Sometimes when your battles are going too well you have to wonder if there is an ambush being prepared. We won Heller, incorporation looks like a shoe-in, we (will soon) be able to take guns in National Parks, and the police, in some jurisdictions, can be sued if they even temporarily detain someone for openly carrying a gun. Except for Heller all of that occurred since “the most anti-gun administration in U.S. history” took power.
As thrilled as I am about all the progress we have been making it also makes me a little bit paranoid. Certainly the administration has lots of other high priority tasks facing it. The economy, the war, and the self-flagellation of advocating more government control of health care probably does distract from their campaign promise of attacking gun owners. And certainly a case could be made for incompetence for accomplishing anything other than getting elected. But could it be the administration have some clever, nefarious plan to make all our civil rights gains moot?
If so, it probably can’t be through the legislature and the courts. It would have to be something like martial law, emergency powers, or possibly an international treaty. Such a treaty is being discussed again:
Seven countries have launched a campaign for the U.N. to start negotiations on a new treaty regulating the global arms trade to help prevent the illegal transfer of guns that kill and maim thousands every day.
…
According to a report published this week by the British relief agency Oxfam and 11 other non-governmental organizations, some 2.1 million people — overwhelmingly civilians — have died either directly or indirectly as a result of armed violence since the General Assembly first voted in December 2006 to work toward a treaty regulating the growing, multibillion dollar arms trade.
This is the equivalent of more than 2,000 people dying every day — worse than one person killed each minute, the report said.
“There is an overflow of government sponsored and private illegal armies, ethnic militias and non-state guerrilla forces,” former U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland, who now heads the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, said in a forward to the report.
“And they are supplied as never before with lethal weapons by reckless states,” Egeland said. “Only a forceful, unambiguous and verifiable convention can control transfers and do away with the networks of illegal arms brokers that supply our generation’s weapons of mass killings and mass misery.”
Duncan said that after three years of discussions, Britain, Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan and Kenya have proposed a resolution establishing negotiations to draft and agree on a treaty.
The idea of a treaty “is still contentious,” Duncan said. But supporters are hoping the disarmament committee will support the resolution and the 192-member General Assembly will approve the measure later this year. That would pave the way for negotiations leading up to an international conference in 2012 that would hopefully adopt the new treaty.
Last year, the assembly overwhelmingly endorsed a working group to move toward negotiations by a vote of 147-2, with the U.S. and Zimbabwe casting “no” votes. Others were either absent or abstained.
Whether President Barack Obama’s administration will now back negotiations remains to be seen.
Gun control is a hotly contentious issue in the United States, where the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens the right to “keep and bear arms,” and powerful lobby groups routinely oppose almost every effort to restrict gun sales and ownership — and usually win.
Supporters of a new treaty stress that it will not interfere with legal arms sales but will target illegal weapons transfers.
What these people apparently fail to consider is the number of people that are killed because of gun control. Even in their own numbers above they are including deaths by governments intent exterminating people because of racial and/or religious differences which could have been prevented had the oppressed been able to defend themselves.
Probably the biggest risk of the treaty to U.S. gun owners is such a treaty will almost certainly require that guns be registered so their movement can be carefully tracked. Registration must never be allowed. The risk is just too high. Remember my Jews In The Attic Test and just say no until you are out of ammo.
“have died either directly or indirectly as a result of armed violence”
BS-ometer pegged on that one – how exactly are they counting people killed “indirectly” as a result of armed violence?
Just a guess, but using arms to deny them access to shelter, food, and water would probably work.
“how exactly are they counting people killed “indirectly” as a result of armed violence?”
See Ethiopian Famine,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_-_1985_famine_in_Ethiopia
Holodomor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
or The Great Leap Forward
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_leap_forward
no direct attempt to slaughter people wholesale, a la Nazi Germany, but force was used to deny food or fundamentally destroy the food production and distribution systems in these countries. Armed people would be able to resist. Unarmed people were given the choice of die fast or die slow.
According to the Constitution no treaty is to be honored if it violates the Constitution even if ratified.
Not that any of the people in government give a damn about the Constitution and feel bound by it. However, amendment two gives us a cure for that stupidity.
First of all, if Obama doesn’t start doing something soon, you guys are going to have to stop calling his administration “the most anti-gun administration in history.”
Secondly, I think you’re right to be paranoid because although the upcoming decision by the Supreme Court will probably be a “shoe-in,” the more attention is placed on this the more obvious it will become to intelligent and open-minded people that you cannot use the 2nd Amendment to justify owning firearms individually in 21st century America.
I have faith in the common sense and righteousness of the average American and expect sooner or later things will turn back around where they belong, at least as far as this ridiculous justification goes.
You may still be able to have guns for protection and even to play with explosives, like you like to do, but you won’t be able to justify it Constitutionally. That’s in the future America that I envision.
After we get that straightened out, we’ll have to tackle those who use the Biblical justification, but one battle at a time, huh?
Not that I expect an answer, and I certainly know better than to expect a reasoned, logical answer from someone who cannot tell fact from fiction, but I have a very simple question for you, MikeB: Why not?
MikeB – Let’s assume that in your fantasy utopia the 2nd Amendment actually gets repealed legislatively. We’ll ignore the fact that no part of the original BOR has ever been repealed.
What would repealing it mean? Do you think, Joe, Linoge or I would give up our rights were that to happen? Would you give up your Free Speech rights if the 1st were repealed? I have 3 words for you. Massive Civil Disobedience. I think millions of us would simply carry anyway, as is our right. As for ownership, what are you going to do, come and take them by force? What about the 4th Amendment? Going to repeal that too?
Repealing the 2nd Amendment doesn’t make it go away anymore than repealing the rest of the Bill of Rights would allow the government to kick in my door and rob, beat, imprison and torture me with impunity. The 2nd Amendment is inherent and inalienable just like the rest of the Bill of Rights. Words on ink & parchment don’t “grant” me the right to keep & bear arms, they merely codify a pre-existing right. My rights, all of them, exist independent of the Constitution.”
Oh, and Molon Labe.
Just the point I was going to make, but Mike W beat me to it.
The Bill of Rights is NOT a Big Gub’ment grant of laws passed through Congress & signed by the President.
They are a written codification of God-given rights to free mankind of tyranny of all kinds.
And if you somehow manage to repeal one, the rest will fall as well.
With the written Bill of Rights, our Constitution is better then the English Constitution it was modeled after. Theirs doesn’t say anything closely related to our Bill of Rights. Instead, these rights are given tacit acknowledgement as “common law”, and are not written down. With the result that those rights are often flauted by Parliment. Witness the current state of affairs with the registration and banning of most guns in JOE (Jolly Old England). And the subsiquent failure of law to recognize “a man’s home is his castle” in matters of self-defence.
Sorry MikeB, you don’t get to pick and choose which rights will be recognized, and which will not. It’s a package deal, all or none. And I don’t think you’d like the “none” alternative, when you’re unable to protect yourself, and no one else will, either.
As for “justification”, “we don’t need no steenkin’ joostification.”
MikeB,
Read through the following links. Realize what has already happened now that JOEs citizens (?serfs?) are stripped and raped of their right of self-defense by guns and just about everything else (knives, bats, pitchforks, etc). Be thankful that it hasn’t happened here – yet.
http://ridenshoot.blogspot.com/2009/10/glasgow-smile.html
http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/10/backlash.html
Have a nice nightmare.
i’ve already told the wife that i will not register. i will publicly refuse to cooperate and will resist anyone that tries to force me. i won’t be alone. i’ll probably lose, but there are enough that feel the same as me that our side will eventually prevail. we don’t have to win a decisive military victory. we just have to make the country ungovernable. for those familiar with the rules of the Senate, think of the current situation as Unanimus Consent writ large. think of how gummed up the Senate would be if they had to have a vote for every little thing. we would simply force the police to send out a SWAT team to issue parking tickets because they could not be sure that anything less would survive.
oh yeah,
Having Come, Take
(molon labe)
What mikeb302000 fails to understand is that those like him will not be above the inevitable conflict that would result if their version of utopia comes to pass, for the armed resistance to the inevitable excesses of government that follow such policies would look upon the enablers of tyranny as no different than those enforcing it, and act accordingly.
Also, notice the byline in the Salon piece.
Associated Press, as usual.
MikeB302000 is a liar, and very well might be a criminal by his own admission.
http://weerdbeard.livejournal.com/568583.html
He advocates laws for us to follow that he would willingly walk right through.
This is the face of the anti-freedom pro-ignorance bigot!
What are you trying to accomplish MikeB?
1) Reduction in violence.
2) Civil war.
Your stated goals work towards (2). Perhaps you should try being on the side of freedom, liberty, rights and responsibility?
I’d say from the little brag session he’s having
http://mikeb302000.blogspot.com/2009/10/mikeb-and-illegal-guns.html
MikeB just wants to protect criminals like himself from us lawful gun owners.
Like the old Bumper-Sticker Gag “Felons for Gun Control!”