Gun owners compromised in England and now look at things.  The anti-gun owner bigots in England can’t be happy with a total ban on handguns!  Now they are going after imitation guns:

Steve Walker of GCN said “…our position is clear. If it looks like a gun it should not be allowed.”

Gill Marshall-Andrews, GCN’s chair, said: “No one needs a realistic imitation gun – except perhaps a re-enactment society.”

GCN is Gun Control Network.  Check out their objectives.  This is what you can expect if you attempt to compromise with them.  Who could imagine that two or more people outside of a mental hospital would insist there be a “Ban on the sale, manufacture and import of imitation guns and their possession in a public place.”?  Why does the newpaper consider the rantings of lunatics newsworthy?

First off, does anyone have an email address or website for him?  I can’t seem to find one. 

Second, while searching for an email address I found this speech by him.  It was from this speech I pulled todays quote.  I have often commented about anti-gun owner bigots and have praised others that use that term against the anti-freedom crowd.  Kates, in his speech, spells it out for us better than anyone else I have come across.  A sample:

… the gun control debate is not really about criminology but rather about bigotry and the effort of an influence group to force its morality on everyone by having it adopted as state and federal law. To see this it is necessary only to review some unfamiliar facts: the average gun owner is better educated and has a better job than non-owners; attitude surveys find gun owners neither racist nor sexist; liberals are only somewhat less likely than others to own firearms; liberals who do are no less willing to use them to defend their families; the only violence gun owners endorse is willingness to come to the aid of crime victims. Gun owners do not approve of police brutality, violence against dissenters, etc. Also, good Samaritans who actually come to the aid of crime victims are twice as likely to be gun owners as the general populace.

Though these facts have been uniformly established by numerous sociological studies, they will doubtless surprise you almost as much as they would the anti-gun movement and the media. After all the former (which is actually a gun BAN movement), with the enthusiastic aid of the media, have succeeded in stereotyping gun owners as violence-oriented yahoos — educationally, intellectually and morally retarded.

There is a word for people who inaccurately, unjustly ascribe negative characteristics to a whole group of others they dislike: that word is BIGOT.

You may not realize it but the language we use in our fight for freedom has a huge impact.  As Kevin at The Smallest Minority posted a couple days ago the mindset and world view are dependent upon the language we use.  If we let our opponents define the terms (think “assault weapons”, “sniper rifles”, “gun safety regulations”, etc.) we will lose.  We must define ourselves and our opponents.  Our opponents are bigots.  It’s demonstrably true.  Don’t let them or anyone else forget it.

As near as I can determine people who desire restrictions on firearms have zero connectivity with reality.  They haven’t looked at the history of gun control to determine what happens in the real world.  This determination is the basis for my Just One Question–which no one has ever attempted to answer.  In addition to the safety and security issues which are my main concerns there are the enforceability, corruption, and abuse of power issues.  The current situation in South Africa is just the latest example of what happens when you allow the government to attempt implementing “common sense” restrictions:

The Black Gun Owners’ Association says it is preparing to sue the Minister of Safety and Security, Charles Nqakula, on behalf of thousands of prospective gun owners who have paid fees in advance to comply with new firearm licence legislation, only to have their applications and requests for refunds refused by the South African Police Service.

…

To comply with legislation, applicants paid up to R1 500 for training courses, safes and competency certificates, only to have their applications denied.

“Everything has been planned for people not to obtain licences. The government has made a big blunder. The minister (Nqakula) said he does not want illegal firearms, so why is he refusing people legal firearms?

“The new law is encouraging people to support illegal firearms. In South Africa, firearms are readily available and some of the people selling illegal firearms are police (disposing of) amnesty firearms,” he said.

…

Durban Guns and Ammo owner Justin Willmers said more than 1 000 applications submitted via his shop, after waiting two years to be processed, had been refused on appeal.

He said applicants had received identical response letters saying they had not given a “substantial reason” as to why they could not use alternative means of protection.

“Since July 1 last year, I have not sold one gun,” Willmers said. He said when customers realised the lengthy processes involved in obtaining a firearm legally, they simply turned to the black market.

…

Suter claimed the police had neither the capacity nor the expertise to administer licence renewals from the country’s roughly 2,5-million gun owners. And with three and a half years left to renew 4,5-million firearm licences, at the current pace of work, it would take 26 875 years, he said.

“This is a day in America when the little guy lost out to powerful special interests.”

– Michael Barnes, President, Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence

That is the lead to this article by Howard Nemerov.  You know Barnes is full of crap just from his association with the Brady bunch.  But I didn’t know the other details outlined in that great article.  Nemeroy also says this about Barnes:

He is a Washington insider, having been a congressman from 1979-1987. He is a lawyer who has an association with the law firm of Hogan & Hartson.

He thens goes on to tell how much money lawyers have been donating to our politicians and how those politicians are a “Who’s Who” of those that voted against the bill to outlaw frivolous lawsuits against firearms manufactures.

If you like well documented, hard facts kind of reading go read the rest of it.

A bit of a side note–I haven’t crowed about this bill passing the Senate for various reasons.  Stephanie sent me this link which articulates some of the reasons not to be overjoyed about passage of this law.  I agree with everything in the article but if I were to vote on the bill I probably “hold my nose” and vote “Yes”.  The reality is the Federal government exercises way more power than it was granted by the Constitution.  But failure to exercise that power for good does not lessen the evils that excess of power brings.  That excess of power must be reduced in a manner which reduces evil as much or more than the good that can be done with that power.  Failure to accept this good does not accomplish that.