As legislation like U.S. Senate Bill S. 54, a bill that purports to help prevent, and increase the penalties for, illegal firearms trafficking, are considered by the U.S. Congress, it seems like the Senators wrangling over them don’t demonstrate much cognizance of the history of gun ban legislation in America, or the events and politics that have inspired it. Gun ban zealotry in America is, and has consistently been, the product of irrational, reactionary, political opportunism.
 |
| Anti-Firearm-Rights Democratic U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy |
One of the ironies for so called left wing Democratic Party politics is that gun ban zealotry was, in part, intended to be a racist people control tool when it was enacted during the 1960s with the hope of disarming militant left wing Black Protest Groups like the Black Liberation Army, and violent Anti-Vietnam-War protesters like the Weather Underground. Throughout the eighty year history of American gun ban zealotry it has also been sold to the public as a way to disarm violent gangs, first against the 1930s prohibition era alcohol trafficking gangs, and more recently with the vain hope of disarming the illegal substance trafficking gangs of the last forty or fifty years.
None of the gun bans has ever decreased the type or quantity of guns in the possession of and used by such gangs as lethal enforcement and territory control tools. The gangs are just as willing to traffic in illegal guns as they are to traffic in illegal substances. They are no more likely to care at all about the statute Senator Leahy proposes than they are about the anti murder statutes they violate when they shoot their drug trafficking enemies and rivals.
All three major unconstitutional attempts to disarm feared groups have failed, in 1930s, the 1960s, and the 1990s, with the unacceptable side effect that law abiding U.S. citizens have become hamstrung in the process by the gun ban statutes and onerous licensing and permitting schemes that exist in many states, such as New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, and California, and which the gun ban zealots would like to see enacted federally. Thankfully, it appears that by summer 2013, some of the hysteria over Sandy Hook will have subsided, and the current disarmament siege will hopefully have failed, at least this time. It will however have left firearm rights supporters forever with a permanently heightened sense of vigilance against the ever present threats to constitutional rights that gun ban zealot politics impose.
full text of U.S. Senate Bill S. 54
existing firearms restriction statute 18 USC 992 et seq
No comments:
Post a Comment