Harris to roll out new executive action on guns

[Vambo]

 · 2d · on MSN

Biden, Harris to roll out new executive action on guns

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris announced new executive actions on Thursday to …

[Jax]

Always out for our rights.

They'll pave the way starting with guns, but will quickly use the same process to eliminate all our rights and give the gov't total control.

[MLD Woody]

What exactly do you not like about this particular EO?

What part of it is limiting your rights?

[Westside Steve]

[Vambo]

1 hour ago, MLD Woody said:

What exactly do you not like about this particular EO?

What part of it is limiting your rights?

The Seizure of Arms has Always Been an Act of Tyranny

The Seizure of Arms has Always Been an Act of Tyranny | Opinion - Newsweek

 

As James Madison observed in Federalist no. 46, tyrannical governments invariably "are afraid to trust the people with arms." This dictum is all the more disquieting given the conditions in which we now find ourselves: the U.S. government, although ostensibly anxious about rising extremism, seems more than willing to penalize non-criminal gun owners, while turning a blind eye to the actual gun violence that increased wherever local police departments were defunded.

This characteristic of tyranny is nothing new. In the sixth century BC, the Persian king Cyrus the Great asked his new adviser—the defeated King Croesus of Lydia—how to stop the Lydian people from revolting. Cyrus wanted to know how to control a population, not an insignificant concern for a monarch. According to Herodotus, Croesus advised that the people should not be allowed to possess "weapons of war" and that they instead should "instruct their sons to play the lyre, sing, and sell things." Cyrus was persuaded, he ordered the confiscation of the people's arms, and, as Herodotus reports, "the Lydians altered their whole way of life." The plan was a success.

For millennia, political authorities have well understood the greatest internal threat to their hold on power—the collective will of people able to defend themselves. Removing that ability is the only way to run an effective monarchy or dictatorship.

The decision to remove the people's weapons is less desirable, however, in a land supposedly governed by the people. The people's sovereignty is, of course, the motivation behind the Second Amendment. The right to keep and bear arms is meant to protect the people from a government gone bad, its military and its police.

That right need not be exercised when the people are truly sovereign. But the Founders provided for a different time and setting, when, as Alexander Hamilton put it in Federalist no. 28, "the representatives of the people betray their constituents" and the people must exert "that original right of self-defense...against the usurpations of the national rulers." When the "usurpers, clothed with the forms of legal authority," oppose the people, it is clear which side Hamilton defends. The best defense against a standing federal army turned against the people is "a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens" (Federalist no. 29). As Madison wrote, an armed population forms a barrier against a government's "enterprises of ambition."

We no longer have national leaders like President George Washington, who willingly relinquished his political power to the will of the people, or like Hamilton, who sided with the people against a hypothetical tyrannical government. Today's situation more closely resembles the days of Cyrus, when the people's arms—and autonomy—are replaced with every diversion imaginable. Examples of such seizure abound.

Perhaps the most memorable instance from last year involved Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who stood on their property in St. Louis and brandished guns at a large group of protesters on their sidewalk. The homeowners' actions were not particularly hospitable, but the confrontation happened during a season of protests that too often ended in unprovoked violence and destruction of property. The homeowners had reason to fear. Yet although the McCloskeys neither fired a shot nor harmed anyone nor left their property during the incident, authorities seized their guns and charged the couple with unlawful use of a weapon. In other words, the police came with guns, entered a private home and confiscated a lawfully owned gun that wasn't even fired.

 

Protestors take part in a Moms Demand Action rally against gun violence, calling for expanding federal background checks on August 18, 2019, in New York City. JOHANNES EISELE/GETTY

The most notorious case in my lifetime of the federal government's attempt to confiscate arms was the raid of the Branch Davidian compound just outside Waco, Texas, in 1993. The group's unconventional religious beliefs and practices notwithstanding, ATF agents stormed the compound not because the Branch Davidians had committed crimes with their firearms, but because they owned the firearms in the first place. ATF agents—who, according to some witnesses, were the first to shoot—were shot by citizens defending their property. After a 51-day standoff, the government mounted a final attack on April 19, 1993, resulting in the death of 76 Davidians. Survivors were convicted of manslaughter against the agents who invaded their premises.

One need not be an extremist to be bothered by the fact that scores of people died and many survivors were imprisoned because U.S. government forces decided to crack down violently on citizens for owning weapons. But such events do lead to extremism. Precisely two years later, on April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh let the world know how he felt about the matter, outdoing the government's violence by bombing the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. Though it wasn't the only contributing factor, Waco gave us Oklahoma City.

As we approach anniversaries of the Waco massacre and Oklahoma City bombing, two points are worth considering. First, from ancient kings to the modern Left, those who wield power know the most effective way to control a population. It shouldn't surprise us when a tyrant disarms his subjects, but it should be alarming when the leaders of a democratic republic attempt it. Our country's Founders foresaw this possibility and took measures to prevent it—measures that have been publicly set aside with impunity.

Second, the government's seizure of arms doesn't lead to anything good. If and when civil authorities come armed to take guns from law-abiding citizens—whether on a small scale or en masse—and when they target not just those who were caught on camera with weapons, or a marginal religious cult with a potentially dangerous stockpile, it is unclear how citizens will react. A large number will presumably comply with the "usurpers, clothed with the forms of legal authority" and allow their constitutionally protected property to be taken, no questions asked. A few of these good citizens, like the McCloskeys, may fight it in the courts.

But it's easy to foresee a large number of citizens choosing not to comply because they see an unconstitutional and even unjust law as not worth obeying. And there is a good chance that a small number of these, feeling pushed over the edge, will go beyond self-defense and choose to fight back, perhaps in unjust, horrific ways.

As the gun control debate rages on and new, even more restrictive measures are considered, those in power should pause a moment to learn from history. The surest way to produce extremism is to undermine the rights people have previously enjoyed. It is shortsighted and disingenuous for those in power to wring their hands about extremism when they are unnecessarily but ineluctably contributing to it.

Keith D. Stanglin is an author and historian. His most recent book is After Arminius (Oxford University Press, 2020).

[calfoxwc]

so, making guns with those 3-d printers is already illegal, so....

it's for show for the election.

As far as "“Many parents, students and educators have expressed concerns about the trauma caused by some approaches to these drills.”"

those drills are not necessary, kids already know what to do.

But the drills? mandated by THIS gov? It's more like teaching children to hate our

2nd Amendment - brainwashing by those who hate our guns.

They could have done those exec orders over three years ago.

harris demands a mandatory buyback, outlawing the AR-15 and any other guns she doesn't want everyone ELSE to have,

mandatory gun registration/universal background checks.

NOPE.

[Axe]

[Canton Dawg]

[MLD Woody]

For this particular EO, what exactly is limiting your rights?

No one has mentioned anything yet...

 

 

 

Our gun culture leads to school shootings which leads to the need for these drills. It's fucking pathetic but it's the result of not taking any real action of decades.

Even then, a study in the implications of these drills isn't doing anything to limit your rights....

 

And "children know what to do". Fucking Christ. I swear you'll all be blindly pro gun until you're personally impacted by a shooting. 

[calfoxwc]

2 hours ago, Axe said:

LOL LOL