Wendy Cukier, President Coalition for Gun Control, and moonbat extraordinaire sent out a news release yesterday:
… international standards for marking and tracing, for import and export and for the regulation of firearms is essential to preventing the diversion of legal guns to illegal markets and the efforts over the last 8 years at the United Nations to combat the illegal trade have been important.
By all means, shouldn’t we combat illegal trade and stop legal guns from getting into illegal markets? It’s just common sense, right? Why are so many people opposed to common sense gun laws? The only people opposed must be red-necked, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthals and criminals. How could it be any other way?
That depends. What’s your definition of an “illegal market”? The store in the state prison? Okay, I won’t argue that one today. But what about those people prohibited from weapon ownership by the Weapons Control Act of 1938? That law, passed in March of 1938, made it illegal for certain “undesirable” people to own weapons. The state would provide for their protection, if they needed it. In November of that same year there was a “spontaneous” riots against those same “undesirables” who had been disarmed. It was called Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass.” The riot lasted for two days as the fire and police brigades stood by. The morning after the riot was over 30,000 arrests were made. The arrests were of the “undesirables” who were the targets of the riot and not the rioters. The government was implementing it’s first attempt at a solution to “the problem of the Jews”. By the fall of 1941 they were implementing the Final Solution to the Jewish question. Any weapons delivered to Jewish people and other “undesirables” was a crime by that German law of 1938. What about the shipments of arms into that market? Would Cukier have supported that law?
One of the argument the moonbats make is that arming people just prolongs the conflict and makes a return to peace more difficult. I’m sure that is true. The 10 million dead from the Final Solution are very peaceful now. That conflict (the extermination of millions) would have taken much longer had the victims been able to defend themselves better. Wouldn’t that have been terrible?
There were no 20th centery genocides without there first being a gun control law to remove the weapons from the target of the genocide. Estimates vary but somewhere between 60 and 200 million civilians (men, women, and children, not just soldiers!) were murdered in the 20th century by government sponsored programs of extermination–all of them were victims of gun control. How many millions will there be in the 21st century if we don’t learn the lesson from the 20th century?
What Cukier (Kooker? How appropriate is that?) apparently doesn’t realize is that ownership of weapons is a right even more essential than freedom of speech or any other natural right. Without the means to enforce your rights the others mean nothing. The government can infringe upon them at will with virtually no recourse. You cannot have a secure free state without the right to keep and bear arms. This entire concept has been expressed succinctly as, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” This right shall not be infringed! So, as Lyle in the comments section of this post, says, “… there’s one legitimate gun law in America. It makes it illegal to write gun laws.” I think Lyle, while correct, is a bit narrow in his scope. I would expand that to international scope. Laws restricting personal weapons in any country are as revolting and without moral authority as laws authorizing slavery or genocide–which is what those weapons laws enable.
