By Alan J. Chwick & Joanne D. Eisen
Manasquan, NJ –-(Ammoland.com)- Since the recent spate of heavily publicized public shootings, the anti-gun media has attempted to create fear and a rash of new firearms laws.
Richard Amrhine, an editor with The Free Lance-Star wrote, “Sure, there is anger and debate about gun violence, and a presidential call for a ‘national conversation,’ but we might as well be talking about the weather” (https://www.fredericksburg.
He has answers. “For the well-being of society, we need to make it as difficult as possible to buy a lot of them at once, to buy the ones that are made to kill people, and to buy massive amounts of ammunition.”
His answers continue, “The Second Amendment bestows upon Americans the right to keep and bear arms, but it doesn’t say we can’t keep track of them…”
His answers are as stale as the playbook from which he is reading. “Trace, List, Register!” That is the mantra. But laws are supposed to be enacted to encumber the smallest number of the populace, the wrongdoers. They should stop the bad guy while permitting the law-abiding to be un-encumbered.
Lists of gun owners does not make it easier to track criminals, but it does make it easier to disarm civilians.
We all know what happens when restrictions make firearm acquisition more difficult — the black market swells and criminals still find it easy to arm themselves. Meanwhile, the law-abiding find it more difficult to acquire the needed tools for the protection of self and family.
We should never forget why our firearm organizations, including the National Rifle Association, fight so hard to prevent the government from acquiring lists, the kind of lists that make it easy to keep track of guns and their owners. These are the kind of lists that firearms prohibitionists — the ones here in the US whom we are now battling, and the global ones who are leading the way to the Arms Trade Treaty — are eager to obtain.
Controlling weapons by tracking firearms owners and their firearms may seem reasonable at first glance, but taking a lesson from the recently failed Canadian attempt to codify gun owners, we see that those schemes do not work as promised. What they accomplish is to make it easy for governments to confiscate weapons. See the Canadian Law-abiding Unregistered Firearms Association, https://www.lufa.ca/quickfacts.
Jews For the Preservation of Firearms Ownership published Lethal Laws by Jay Simkin, Aaron Zelman and Alan Rice in 1994. The book noted that gun owner registration and lists often preceded and aided confiscation. It also noticed that genocide was easier to perpetrate upon unarmed civilians. Gun owners ignored the messenger then, but soon got the message that lists of gun owners gave governments too much power. One can see JPFO’s Genocide Chart which documents prior gun registration and confiscation of civilian weapons (https://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/
While genocide does not always follow licensing and confiscation, gun-phobes pass these laws with sinister intent. In Zimbabwe, in 2005, confiscation was made possible by registration. “Police at the weekend said they were revoking licenses for all automatic rifles and some types of pistols and said civilians owning such weapons had until today to surrender them” (ZWNEW.com, https://www.zwnews.com/
The Australian “buy-back” scheme of 1996-1997 used existing records to coerce firearms owners to turn in newly banned weapons (https://www.anao.gov.au/
Closer to home, in California, in 1997, SKS Sporter rifles were declared illegal by government fiat, and the list of legal, registered owners was used to confiscate them (NRA-ILA California Fax Alert, “LUNGREN DECIDES GUN CONTROL IS OUT, GUN CONFISCATION IS IN”, www.nrawinningteam.com/states/
And even more recently, California is continuing the process with another attempt to delegalize and confiscate guns ((National Rifle Association of America. Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), “Dangerous Gun Ban/Confiscation Bill Died TODAY, but the Anti-Gun Threat is Not Over Yet“, August 16, 2012).
In New York State’s Nassau County, where gun possession is licensed by Make, Model, Caliber, Barrel Length and Color, county leaders attempted in 2008 to ban all guns of color that they did not like. Luckily, a lawsuit followed and was won. But the county came close to confiscating a group of weapons because they had all the data they needed. (MATTER OF CHWICK v. Mulvey, 81 AD 3d 161 (NY: Appellate Div., 2nd Dept. 2010)).
It all comes back to the intent of those who smile at us and ask for ‘common sense’ laws. In the UN Chronicle, of June-August 2003, Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico stated, “Civilians cannot have any kind of weapon without putting others in serious danger.” It isn’t 2003 now, and the proponents of disarmament understand that they can no longer divulge their true intentions.
They have learned to proceed slowly and silently toward their goal of civilian disarmament using “common sense” restrictions.
That’s why we must never accept the ‘common sense’ gun control proposals when they pop up. Never.
About the authors
Dr. Joanne D. Eisen practices dentistry on Long Island, NY, and has written on firearm politics for the past 20 years. Most recently, Eisen ha also written with Alan J. Chwick.
The co-authored writings of Eisen and Chwick can be found at https://gallanteisen.incnf.org, which contains more detailed information about their biographies and writing, and contains hyperlinks to many of their articles. They can also be found, focusing on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), at https://gwg.incnf.org.