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I used to think it couldn't happen here . . .

. . . so when I read about the new, pending Firearms Prohibition Orders in Australia in Thoughts on Freedom, I felt somewhat smugly secure on reading the line, "Once freedom is lost in this way, it can’t be regained. We don’t have a Bill of Rights and Supreme Court that can throw out the legislation."

These FPOs will allow police. among other things, to enter the domiciles of prohibited individuals at any time--without a warrant--to insure compliance.

Yes, we have a Bill of Rights and a Supreme Court in the US.

We also have the DC handgun ban case.

We have the City of New Orleans, which removed--sometimes forcibly--legally owned firearms from law-abiding citizens in the aftermath of Katrina, and who have consistently stonewalled attempts by those citizens to recover them.

We have the State of Connecticut attempting to subject rifles and shot guns to all the same legal constraints of sale and transfer as hand guns--with proposed legislation that would make it a licensed and recordable (on pain of a felony charge) for me to pass down a shot gun to my son or grandson without notifying State authorities.

We have the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms seizing legally owned firearms on deposit for repair at a licensed gun shop, refusing to return them to the owners even though their weapons had nothing to do with the justification for the raid on the gun dealer.

We have Upper Darby Township in nearby PA routinely refusing to return weapons (and often destroying them) confiscated from citizens charged with no crime, but merely being investigated for a non-related complaint.

We really do face a combination of special interests aiming at, first, complete registration and recording of all firearms by the State, and eventually to the restriction of the right to bear arms from an integral property right to a government-supervised privilege.

I used to laugh at people who said they were eventually coming for all our guns.

I've stopped laughing.
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The Last Ephor said…
I used to have a shotgun but I uh....dropped it in the lake while duck hunting. Yeah, that's the ticket. Dropped it in the lake.
March 25, 2008 at 8:06 AM
Anonymous said…
dropped it right under the engine block buried in my back yard. Yup, when they come lookin all they will find is old car parts. ;)
March 25, 2008 at 10:09 AM
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