The Mask Comes Off

By Victor Milan
[email protected]

Exclusive to The Libertarian Enterprise

         The National Rifle Association, like the National Libertarian Party, has become at best utterly irrelevant to the struggle for freedom in this country, and at worst dangerously deleterious to it.
         The NRA is committed to working "within the system," by legislative means. And that approach is simply doomed to fail. The fix -- as I've said before, and will again -- is in.
         Politics will not save our guns, or any of our rights. Politics can and will only take from us our guns -- and all our rights.
         I enter in evidence Senate Bills 3 and 10, under consideration by the 105th Congress.
         These stercoracious beauties purport to protect us from youth violence, gangs, and terrorism. If those words don't at once cause your Freedom Destruction Sensors to yammer uncontrollably, it's probably time to invest in a new head.
         I'll only hit some low points; for detailed analyses, check the GOA website [http://www.gunowners.org/anas3.htm for S-3, http://www.gunowners.org/anaview.htm for S-10].
         Title II of S-3 continues the trashing of the Fourth Amendment that Republicans voted for and Slick signed into law in the last few years, eviscerating the doctrine of "fruit of the poisoned tree" which excludes evidence seized in illegal searches. Basically, by pretending to believe you're a drug dealer, the cops can kick in your door without a warrant, then bust you if they find guns, 'cause you're a drug dealer.
         Good luck proving you ain't, and good luck getting any of your seized property -- and it's all gonna go, thanks to RICO -- back if you do.
         That's if they don't just shoot you in your rec room. Never happen?
         Tell that to the Seventh Day Adventists who used to have their church outside Waco.
         Section 521 makes it a mandatory-sentence crime to possess -- that's own, not have in your hand or in your pocket -- a gun if you commit a "crime of violence." The definition of such a crime is predictably real broad, including, as the GOA report says, "crimes as minor as a threat against property." And that's before the DoJ and HCI lawyers -- to the extent there's a meaningful distinction there -- get hold of it, and define, say, possession of "anti-government hate literature" such as TLE as a violent crime.
         We get major expansions of the hideous RICO act -- the JBTs love that, it's money in their pockets -- and definition as a gang, membership in which qualifies you for lovely civil forfeiture, of any group of kids one of whose members happens to commit any kind of firearms violation.
         Cub Scouts, beware. Oh, and here's a good one: the bill expands the ability of "victims of firearms violence" to sue gun dealers, distributors, and manufacturers.
         S-10 is more of the same, with further expansions of RICO and of opportunities to sue people in the gun business out of the gun business. Also, if you give your kid a gun for her 15th birthday, and she gets busted for any violation, no matter how minor or abstruse, you're good for 3 years mandatory in Federal slam.
         All right, you say, what else can we expect from asshole liberal Democrats like Feinstein and Schumer? Well, both bills were sponsored by Orrin Hatch, R-UT, and co-sponsored by Trent Lott, who's only the Republican Senate Majority Leader. You don't get any more Republican than that, and plenty of other Repubs have already signed on. [For a complete list of co-conspirators, check THOMAS, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:SN00003:@@@P for S-3 and http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:SN00010:@@@P for S-10.]
         To make things even better, GOA points out that, "a crime bill of this sort will open up the possibility of Democratic anti-gun floor amendments. Based on last year's record, one can rest assured that none of the Republican leadership will take a firm stand against such amendments."
         And there you have it. Whom can we turn to? We can rely for protection of our gun rights upon ... nobody.
         Nobody but ourselves -- and one another. And ultimately, our guns.
         Maybe these laws won't pass this time, or even the next. It doesn't matter -- they're coming. Indeed, it's possible that NRA's past "successes" in forestalling such legislation, by forcing upon greedy gun-grabbers that very gradualism which has won the forces of big government a century and more of unimpeded success, have materially if unwittingly helped Leviathan. NRA's delaying actions have fostered in many gun-owners the dangerous misapprehension that the long-term outcome is anything other than etched in stone.
         The mask is off -- and so is the muzzle. The forces of darkness are no longer content to nibble at our freedoms. From here on in, they'll take big bites. And never doubt: guns are but prologue.
         They're kicking down doors in Australia.
         Before too long, you will confront the choice: give up your guns or become an outlaw. There is no third way.
         Which will you choose?

Prometheus Award-winner Victor Milan is the author of over 70 novels, including the just-released CLD from AvoNova and War In Tethyr from TSR.