Are you prepared for the day that your state legislature outlaws semi-automatics? I am not optimistic. I feel like it is coming in my lifetime. I do not believe that the USCCA, NRA and our other organizations wield enough political power to stop the persistent onslaught.
It will happen state by state, drip by drip. We will be notified by all the media. Gun stores will pay exorbitant taxes and license fees. Box stores will follow the lead of Dick’s; most will quit selling guns and ammo altogether. Our semi-automatics may be grandfathered in, meaning we can keep them if we have them already, but we will have to register each gun by serial number, and we will not be able to sell them privately or give them to our children.
The second step will be confiscation. We will be required to sell them at a price determined by the legislature. Police will knock on our door. Our name will be on their list. All of the angry muttering about “out of my cold, dead hands” will, at that point, be just hot air.
We will be left with revolvers, double-barrel shotguns and single-shot bolt-action rifles. Soon, those too will be gone, as will concealed carry. Those ignorant of history will then prohibit hand-holding in public, dancing and music for being immoral, fishing and pet ownership for being inhumane, and private automobiles for being environmentally hazardous.
I hear, “If only we could stop the mass shootings.” But as terrible as they are, and as much media-mourning as they attract, such actions by single deranged individuals are barely a drop in the bucket of overall murder and mayhem.
If our semi-automatics are confiscated to prevent incidents of mass murder, the American murder rate will not change. The frequency of mass murders will not slow either. And a hundred years after your semi-automatics are confiscated, you will still be able to purchase one on the mean streets of Chicago or Los Angeles.
And if you think gangs, drug dealers and professional criminals will register or surrender their weaponry because some egislator asks them to do so, politely, you’re a simpleton. If you think the federal and state governments can halt the flow of firearms across the borders or through shipping ports (like they have done cocaine and heroin), you’re a simpleton. (At the highest levels of U.S. law enforcement, political cops might not want to crack down on illegal guns in America; they make their living and get raises and paid vacations not from a Sunday school picnic but rather from mayhem.)
No crackdown on law-abiding citizens will reduce violence in America. Only a culture change can reduce violence, and the people who control the inner cities will not ever acknowledge that fact because they have nothing personally to gain from peace and love.
I noticed a meme on Facebook which suggested that if the violence in five cities (Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Saint Louis and Washington, D.C.) were eliminated from America’s overall statistics, the U.S. would rank 189th of the world’s 193 countries for murder. The accompanying photo shows a pretty girl holding a scoped AR.
This is not exactly true, because reliable statistics for the world’s countries and U.S. are impossible to gather. Snopes.com writes, “Broadly, the ten countries with the highest murder rates in the world are Honduras, Venezuela, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Swaziland, Saint Kitts and Nevis, South Africa, and Colombia, while the United States doesn’t crack the top hundred.” You can read the entire analysis here.
So, before they come to take your semi-automatics, try a few of these facts and ideas on your gun-hating friends. My guess is they won’t listen because guns aren’t what they’re really after. They want your freedom of choice, and they’ll still want to grab your gun. Eventually, they will want your revolver, your concealed carry permit and your knives. To shoot trap, you will need a one-day license. To fish, you will need to promise not to hurt the worms. Dancing in public will be outlawed. Facts don’t matter. Get ready. They’re coming.
