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Letter from A.X. Perez

Letter from A.X. Perez

More on Repealing Hughes

Last week I suggested that if gun banners wanted to show good faith they should support repealing the Hughes Amendment and reopen the machine gun register. The restrictions machine gun purchasers faced before May 1986 were even more stringent than those victim disarmers seek, and at least 175,977 MG owners successfully completed this process between 1033 and 1986, and others have submitted to it to buy and sell from this limited pool of weapons since 1986. Thousands of others submit regularly to similar conditions to purchase silencers (correctly: suppressors), and short barreled rifles and shotguns and certain other restricted weapons.

Honest people with a tolerance for bureaucratic nonsense and relatively deep pockets can buy the weapons they "need," whether it’s to keep the KKK from burning a cross on your yard without your permission to simple collecting. Not exactly what the Second Amendment calls for, not exactly how honest free people should be free to exercise rights, but since when did gun banners see gun owning as a right instead of a privilege?

So I addressed the need of our opponents to show a willingness to compromise by suggesting the cheapest compromise they can make. Of course, I was talking in terms of quotidian political wheeling and dealing instead of sacred rights. Now it’s time to talk about our so-called allies. Where have you been when it was time for gunowners and gun rights advocates to actually gain something?

What happened to the bills calling for removing silencers from NFA regulation or to stop classifying them as firearms that you needed to fill a Form 4473 and go through NICS to purchase? What happened to National Reciprocity? You had the votes last session, why didn’t you pass these bills?

I have to ask: did you lack the votes? Were these traded off for other laws on other issues you considered more important? If so what laws and why? Did you just put gun rights legislation on the backburners for other more important laws? Again which laws and why?

Since I began to focus on the gun rights debate and legislative struggle I have noted that our allies promise us the sun and the moon, and occasionally deliver a micro flashlight suitable for putting on a keychain. I’ve noticed that conservatives we thought would support gun rights have actually voted for gun control as part of supporting law and order. Yet every election cycle these people come around making the same celestial promises. Sometimes in attacks of honesty they’ve admitted to failing to support gun rights or actively supporting "reasonable gun control laws" and told us we had to vote for them anyhow because the other guy was worse. Sadly, they were and will be telling the truth.

Come 2020 hundreds of politicians will be seeking election and re-election promising to protect gun rights from hostile legislation and maybe even to expand legal recognition of gun rights. This time around we need to hold them to these promises more strictly. This time we should insist they add repealing the Hughes Amendment to the list of promises. Maybe this time they’ll keep their word, probably by accident.

It’s hard enough defending our rights from our enemies. It’s time to insist that we don’t have to be fighting our so-called friends to protect our rights and expand legal recognition of them (They cannot grant us rights we already have, just pass laws protecting and enforcing them.

A.X. Perez
[email protected]

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