by
William L. Anderson

Recently
by William L. Anderson: Progressives
and the Phony Gun Debate

As one who
does not care much for American Progressives, I do read their sites
on a regular basis. Not only does that mean reading Paul Krugman’s
columns, blog posts, and occasionally his television appearances.
(I cover Krugman and other “economic Progressives” in
my website, Krugman-in-Wonderland.)

Another site
I visit infrequently is the Daily
Kos, which is one of the most influential Democratic Party sites
and receives huge amounts of daily traffic. The Daily Kos does not
repeat Democratic “talking points;” it generates
political talking points that later are found in mainstream publications
and from Democratic politicians themselves. Thus, when the
Daily Kos not only calls for prohibition on all privately-owned
firearms and lays out the political and legal road map
on how to accomplish that political goal, Libertarians and others
need to pay attention. These people are serious and are willing
to use violent means to accomplish their ends.

We should not
be surprised that Progressives have this goal, nor should we be
surprised when they deny it and call us “paranoid” and
“whack jobs” for believing what Progressives always have
believed: all individuals should be firmly and absolutely made subservient
to the State, and part of subservience is being disarmed and unable
to defend oneself from other predators. Only the State is fit to
protect us, even if the U.S. Supreme Court already has ruled that
police have no legal obligation to protect anyone.

The writer,
identified only as “Sporks,” begins with explanations
about why an assault weapons ban won’t have any effect upon crime
in general or spree shootings in particular:

It’s nice
that we’re finally talking about gun control. It’s very sad that
it took such a terrible tragedy to talk about it, but I’m glad
the conversation is happening. I hear a lot about assault weapon
and large magazine bans, and whilst I’m supportive of that, it
won’t solve the problem. The vast majority of firearm deaths occur
with handguns. Only about 5% of people killed by guns are killed
by guns which would be banned in any foreseeable AWB.

Furthermore,
there seems to be no talk about high powered rifles. What gun
nuts don’t want you to know is many target and hunting rifles
are chambered in the same round (.223/5.56mm) that Lanza’s assault
weapon was. Even more guns are chambered for more powerful rounds,
like the .30-06 or (my personal “favorite”) 7.62x54R. Even a .22,
the smallest round manufactured on a large scale, can kill easily.
In fact, some say the .22 kills more people than any other round
out there.

Again, I
like that we’re talking about assault weapons, machine guns, and
high capacity clips. But it only takes one bullet out of one gun
to kill a person. Remember the beltway sniper back in 2002? The
one who killed a dozen odd people? Even though he used a bushmaster
assault rifle, he only fired one round at a time before moving.
He could have used literally any rifle sold in the US for his
attacks.

While one could
use the above argument against an assault weapons ban, the Daily
Kos continues with what it says will eliminate almost all crime:

The only
way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence
is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything.
No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles.
No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing.
This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children
safe from both mass murder and common street violence. (Emphasis
mine)

Although the
writer says he believes that banning all civilian gun ownership
will make us “truly” safe, it is hard to agree with such
a statement, since murders and other violent crime still happen
in countries that either ban civilian ownership or restrict it so
that individuals effectively are kept from legal ownership of guns,
including Great Britain, Australia, and Canada. The purpose, as
one finds while reading this political screed, is for people the
author hates – legal gun owners – ultimately to be imprisoned or
killed violently by the police, as we shall see.

Like
so many government actions that start out being “voluntary”
and later become mandatory, the author calls for a national registry
emphasizing “voluntary” compliance that then turns into
something else:

Along with
this, make private sales illegal. When a firearm is transferred,
make it law that the registration must be updated. Again, make
it super easy to do. Perhaps over, the internet. Dealers can log
in by their FFLs and update the registration. Additionally, new
guns are to be registered by the manufacturer. The object here
is to create a clear paper trail from factory to distributor to
dealer to owner. We want to encourage as much voluntary compliance
as possible.

Now we get
down to it. The registration period has passed. Now we have criminals without
registered guns running around. Probably kooky types that “lost”
them on a boat or something. So remember those ATF form 4473s?
Those record every firearm sale, going back twenty years. And
those have to be surrendered to the ATF on demand. So, we get
those logbooks, and cross reference the names and addresses with
the new national registry. Since most NRA types own two or (many)
more guns, we can get an idea of who properly registered their
guns and who didn’t. For example, if we have a guy who purchased
6 guns over the course of 10 years, but only registered two of
them, that raises a red flag.

What happens
at this point? Now the police become involved and the Daily Kos
advocates the most violent approach to anyone who might technically
“violate” the new rules:

Now, maybe
he sold them or they got lost or something. But it gives us
a good target for investigation. A nice visit by the ATF or state
police to find out if he really does still have those guns would
be certainly warranted. It’s certainly not perfect. People
may have gotten guns from parents or family, and not registered
them. Perfect is the enemy of pretty darn good, as they say. This
exercise isn’t so much to track down every gun ever sold; the
main idea would be to profile and investigate people that may
not have registered their guns. As an example, I’m not so concerned
with the guy who bought that bolt action Mauser a decade ago and
doesn’t have anything registered to his name. It’s a pretty good
possibility that he sold it, gave it away, or got rid of it somehow.
And even if he didn’t, that guy is not who I’m concerned with.
I’m concerned that other guy who bought a half dozen assault
weapons, registered two hunting rifles, and belongs to the NRA/GOA.
He’s the guy who warrants a raid. (Emphasis mine)

The recommendation
here depends upon one thing: all government agents raiding others
are armed, and armed to the teeth. The author, then, is saying that
indiscriminate raids, which often end in tragedy and the loss of
innocent life, are a good thing and should be expanded.

(We should
not be surprised that the Daily Kos is a cheerleader for government
violence. This is the same political blog that
claims that socialism is good for the United States because
it has provided war, the CIA, business subsidies, FEMA and…the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security. At least we know what they believe
in Washington, D.C.)

As for gun
control, the author then demands an end to the gun registry, with
a government campaign to tax, harass, arrest, and turn on the propaganda:

A national
Firearms Owner Identification Card might be good, but I’m not
sure if it’s necessary if we have a national database. We should
also insist on comprehensive insurance and mandatory gun safes,
subject to random, spot checks by local and federal law enforcement.

We must make
guns expensive and unpopular, just like cigarettes. A nationwide,
antigun campaign paid for by a per gun yearly tax paid by owners,
dealers, and manufacturers would work well in this regard.

If that is
not enough, then the government will turn on the hunters as well:

We should
also segway into an anti-hunting campaign, like those in the UK.
By making hunting expensive and unpopular, we can make the transition
to a gun free society much less of a headache for us.

I know this
seems harsh, but this is the only way we can be truly safe. I
don’t want my kids being shot at by a deranged NRA member. I’m
sure you don’t either. So lets stop looking for short term solutions
and start looking long term. Registration is the first step.

My guess is
that very few crimes have been committed by NRA or GOA members,
but that is not his point. These people are different than “Spork,”
and while they pose no threat to him whatsoever, the very existence
of people who might have different outlooks on life is just too
intolerable. They must be arrested or killed, but they certainly
need to be eliminated. (And to think that the writers for Daily
Kos consider themselves to be the Apostles of Tolerance.)

There also
is another matter to consider, although I doubt it would bother
the Daily Kos people or their fellow Progressives: Since police
and other government “law enforcement” officers and departments
would not be affected by this gun ban, it is ludicrous to think
that many of these weapons and ammunition would not make their way
into the hands of civilian criminals (as opposed to government criminals
who are permitted to commit robbery, murder, and rape and not have
to worry about being punished).

My
sense is that the Daily Kos people know exactly what would happen,
as armed criminals would go on rampages against unarmed civilians,
with the police dutifully drawing the yellow chalk lines around
the bodies. One also could expect civilians who did try to
defend themselves and their families from armed predators (not police,
just regular criminals) quickly and surely would be charged with
crimes as they are in Canada, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand,
as it effectively is illegal for people to engage in self-defense,
even if their lives are in danger.

Progressives
really don’t care whether or not individuals are safe in their homes,
and if they truly believed that firearms themselves were the cause
of violence, then they would demand disarmament of the U.S. Armed
Forces and all state, local, and federal police. Furthermore, most
of them know that the vast majority of legal gun owners in this
country do not commit crimes, nor are they a danger to the public.

However, most
Progressives believe that even the mere presence of a lawful gun
owner is so odious and so evil that if the government cannot rid
the world of those people, at least it can try to take away all
of their firearms. My sense is Progressives will not stop there
if they have any success at all with the latest gun-control/gun-ban
initiative. As they continue to win more political victories, and
as they continue to ravage the U.S. economy, they will become even
angrier and more paranoid and more oppressive. Their end is a society
in which the State makes all decisions for individuals, and their
means is violence and more violence.

January
4, 2013

William
L. Anderson, Ph.D. [send him
mail], teaches economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland,
and is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig
von Mises Institute. He
also is a consultant with American Economic Services. Visit
his blog.

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© 2013 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in
part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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