They're 'Shocked, Shocked,' at the FBI's Plans

By Vin Suprynowicz
[email protected]

Special to The Libertarian Enterprise

          Nearly every day, it seems, my e-mailbox is flooded with emergency dispatches from well-meaning but breathless defenders of the Second Amendment, urging all their friends to write or e-mail the appropriate congresscritter in opposition to whatever new piece of chicanery the gun-grabbers have got up to (three-day waiting periods to buy long guns, $16 background checks before a gunsmith can return your repaired weapon, 1000 percent ammunition taxes, jail sentences for gun owners whose guns are stolen and used in teenage crimes, et bleeping endless cetera.)
          Either that, or I'm supposed to frantically weigh in at the latest on-line media poll asking "Do we need more gun control" ... with the results thrown out and never publicized, of course, should the majority -- as usual -- answer "No."
          Last week, a pair of faithful correspondents advised:
          "Senator Smith, R-New Hampshire, is apparently attempting to put the brakes on the FBI shenanigans regarding the Brady Law. One of his proposals is to defund the ability of the FBI to tax gun owners; another is to defund any attempt by the FBI to use Brady 'instant check' as a mechanism to keep gun owners' names, and requires 'immediate destruction of all (gun buyer) information in any form whatsoever.' Another is to allow aggrieved citizens to sue the agency and collect damages and attorneys' fees. He needs to hear from lots of people that he is supported in his stand. Please take the time to e-mail or fax a letter to him."
          I've actually been lobbied on the phone by some gun rights advocates I respect, this week, ensuring me Sen. Smith is the closest thing to a friend freedom-lovers have in the Senate, and insisting his proposal could indeed strike a solid blow for the Second Amendment, by giving citizens some standing to get into court and challenge the coming national background checks (and resultant national gun registration -- precursor to confiscation in Nazi Germany, in Australia, everywhere it's been tried.)
          Maybe Sen. Smith means well. I don't know.
          Regardless, I've had enough of this game. I replied to my well-meaning correspondents:
          Hi, guys --
          Pardon me, but I grow tired of running first one way, then another, on treadmills erected by others.
          "Requiring immediate destruction of all (gun buyer) information in any form whatsoever" is too ridiculous for even a child to fall for.
          Let's say these national background checks for all gun sales go into effect Dec. 1, as scheduled. But the FBI is absolutely forbidden by law to keep any such records, ironclad, cross our hearts and hope to die.
          Now, a weapon is found at a crime scene. (Notice the careful phrasing. Most "weapons found at crime scenes" are stolen and thus untraceable. Few were actually used in any crime, since shooters tend to carry their guns away with them, rather than dropping these expensive tools like candy wrappers. If your loser brother-in-law is rousted out of bed at 3 a.m. and the cops find a bag of marijuana in his cereal box, then your grandfather's First World War souvenir Mauser in the attic becomes a "weapon found at a crime scene.")
          Using the national gun registration computer data bank which they have illegally established in West Virginia, the FBI traces the owner -- you -- and you admit the weapon was "borrowed" by your loser brother-in-law. You are then arrested along with him, on charges you "allowed a deadly weapon to fall into unauthorized hands ..."
          What happens? The suspects are set free -- the evidence and all subsequent confessions disallowed under the "exclusionary rule" -- because the G-men violated the "no gun registration data-bank" law, while the G-men (up to and including Louis Freeh) are indicted, tried, convicted, and locked up in small cells with roommates named Butch.
          Right?
          Oh, sure. And if you believe this, I can also sell you an address where you can send care packages at the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, where Lon Horiuchi and everyone up the 1992 FBI chain of command are now doing their 30-year sentences for the murder of Vicki Weaver.
          No, I am not going to express any support for a suit who claims he is "shocked, shocked to learn" that the FBI and BATF are proposing to violate our Second Amendment rights ... while snickering behind his hand that any attempt to disband the FBI and BATF, and to repeal the Brady Bill (along with the Firearms Acts of 1934 and 1968) would be "extreme, counterproductive, and politically unfeasible."
          The simpering Tories. Let our GOP senators filibuster any bills that come before the Senate, until they win a straight up-and-down recorded voice vote on repeal of the Brady Act. Nothing else will draw any "fan letters" from me.
          We're being played like a wheezing calliope, here. We're being set up to "thank" our masters when they "reluctantly" agree that our gunsmiths won't have to do a $16 background check on us when they return our repaired hunting rifles ... this year. And this process has now been going on for 65 years! My cat can figure out there's no way to get the little bell out of the cat toy faster than that.
          Next time: what to do.

Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at [email protected]. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127.

Next to advance to the next article, or
Previous to return to the previous article, or
Table of Contents to return to The Libertarian Enterprise, Number 43, December 25, 1998.