Not surprisingly, the recent massacre in New Zealand has brought out the gun-control crowd, big time. It’s always so predictable. Rather than focus on the root causes of gun violence, such as the drug war, the perpetual war on terrorism, the forever wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and the daily stream of assassinations being carried out by the U.S. national-security establishment, the gun-control crowd immediately seizes on gun massacres to promote their gun-control agenda.
A good example of this phenomenon appears in an article entitled “Gun Control: Lessons from the East” by Devika Khandelwal that appeared recently on a website called Modern Diplomacy. Writing in the wake of the massacre in New Zealand, Khandelwal praises the new gun-control law enacted in that country, which includes a halt on the importation of assault rifles, a gun-buyback program, the confiscation of 650,000 automatic and semi-automatic rifles, a gun registry for all guns owned in the country, and a new permit requirement for all new firearms purchases.
Essentially, there are two gun-control positions.
The first position is that when the government enacts a gun-control measure, would-be murderers will comply with it. The idea is that since the law is the law, people can be expected to obey it.
But obviously, that is a ridiculous notion. If a murderer is not going to comply with a law against murder, he’s not going to give a hoot about complying with a law against owning an assault rifle or any other illegal gun. He is going to do whatever he can to get his hands on the guns that are going to enable him to commit murder.
Now, of course, this assumes that there is a black market in guns, which is a reasonable assumption, especially if there has been widespread ownership of guns in society prior to the gun ban. Once the gun ban goes into effect, some people comply with it but others don’t. The ones who comply with the ban are the peaceful, law-abiding types. They don’t want to take a chance of being convicted of a felony. They turn in their guns.
The ones who don’t comply with the ban are the murderers, rapists, and robbers. They know that they will now have a distinct advantage committing their crimes. Why is that so? Because the peaceful, law-abiding types now no longer have the means to resist them with guns. It’s like a dream come true for murderers, rapists, and robbers: a gun-free society to prey upon.
Moreover, a lively black market in guns comes into existence, one in which murderers, rapists, and robbers are participating. Thus, what a gun ban does is deprive peaceful and law-abiding people of the right of self-defense against those who are initiating force against them with illegally owned guns.
That then leaves leftists inexorably moving toward the second gun-control position: a total ban on guns, including guns held by murderers, rapists, and robbers. That inevitably means a total police state, where the government wields the power to do whatever is necessary to ferret out, find, and smash any gun held by anyone in society. A total police state would be the only way to accomplish that, especially in a country like the United States, were so many guns are already privately owned.
In fact, Khandelwal even points favorably to China as a country that has the “lowest number of gun-related deaths in the world.” China, of course, is a totalitarian police state, one that has a ban on private ownership of guns, except for the government of course.
Now, let’s assume that leftists are successful in getting their fondest gun-control dream fulfilled here in the United States. Let’s assume that a law is passed banning the private ownership of all guns whatsoever. Let’s assume also that a federal police state is successful in totally eradicating all guns from society.
Big questions naturally arise: Who protects the citizenry from the government (which has all the guns). What if that police state becomes so tyrannical that people wish to overthrow it? Suppose, for example, government forces are indiscriminately killing, raping, jailing, and Abu Ghraibing Americans, including wives, daughters, and mothers? What then? How do people resist that sort of tyranny, which the Declaration of Independence says they have the right to do?
They don’t. Like Chinese citizens, they either submit to tyranny and passively watch it occur or they are severely punished for objecting. They have no other recourse because the leftists have deprived them of the means to resist such tyranny with their gun ban.
In fact, that was precisely the reason our American ancestors demanded the enactment of the Second Amendment immediately after reluctantly approving the Constitution, which brought the federal government into existence. They knew that the gun ownership was not only the means of deterring tyranny but also the means to resist tyranny.
Like other leftists, that higher-law Second Amendment restriction on federal power doesn’t mean much to Devika Khandelwal. She concludes her article with the following sentence: “The government must find a way to work around USA’s Second Amendment and place stricter laws in relation with gun-ownership.”