Straight talk about November, the Second Amendment and Iraq

by Loren Bliss

I DIDN’T HEAR the President’s speech, but I read its text, which said nothing new, was less compelling than the average speech by an average legislator during an average day in some average statehouse, and – at least according to some commentators – was badly marred when the President stumbled over the pronunciation of Abu Ghraib. I voted for George Bush in 2000, and I will vote for him again in November, though this second time I will vote for him only because I have no other choice. Voting for the alternative – John Kerry, the foreign-policy reincarnation of Neville Chamberlain – seems to me tantamount to voting to wave the white flag: to surrender American liberty and Western Civilization to the nonexistent mercies of Islam’s global caliphate, a reality I cannot contemplate without literally gnashing my teeth.

Nevertheless I think it is now a foregone conclusion Kerry and the Democrats will win the election – in all of the history of opinion polling, no President whose popularity is as far down the commode as Bush’s is now has ever won re-election. And I think that means those of us who are firearms owners and Second Amendment advocates (sadly, the two are not synonymous) had better begin bracing ourselves for an onslaught of gun controls far harsher than anything yet imposed or perhaps even imagined.

I think we’ll see the “assault weapons ban” renewed and expanded two ways: just as Michigan’s Sen. Carl Levin attempted a few years ago and has pledged to attempt again, by confiscatory prohibition of any civilian ownership of obsolete U.S. military firearms including antiques dating back to the birth of the Republic; and as Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the Million Matrifascist Moms are demanding, by outlawing civilian possession of all semiautomatic arms including .22s, and all manually operated arms with magazine capacities greater than five rounds.

Also I think we’ll see gun shows shut down permanently, and all firearms sales and even firearm gifts between private individuals banned. Based on what the Democrats have attempted in various state legislatures, the gift ban would probably include a provision prohibiting anyone under 21 (or perhaps under 18), from so much as handling firearms or perhaps even being in proximity to them, even with adult supervision – and extremely harsh penalties for violations. Nor is my concern the least bit overstated: Clinton Administration Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala reportedly wanted it made a criminal offense for firearms to be kept in any household that included children, a position endorsed publicly by Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund (one of Hillary Clinton’s favorite organizations). Edelman was actually quoted as saying gun owners are by definition unfit parents.

But most of all I think we’ll see the universe of prohibited persons dramatically expanded by federal enactment of laws that are already in force in New York City and New Jersey. These provisions criminalize any allegedly abnormal mental condition. The moment you are so diagnosed, your ownership of firearms becomes a penitentiary-time felony, no exceptions, no appeals, no matter the brevity or mildness of the affliction. In both New York City and Jersey, where such restrictions have been in effect for decades, this has come to mean in practice that a single outpatient trip to a psychiatrist, psychologist or even a grief counselor (all of which by law must be reported to the authorities) disqualifies you from firearms ownership forever. Universal gun registration – mandatory in both places – then brings a police-department firearms-confiscation squad to your door forthwith. By some estimates, fully half the people in the United States will at one time or another suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder, which means a nation-wide version of such a measure would shrink legal firearms ownership accordingly.

Indeed this would be its primary objective. The Democrats have long schemed to impose just such restrictions nationwide. Meanwhile, creation of the national mental-patient roster it would necessitate is one of the favored albeit little-known objectives of the Communitarians, unapologetic advocates of tyranny who have become a powerfully influential faction within the Democratic Party’s policy-making circles. (The acknowledged Communitarian purpose of the mental-patient roster is the alleged enhancement of public safety that would supposedly result from imposition of harsh restrictions on the mentally ill – controls distinctly reminiscent of the Third Reich, where they were a precursor to forcible euthanasia.) But for the Democrats in general – who are probably more malicious and vindictive than any political party in U.S. history – the payoff would be vengeance pure and simple: the almost-total destruction of the hated “gun culture,” both by halving the number of legal firearms owners and completely prohibiting firearms instruction for children and youths, all in revenge for the succession of defeats Second Amendment advocates have been regularly inflicting on the Democrats since 1994.

Moreover, if the history of other attempts to restrict firearms ownership via mental health criteria is any indication, the entire Second Amendment community will remain cowardly, cravenly silent. The National Rifle Association is in fact actively collaborating on one such effort, the so-called Our Lady of Peace Act (overwhelmingly passed by the House in 1992 and reintroduced in both House and Senate), which mental health professionals say would felonize firearms ownership by anyone with any formally diagnosed mental illness. It would also indelibly and forever stigmatize as a "mental defective" anyone who was even briefly mentally ill – never mind the fact that the mentally ill are no more prone to violence than any other American subgroup (and far less prone to violence than certain subgroups we probably need not name). That the term "mental defective" is yet another nasty echo of the Third Reich makes it all the more outrageous an NRA director, Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), is one of the sponsors of the legislation.

But in reality this is an old and exceptionally ugly story. In 1994, the matrifascists who ran the Washington State Democratic Party worked via their ideological sisters in the state Department of Social and Health Services to sneak through the chaotic final moments of the legislative session a measure that criminalized firearms ownership by anyone who had participated in any mental health treatment program, in-patient or out-patient, that lasted longer than two weeks. This would have included any one-session-per-month therapy program of more than a single session. The law, which had been narrowly defeated twice but was re-introduced at the last possible minute by DSHS in violation of several promises, was enacted as part of the so-called “Youth Violence Act,” in reality the most draconian anti-gun measure the state has ever imposed, and it was sent to Gov. Mike Lowry – an outspoken anti-gunner himself – for signature. Not one Second-Amendment-advocacy group in the entire state spoke up; all tucked their tails between their legs, wet themselves and hid, cringing in terror lest the anti-gunners accuse them of lobbying to “let crazies have guns.”

Instead, the state Department of Veterans Affairs jumped into the fight. Long at odds with DSHS over the giant welfare bureaucracy's institutionalized feminist hostility to military veterans -- and now furious at what was clearly an especially vicious betrayal -- DVA officials alerted the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and several statewide mental-health professional organizations, and these groups formed an informal coalition that convinced Lowry to item-veto the measure. The veto was a bold move on Lowry's part, one that may have cost him his political career. When his anticipated run for a second gubernatorial term was suddenly blocked by questionable sexual harassment charges a year later, there were rumors it was revenge for his refusal to sign into law the matrifascist attempt to radically increase the number of Washingtonians prohibited to own firearms.

The point, of course, is that the Democrats feel it is absolutely safe to try to limit gun ownership via mental health exclusions – they have learned from long experience even Republican politicians are afraid to object, and they know beyond any scintilla of doubt the Second Amendment community won’t lift so much as a finger to stop them. In this context, Google “Our Lady of Peace Act,” and note that the reasoned objections to the proposal come almost entirely from mental health professional associations, which universally denounce it as an especially egregious attempt to criminalize (and further demonize) mental illness.

And how were we reduced to such dreadful prospects? The short answer is the incessant blundering of President George Bush, by which he squandered and flung away each and every one of the formidable advantages with which he entered the 2004 election campaign. A much longer and more detailed answer – at least as it concerns the ruinous and astonishing screw-ups in Iraq – is provided by the expert criticism of Laurie Mylroie, who despite her former association with the Clinton Administration has been one of Bush's staunchest supporters in the war against terrorist Islam. Mylroie's most recent analysis is available here.

posted by on May 25, 2004 01:46 PM