Assault Weapons a Question of Freedom

“Trust in God but keep your powder dry.”
-- Oliver Cromwell

There was good news for meth lab owners, street gangs and coke dealers last week. Thanks to a lack of action on the part of Congress in renewing the 1994 assault weapons ban, it’s now possible once again to buy high-powered firearms such as AK-47s, Uzis and TEC-9s.
Those who feel the need to shoot up a McDonald’s or a schoolyard (as was the case in San Diego in 1984 where 21 people died, or on a playground in Stockton, California where five kids lost their lives -- not to mention Columbine), can now once again buy something on par with an Israeli UZI with attached bayonet -- just like the gun used to kill hundreds of rock-throwing kids in the Occupied Territories.
It’s a sick world.
But there’s no need to weep in your herbal tea for the demise of the assault weapons ban. When the ban outlawed 19 military-style weapons 10 years ago, gun manufacturers simply kept the same guns on the market by “changing their names or altering some of their features or accessories,” according to USA Today.
For instance, a Colt AR-15 is reportedly a civilian version of the U.S. military’s standard issue M-16 and has been available all through the past 10 years of the assault weapons ban.
So, some form of those guns have been out there all along, and given the fact that they seem to be widely available in the dirt-poorest countries of the earth, including the Sudan, Ivory Coast, Iraq and other tinderboxes, it comes as no surprise that they’re here to stay as well.
As a supporter of our Second Amendment, I can see both sides of the pro-gun/anti-gun controversy which divides America.
Many anti-gun advocates seem to feel that the right to bear arms is simply an add-on to the sport of hunting. They tend to have a lot more faith in the stability of American ideals, our government and our civic institutions and feel that as long as the average citizen can own a shotgun or a hunting rifle, well then, what more does he need? They fear guns in the hands of criminals, schoolyard shooters and the mayhem of the inner cities. There are more than 30,000 gun deaths each year in the U.S., and something like half of them are self-inflicted suicides, so give the anti-gun folks some points there.
On the other hand, some of us who are ardently pro-Second Amendment tend to have a healthy fear of government, knowing that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It‘s not hard to imagine the American ideals of Thomas Jefferson disintegrating over the next 25 years, driven by overpopulation, globalism, unemployment and the rise of a one-party government in league with mammoth corporations that control the news media as well as the military (ie. Fox News, Halliburton). A place very much like Mexico, for instance, where a few super-rich types lord it over millions of impoverished citizens. We’re peering down that road right now.
Put me in the same column as the NRA crazies for imagining that such a facist state could someday arise. It’s not like the same scenario hasn’t been written large in history, after all. Someday, a well-armed citizenry could be a deterrent to a corporate-backed dictator.
The people of the Soviet Union were allowed to have only shotguns for hunting, and there’s not a gun to be had in all of Cuba. Nor was gun ownership possible in Nazi Germany until they stuck one in your hands in the Wehrmacht. How different might the tales of those desperate countries have been if their citizens had a Second Amendment like ours? Would there have been a Tianneman Square Massacre in China in 1989 or a Cultural Revolution that killed tens of millions if the average Chinese citizen had been armed and dangerous to their own rulers?
So those are two views on the gun debate, with the devil in the details. I always hate writing a column like this because by the time it comes out, Lord knows there could well be another gun-driven massacre on some American streetcorner, perhaps even in our own town.
I hope not, but the fact remains that our First Amendment right to free speech which has made America the finest place in the world to live is defended in the last ditch by the firepower of the Second in the hands of citizens, rather than the government.
Critics like to argue the absurd -- if American citizens should have the right to own assault weapons, then should they also be able to own grenades? Flame throwers? Machine guns? Tanks? Unfortunately, only the future knows the answer to that question. The only responsible answer is -- perhaps.
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