The government’s assault on law-abiding gun owners continues

Story by Jim Nelles

Once again, law-abiding gun owners find themselves under assault by both federal officials and many state governments.

President Joe Biden, who has touted gun control policies since taking office, made the following remarks during the Thanksgiving weekend: “The idea that we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no social[ly] redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers. I am going to try to get rid of assault weapons.”

Over on the West Coast, Oregon officials passed a new gun law, Measure 114, which requires a permit, criminal background check, fingerprinting, and a hands-on training course for new firearms buyers. It also bans the sale, transfer, or import of gun magazines over 10 rounds unless they are owned by law enforcement or a military member or were owned before the measure’s passage. A ruling by a state judge on Dec. 6 placed the law on hold, preventing it from taking effect.

Likewise, the Illinois state legislature is preparing to vote in January on an extremely restrictive “common sense” gun law, HB5855, that would ban the sale of so-called assault weapons, raise the age to purchase a gun to 21 years old, ban any magazine with a capacity greater than 10 rounds, and require those who currently own an “assault weapon” to register that weapon with the Illinois state police, among other restrictions.

The gun registry that is part of Illinois law is particularly troubling for anyone who understands the history of gun confiscation. In Nazi Germany, disarming Jewish citizens was one of the government’s first priorities, and finding out which Jews had firearms was not too difficult as Germany’s Firearm Law in 1928 required extensive police records on gun owners.

It wasn’t just Germany. Mao Zedong, founder of Communist China, made sure his first act after gaining complete control of China in 1949 was to take away all guns from the population. Mao famously stated, “All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The Communist Party must command all the guns; that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party.”

Many would say that the start of a gun registry is the true start of tyranny.

Sadly, these state gun laws, and whichever law the federal government tries to pass, will only make potential criminals out of otherwise law-abiding gun owners, ensuring that those with no respect for the law are the only ones with access to firearms.

These efforts to restrict legal gun ownership aren’t just short-sighted; they’re also nonsensical. Many seem to think that banning assault weapons, for example, would reduce the number of mass shootings. But according to the statistics, handguns, not assault weapons, “are the most common weapon type used in mass shootings in the United States.”

Banning “assault weapons” will also have very little impact on the number of murders in the United States. In 2020, handguns were involved in 59% of the 13,620 U.S. gun murders and non-negligent manslaughters for which data is available, according to the FBI. Rifles — the category that includes guns sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” — were involved in 3% of firearm murders. Assault weapons are not driving the murder rate. In fact, on a percentage basis, hands kill more people than rifles, as do knives.

As I have written before, more people die falling out of bed than are murdered by assault weapons.

Lastly, criminals, by definition, do not care about laws. That is what makes them criminals. Murder is already against the law, as is assault with a deadly weapon, but criminals still commit crimes, and one more gun law will not stop them. Only about 6% of murders were committed by the person who legally purchased the gun. As Bev Fitchett’s Guns put it in a recent blog post, “Amateurs buy guns at dealers, which involves extensive paperwork, identification, FBI background checks, and so on. Pros buy guns on the street, where the only requirement is money — or other valuta. These guns are passed from criminal to criminal … and may be used in hundreds of crimes.”

Gun-free zones are of no help either, as a gun-free zone ensures that only criminals have guns in those areas. Can you imagine a potential murderer returning to his car and leaving an area because the person he wanted to kill was in a movie theater that was a gun-free zone? Again, criminals do not care about the law.

Moreover, Biden’s attitude toward Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms sets a dangerous precedent. He’s claimed that “the Second Amendment is not absolute.” Does this mean that the 13th, 14th, 15th, or 19th amendments are also not absolute?

Remember, the right to bear arms is always the first to go in a tyrannical society. And once it’s gone, the rest of our rights will follow.