The desire to police speech is nothing but another form of the desire for control. Thus, the Liberal illness makes itself felt yet again. In the debate over free speech, we see symptoms 1, 2, 4, and 5 from Cluster I appearing, and symptoms 6, 7, 8, and 9 appearing from Cluster II.
Cluster I
1. Deceitfulness, indicated by repeated lying, grand exaggerations, or omission of contrary information, with the purpose to advance their chosen narrative and discrediting others.
2. Irritability or aggressiveness towards anybody that questions or opposes their views. Coupled with the inability to recognize they own hypocrisy, double standards, and doublethink.
3. Inability to adjust views when presented with information contrary to their own beliefs.
4. Frequent projections of their own traits onto others.
5. Difficulty in dealing with a loss of control or power, or a strong desire for control and power.
Cluster II
6. Appeals to altered and redefined definitions of words, or relies on fictitious terms for argumentation.
7. Consistent feelings of having been victimized or wronged, without any actual harm being done. Seen also as playing the victim after attacking others.
8. Intense sense of righteousness or moral superiority.
9. The inability to recognize the negative outcomes of their own actions. Often placing the blame on others.
10. Intense guilt or self-hatred, often manifests as hatred towards one’s larger group identity.
II
Revolutionaries & Renegades: A Closer Look at the Second Amendment
When loss of liberty is looming, as it is now, the siren sounds first in the hearts of freedom’s vanguard … because they know that sacred stuff resides in that wooden stock and blued steel. Something that gives the most common man the most uncommon of freedoms. When ordinary hands can possess such an extraordinary instrument, that symbolizes the full measure of human dignity and liberty.
— Charlton Heston
There may be no other issue that attracts the ire and contempt of Liberals like the freedom to keep and bear arms. There is indeed something sacred hidden here, when the simplest of materials, in the hands of ordinary men, transforms both man and material into a single entity with the capacity of liberating himself from the wretched clutches of tyranny.
The history of gun laws in the United States makes for a fascinating and checkered tale. The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791; following that, the federal government did not regulate firearms until the National Firearms Act of 1934, introduced by Democrat House Representative Robert Doughton, and signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Firearms Act of 1934 was a reaction to the violence stemming from the Prohibition era and the organized crime which was its consequence. This Act created Title II weapons, often referred to as NFA weapons (short for National Firearms Act). These include short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, automatic and burst-fire weapons, explosives, and suppressors. The act created more stringent regulations on these weapons, and instituted a $200 tax on the transfer of the same.
The next major federal piece of gun control arrived in 1968. While the Roaring 20s, the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, and an attempt on FDR’s life paved the way for the NFA act of 1934, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Junior, and Robert Kennedy all fueled efforts to pass the Gun Control Act of 1968. Democratic Senator Thomas Dodd and Jewish House member Emanuel Celler introduced legislation to ban mail-order weapons and to regulate the shipment and transfers of firearms. The 1968 act signed by Lyndon B. Johnson established the Federal Firearm Licensing (FFL) requirements for those in the firearm business.
In an effort to address allegations of abuse by the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Republican Senator James A. McClure introduced the 1986 Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, signed into law by Ronald Reagan. The act made several revisions to gun laws and prohibited a firearms registry for non-NFA weapons. The act also clarified and expanded the definitions of prohibited persons, specifying who may or may not purchase a firearm, and limited ATF inspections of Federal Firearms Licensed dealers to once annually, in an effort to curb allegations of ATF harassment. Additionally, Democratic Representative William Hughes of New Jersey proposed a ban on the sale of new automatic weapons to civilians once the Act was passed.
Herb Kohl, Jewish Democrat Senator from Wisconsin, introduced the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, the bill that would ensure that school children are defenseless against all those who wish them harm. The Gun-Free School Zone act was one of a dozen or so bills incorporated into the Crime Control Act of 1990, which was introduced by Democrat Senator Joseph Biden and signed into law by George H. W. Bush. Our society routinely protects court houses, banks, sporting events, music venues, politicians, and office buildings with firearms, yet when it comes to our children, these elected officials have taken a different path.
Introduced by Jewish Representative, Chuck Schumer, and signed into law by Bill Clinton, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act arrived in 1993. Named after James Brady, who was shot during the assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan in 1981, the Brady Act required background checks on anybody purchasing a firearm from a federally licensed dealer. The National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS), maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was implemented along with the act to process the mandated background checks.79
A year later, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, written by Jewish Senator Diane Feinstein, was added to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The weapons ban was in part a reaction to the 1991 Luby’s massacre that took place in Killeen, Texas. After that massacre, which left twenty-three dead and twenty-seven injured, Democrats sought to make certain weapons more difficult to obtain. The Right took a different approach.
Suzanna Hupp was with her parents at Luby’s the day of the shooting. Both of her parents were killed in the massacre. Hupp had a gun in her car, but did not bring her weapon into the restaurant, as Texas law prohibited concealed carry at the time. After the massacre, Hupp became a leading advocate for concealed carry laws to be introduced and passed. In 1995, Texas passed its concealed carry law. Hupp then served five terms as a member of the Texas House of Representatives.
In response to gun violence, the Left seeks to further disarm us, while the Right fights for laws that enable us to protect ourselves. This is another prime example of the cultural differences between the Left and the Right. One favors individualism and self-determination, the other favors collectivism and a powerful state.
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban restricted numerous firearms and certain features for ten years. Numerous studies have been conducted, all of which found the Assault Weapon Ban to have been entirely useless for stopping any crime or murder. Despite the evidence, many on the Left have demanded that the Act be renewed.80 81
Over the last 100 years, the Federal government has already passed the majority of the “common sense” gun laws that Liberals like Hillary Clinton advocate. As we read on Clinton’s website:
Keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, other violent criminals, and the severely mentally ill by supporting laws that stop domestic abusers from buying and owning guns, making it a federal crime for someone to intentionally buy a gun for a person prohibited from owning one, and closing the loopholes that allow people suffering from severe mental illness to purchase and own guns. She will also support work to keep military-style weapons off our streets.
This all sounds reasonable enough. But there’s a glaring problem to anybody who is paying attention. The Brady Act already covers the majority of what Liberals commonly refer to as “common sense gun control.” There are two different criteria on background checks that specifically regard domestic violence. If you’ve ever been convicted of even a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, or if you are the subject of a restraining order, you cannot purchase a firearm. If you have a felon status or have been found guilty of
other crimes that could have landed you in prison for a year or more, even if the sentence was reduced or you received probation, you cannot purchase a firearm. Liberals call for violent criminals to be denied guns, yet the Brady Act goes even further by barring non-violent offenders access to firearms as well. The current background checks also consider mental health, ensuring that the buyer has never been committed to a mental institution or deemed in a court of law to be a danger to himself or others.
Clinton goes on to say we should make it a federal crime to purchase a gun on behalf of a prohibited person. Well, we already do. It is referred to as a Straw Purchase, and you can be sentenced to ten years in prison for lying on a background check or for purchasing a firearm for somebody who is not eligible to do so themselves.
In any case, I’m not sure I even believe in the concept of a “prohibited person.” If the person is such a danger to society that he cannot legally own a weapon, he should probably still be in prison. And if he is no longer a danger, his right to defend his home and family should be restored.
Further, I believe the idea of barring the “mentally ill” from owning firearms creates a dangerous precedent. Currently the laws are such that those people who have been legally committed to a mental institution are unable to purchase a firearm. However the push for further restrictions on the so-called mentally ill is beginning to sound eerily reminiscent of Article 58 of Soviet era Criminal Code, a catch-all served to criminalize and pathologize political dissidents. Those who were inconvenient to the regime and those who held beliefs not in-line with the state were “diagnosed” as mentally incompetent. The Left has long since declared that antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia are a sort of “mental illness.” Soon, they will declare those with nationalist sentiments or a desire to retain their ancestral homelands unfit to purchase firearms. The effort will encroach slowly, first by including those who take any sort of medication for mental health issues, then expanding the definition of mental illness, until only those approved by the state will be allowed to exercise the basic right preserved in the Second Amendment. This disarming of dissidents will be accomplished entirely under the guise of “safety.”
What Clinton and other Liberal politicians are doing is incredibly misleading at best. At worst — and more likely — it is intentional manipulation. By claiming they only want laws that keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals, the mentally ill, and domestic abusers, they are creating the myth that these people can now walk into any gun store they choose and purchase a firearm. This is simply not the case, and has not been the case for nearly a quarter-century. Yet the Liberal, who knows little about firearms, and even less about the laws, will believe the lying Democrats when they tell them that, as it stands, a domestic abuser or a violent felon can easily purchase a firearm. And so the rank and file Liberal supports more restrictive gun legislation.
The next point brought up on the Clinton website is commonly referred to the “gun show loophole.”82 Simply put, when two people who are not federally licensed dealers, such as two neighbors or friends or strangers at a gun show, decide to buy and sell to each other, no background check is required. Gun advocates oppose background checks for private sales because it would in essence make it illegal to sell a firearm to anybody, even your family members, without going through the State. Which in turn creates a de facto registry of who has firearms in their possession, and what firearms they possess.
Those in favor of background checks for private sales make the argument that a person who knows he cannot pass a background check will simply resort to buying a firearm from a private seller to avoid this obstacle. I can certainly understand both perspectives. Yet I often wonder why the Liberal default solution is always the addition of more laws? It is already illegal for the person in question to possess a firearm. He would already be actively breaking the law in purchasing the firearm. Yet somehow another law will succeed where previous laws have failed?
A more reasonable solution might be to only allow federally licensed dealers to sell at larger gun shows. That way gun shows would not be a “go-to” place for prohibited persons looking to buy a firearm. But this is almost too easy of a solution; I wonder if a de facto registry is not in itself the Liberal goal. When people advocate for “closing the gun show loophole,” what they are really saying is that they wish to make the private sales of arms illegal.
The final point on Clinton’s site is the most telling as far as the true Liberal agenda goes. Clinton would work to keep “military-style weapons off our streets,” no doubt a reference to the panic-inducing “assault rifles.” But the concrete claim that “civilians do not need assault rifles and should not have them” is made without any real justification, other than the sorry excuse that rifles apparently frighten Liberals quite a lot. Liberals often ask, “Why would anybody need an AR-15 or AK-47 to hunt deer?” and “Why do civilians need military-style weapons if they aren’t fighting a war?” Sadly, I seldom see Republicans, conservatives, and those on the Right offering the honest and genuine answers to these questions. So here it is.
Why do a civilians need military-style weapons? Because the government has military-style weapons, and you can’t very well overthrow a tyrannical government with your granddad’s old six-shooter. It’s true, you do not need an M14, AR-15, FN-FAL, or AK-47, nor any other high-powered rifle of the kind, to hunt deer. These rifles are designed to hunt a far more dangerous game. The logic behind the Second Amendment was not to protect the people from the local deer population, nor to ensure their stock of venison. It was to protect the people from tyrannical government. Civilians need military-style weapons in order to wage another revolution, should such ever be needed. Too many have forgotten that this entire nation was born when a small group of men, who had committed high treason against the King, picked up their rifles to defend their rights. That heritage has been diluted and in many ways erased over the decades. But for some of us, the revolutionary spirit burns yet.
The purpose behind those “weapons of war” is simple — to keep the government afraid of the people, and not the other way around. Our Europeans cousins are being arrested and having their rights violated daily. They are routinely arrested, fined, tried, and harassed by their own governments for Thought Crimes. For political dissidents, there is a legitimate and substantial fear that once the right to keep and bear arms is limited, a domino effect will begin to erode all subsequent rights as well.
Although Americans have had many of their freedoms stripped, and much of their property and income taken, we still remain the freest people on Earth. Having those terrifying rifles, with thirty-round magazines, collapsible stocks, precision scopes, and even a suppressor if you’d like, is quite literally the last line that can be drawn in the sand to protect this freedom. Gun owners like myself, and others the country over, do not take our heritage or duty lightly by any means. These arms are far more than simple tools or hobbies or “weapons of war.” What those rifles represent is quite literally the last hope, the final straw, the ultimate iron guard. They are the last vestiges of a dying breed. And maybe that is precisely the problem Liberals have with our rifles. Maybe they see us as an archaic and antiquated lot, nothing but a group of throwbacks that somehow missed a step in evolution while they were busy ushering in the new century. Perhaps they see us as the philistine Morlocks to their cosmopolitan Eloi.
And perhaps they are right. But there is one thing that keeps me up at night. It bothers me far more deeply than all the deaths caused by civilian gun violence.
It is estimated that in the last one hundred years alone, around 262,000,000 people, over a quarter of a billion, have been killed by their own governments. From Mao’s Great Leap Forward to the Holodomor, from Stalin’s Great Purge to the Armenian genocide, from the Killing Fields to the deaths in Bosnia and Rwanda. Genocides the world over, committed by governments against their own, unarmed, citizens. Men, women, and children. Nothing spared, and no defense that could be brought
on behalf of the innocent against the juggernaut of these authorized massacres.83
If I had to take my chances with a bunch of mentally ill people right out of an insane asylum all armed with rifles on the one hand, or my own government on the other, I think I would try my luck with the lunatics. I am certain that not all of them would have genocidal intent — far more than I can say about the governments of the world.
Those people, whose corpses now rest in mass graves, trusted their governments, and many would have supported the very leaders that brought their demise. From a purely historical standpoint, I think it is more than reasonable to be incredibly skeptical of any person, especially any government figure, who has the intent to disarm his constituents.
Those 262,000,000 dead deserved at least a chance. At the very least, they deserved so little. And the very rifles Liberals loathe would have given them just that: a fighting chance.
I do not think it is irrational in the least to be concerned with a government turning tyrannical against its own people. It has happened over and over again throughout recent history, even in my own young lifetime, today even, in Venezuela. Based on the violence we have seen coming from the dark-hearted Left, I had no doubt that if they had their way, the Right-wing of the America and Europe would be the next Great Purge.
Smallpox has killed over 300,000,000 people in the twentieth century. Governments have killed nearly as many humans as smallpox in the same time frame. This is absolutely staggering to consider. Governments have killed more of their own people the world over than all the people who have died in automobile accidents in the twentieth century. Yet nobody calls me paranoid when I wear a seat belt.
Liberalism Unmasked Page 10