facial features.  Within five years there will be one on every corner.  

Let's compare societies.  Australia has about 22 million citizens and your entire regular army is about 30,000. Supposedly you can own firearms, but not so much in reality.  In comparison, the US has over 322 million citizens. There are over 35,000 police officers in New York City alone, and it has the most restrictive gun laws in the country - yet it has the highest crime rate.  Is that a function of overcrowding, or illegal firearms?  The NYPD broke every law in the book repressing the First Amendment rights of the Occupy protestors and nothing was done. Oakland PD shot a Combat Marine in the head for standing well outside their perimeter and doing nothing aggressive.  Nothing was done. The police can now break into your home by accident and kill you for no reason and nothing will be done.  The President says "I won't use the rights I have abrogated against Americans", but he does.    

First, NO ONE is suggesting that MORE guns will solve anything. What is being suggested, is that 1% of the population bought off the government and now owns more than 40% of the wealth in the country at the expense of the other 322.99 million people - and it is getting worse. Furthermore, it is obvious that while the liberals got out more of the vote because people WANT peace and prosperity, and because the conservatives went off the deep end and still are, no one trusts the government to provide fair and impartial laws which treat everyone equally and no one trusts the government to protect them from violent criminals. 

An average mass shooting, when stopped by the police, is 18 victims. When stopped by an armed citizen, that drops to TWO victims. My argument is very simple. If the government cannot protect me from violent people and crazies, it should not try to restrict my ability to protect myself.  Sending the police out to count the bodies and identify a shooter who has already killed himself is an effort in futility.  

Worse, a lot of people are beginning to suspect that these incidents are not random.  I don't care to debate that particular theory, but I'm pretty sure that marijuana is not responsible for these actions and that pencils are not responsible for misspelled words, or firearms for the actions of people.  But every time someone wants to do something like start a war or ban firearms, some horrible incident that just happens to fit their wish nicely seems to happen.  Now it happens to be a bunch of twentysomethings who just happen to obtain firearms they really don't know how to use and go on meaningless killing sprees until they are stopped or their firearm jams at which point they either kill themselves or wander around like zombies until they are caught. It's pretty darned obvious that Adam Lanza was a nutcase and his mother knew it.  But instead of having his nutty little ass committed, she kept guns and they happened to be exactly the kind she didn't need.  You can't blame the gun for that.

OK, firearms are a hot-button issue.  But more children die of PARENTAL NEGLECT than from homicide by firearm.  More die in motor vehicle accidents.  More die from accidental poisoning.  More die in structure fires.  More die from falls. More die in hospitals from ADVERSE EFFECTS OF MEDICAL TREATMENT!  To me it's stupid to go down the list and ignore everything else until you come to something you want to ban and try to make that a national priority.

We live in different societies, Australia and America, but our governments are REactive, not PROactive. They will never do anything until they are forced to, and then they will go too far. ALMOST everyone in the US knows that is exactly what is about to happen, once again, and almost everyone in America is buying a firearm if they didn't have one before. 

We saw what happened with the prohibition of alcohol. We have seen what happened with the War on Drugs. We have a President who went through life smoking pot and campaigned on legalizing it, but then set the government after states which HAVE legalized it. We know what is going to happen. 

I am not advocating for more firearms. I am not advocating for fewer restrictions than we already have. I am saying that until we get some responsible, adult leadership in government, people who can make rational decisions and tell the truth, we are not going to lay down for irrational and irresponsible laws.  We keep doing that and it keeps not working.  The government has to keep people scared of something or they might realize they have been sold into slavery.

People have bought almost every firearm available in this entire country during the last month. They have done that in ANTICIPATION of breaking any new firearms laws which are enacted. They know that the government is going to make millions of people criminals and have decided they would rather be criminals than trust the government. I understand that you can't understand how that is possible, But you have to understand that these laws are being passed by people like Diane Feinstein WHO CARRIES A CONCEALED FIREARM HERSELF, and a President who signs off on killing 'suspected insurrectionists' from thousands of miles away - some of which happen to be schools full of children. 

That's not OK with most people and we do not intend to turn into the Weimar Republic. The same people who are proposing these laws killed half a million children in Iraq for a lie. Now they are talking about REVOKING parts of the Constitution, upon which ALL of our laws are based. That document defines us as a nation, or should. There is already less personal freedom in the US than in Guatemala, and now they want to take the rest of it.  It is not going to happen.

One more thing.  Maybe Australia is not being overrun by wild pigs, but Hawaii is.  Literally overrun.  It isn't too likely that you will encounter one in the daytime unless you are hunting them, but it happens.  If it's a sow with babies, she'll tear you up in a heartbeat.  If it's a big Boar, he might well decide you are dinner.  I don't have much jungle left on my farm, but the part that is jungle has a huge pig freeway in a hidden ravine at the back.  I can go back there any time of any day and find fresh tracks and spoor.  It's uneven ground at best and treacherous at worst and when I am tramping around back there, I carry a pistol.  I'd be real stupid if I didn't.  Cellphones don't work here and you can't hear a rescue whistle from the house.  But you can hear a gunshot.

The pistol I carry was designed in 1876.  It doesn't have a high capacity magazine.  It doesn't have a magazine at all. In fact, you can't even carry it fully loaded because the hammer has to sit on an empty chamber, so I have five bullets, and six more in bullet loops on my belt.  For what I do, I consider it a necessary farm implement and I'm going to carry it.  No one is going to tell me any different.  

I have a .22 rifle, too.  When all this started, I bought all the high capacity magazines I could find.  "OH MY GOD!  What are you going to do with 25 rounds in your rifle?"  Nothing, really.  It's a single shot target rifle.  But all those magazines I paid $15 for are now selling for $60.  By next week they will be $100.  Not because they are useful for anything, but because the government is going to outlaw them.  I bought a bunch of AR-15 mags, too.  I don't have an AR-15.  I don't want an AR-15.  But these are like gold. And no matter what kind of ban goes through, I can sell them to police officers.  Everyone wins.  

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