In an article on CNN.com, Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, reminds us of how conservatives and liberals share a common philosophical framework with respect to the role of government in our lives, a framework that poses a grave threat to our freedom.
In his article, LaPierre takes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to task for suggesting that gun control should be employed to stem the drug-war violence along the border. The thrust of LaPierre’s argument is that the Mexican drug cartels are primarily using fully automatic weapons, not the single-fire weapons available in the United States that are commonly referred to as “assault weapons.”
In the process of making his argument, however, LaPierre reveals that he, like Clinton, favors the war on drugs, the 35-year-old failed war that has brought nothing but death, torture, assassination, corruption, violence, and chaos to the United States and the rest of the world.
While correctly holding that people have a fundamental right to put a gun into their hands, LaPierre feels that people don’t have a fundamental right to put drugs into their mouths. How consistent is that?
LaPierre states, “Nobody can substantiate claims that U.S. guns cross the border ‘by the thousands’ or ‘account for 95% of weapons used by Mexican drug gangs.’ Because it’s not true.”
LaPierre is being disingenuous, however. The fact is that Mexican drug cartels are getting assault weapons from gun shops in the United States. Just last week, for example, in Brownsville a man was sentenced to 10 years in jail for purchasing 70 guns in the United States and smuggling them into Mexico. Another man from Houston was recently sentenced to 4 years in prison for purchasing 339 weapons, at least 40 of which ended up in Mexico.
Where does that leave LaPierre, given his ardent commitment to the war on drugs? It leaves him with his secondary argument — that gun control here in the United States won’t prevent Mexican drug cartels from getting their hands on guns on the black market.
But since when has that sort of argument deterred drug-war statists? After all, 35 years of harsh jail sentences, asset forfeiture, drug raids, searches and seizures, and other such measures haven’t brought “victory” in the war on drugs, and we don’t see the statists abandoning those efforts. Why should anyone expect the drug warriors to keep gun control off the table in their attempt to “win” the war on drugs?
The war on drugs is not the only area in which conservatives and liberals join forces to support measures that inevitably lead to gun control and other infringements on liberty. The “war on terrorism,” which both conservatives and liberals have wholeheartedly embraced, is another good example, As U.S. officials have repeatedly reminded us after 9/11, in the war on terrorism the entire world is a battlefield. That includes the United States and, of course, Afghanistan and Iraq. That means that the president and the military are now empowered to do everything here in the United States to fight the terrorists that they’re doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, without worrying about constitutional constraints.
And what have they been doing to combat the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq? Busting down doors and conducting searches without warrants, incarcerating people indefinitely without trial, torture and sex abuse of detainees, censorship … and confiscating guns and imposing gun control on the citizenry!
Conservative support of the war on drugs and the war on terrorism shows us that when it comes to freedom, we simply cannot depend on conservatives. Their inconsistent defense of freedom , especially their support of such anti-freedom programs as the war on drugs and war on terrorism, steadily leads to loss of freedom.
Wayne LaPierre’s support of the drug war, even while opposing gun control, is just another reminder as to why the American people should look to libertarians, not conservatives, to lead America toward the restoration of liberty and a constitutional republic to our land.