Tenth Amendment Center: Hypocrisy: World’s Biggest Arms Dealer Restricts Your Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Politics is rife with hypocrisy. For instance, Washington D.C. continues to gradually clamp down on your right to keep and bear arms while simultaneously operating as the biggest arms dealer in the world.
Hands clasped, politicians, lobbyists, media, pundits and the war machine move as one. Their jobs depend on it. Individually they don’t have enough power to dominate the public. But together they form a network of influence.
This cabal operates under some restraint in a democratic republic. To some extent, it needs the consent of the governed. This is where my frustration begins: Even if I do not consent, I am told I must still abide.
It reminds me of a scene in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in which the state believes it can take a man’s property because doing so will serve a beneficial public purpose. As Rand said, a burglar also thinks another man’s property is better suited for his own needs. The difference, according to Rand, is that the victim is never expected to excuse the burglar. But, victims of the state are expected to excuse the state, assume the existence of a greater good, and accept it.
Scenarios like this play out every day with our right to defend ourselves.
Try explaining to the “common sense gun reform crowd” that buying a gun means you will always go through a background check and that there is no gun show loophole and you will get back a textbook example of sophistry.
Their appeal to regulate some types of guns or magazines in the name of public safety is either ignorant or tyrannical. According to one politician, the 1990s was supposed to be the last time America was going to deal with gun control, once and for all. But Congress just passed another gun control law this year.
Ironically, federal gun control is set against the backdrop of Washington’s arms sales to countries all over the world. Despite holding the dubious distinction of the world’s top arms exporter, Washington severely limits what arms Americans may possess.
In December of 2017, the Trump administration approved the largest U.S. commercial sale of lethal defense weapons to Ukraine since 2014. One Senator approved the arms sale because it will help Ukraine in the face of “ongoing Russian aggression.”
The implication in that statement is that arms are necessary for defense against an antagonistic government. The same people who want to sell weapons to foreign countries cannot or will not see the duplicity in their stance for gun control in America.
It’s up to us to protect our right to self-defense. We can’t limit ourselves to plans to “get out and vote.” That is a silent sanction of the burglar’s act about which Rand warned. Why should we agree to any federal gun confiscation? Waiting until the next election only tells others that we don’t take the right to defend ourselves seriously.
If you vote, of course going to the polls is one step. But more can be done in the present.
States can nullify federal gun laws. It is already happening.
We can win this fight.
When we nullify unconstitutional laws, Washington will call it populism. But, when we sanction criminality, Washington calls it democracy.
P.A. Deacon
May 09, 2018 at 06:09AM
