Remedial Practical Civics 100, Lesson 4: “A hunting we will go!

Remedial Practical Civics 100, Lesson 4: “A hunting we will go!”

Good morning, class. I’m frustrated.

Lately it’s over the “bump-fire” stock — apparently non- — issue, but that’s just a symptom.

Let’s look at that symptom:

There is a proposed rule that would “make” bump-fire stocks (“bump-stock-type devices;” BSTD) machineguns. This is rationalized through an outright lie:

[S]uch devices allow a shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger.

That’s a lie worthy of of the Billy Jeff Democrat administration. Screw objective, physical reality. This one comes to us via the “I’m pro-RKBA” Republican Trump administration.

Hey, “stroke of the pen” worked for Trump’s old friend Clinton.

[No, Bobbie, the other Clinton. The “it depends on what is is,” not “what happened?” one.]

You know, the same Republicans who are pushing for “extreme risk protective orders” (ERPO) — lately propagandized as “red flag” orders, as if the authorities will deign to notice “red flags” before mass deaths — with maybe a little ex post facto “due process,” if the unsuspecting ERPO victim can get a lawyer and schedule a hearing after the rights violation and before the two week deadline runs out.

The same Republicans who let concealed carry reciprocity die.

Who passed Fix NICS with all its troubling language that can make anyone a prohibited person. Except, seemingly, actual prohibited persons.

A Zelman Partisans poll shows most people aren’t even bothering to comment on the proposed rule, mostly because they believe it to be pointless, a foregone conclusion. Of those that do attempt to comment, a substantial number report their comments never become visible.

And many folks just don’t give a damn.

That would explain why sites like The Gun Feed aren’t bothering to cover it, not even the little problems with vanishing comments.

I bow to the wiser majority. I shall cease to give a flying fuck.

I will however invest heavily in popcorn for the coming civil war hunting season.

Speaking rather generally, lawful gun owners have been almost notoriously faithful to the rule of law. They petition government. Attend legislative hearings. Write to their Imperial Wetlands representatives and senators. Letters to the editor. Vote.

When illegal and unconstitutional restrictions — against them, not the criminals committing the atrocities that precipitate dumbass laws — pass, they again look to the law and file lawsuits and beg the courts to take their meds and make a sane ruling in favor of the Constitution they swore to uphold.

Yeah, right. Funny thing: I know of only one Supreme Court decision which directly addressed what arms (in the hands of citizens) are protected the Second Amendment; MILLER, which found that those arms are ” “of the kind in common use at the time.” (HELLER actually sidestepped that issue.) So the one class of arms absolutely guaranteed to be left unregulated — as certified by SCOTUS fiat — are weapons suitable for military use.

Except when they aren’t.

The legislators abandoned law. The rulemakers blatantly lie. The courts are full of crossdressing, moronic oathbreakers. Sure, Justice Thomas assures us the Supreme Court won’t touch the Second Amendment, but the post-Heller record demonstrates that simply means they won’t touch a Second Amendment case, leaving infringements standing.

They’ve left no “rule of law” for — previously lawful — gun owners, who counted on that very thing.

What we have are mala prohibita fiats

[No, not the effin’ car company: fiatan arbitrary decree or pronouncement, especially by a person or group of persons having absolute authority to enforce it.]

Aaaand… apparently I have to explain this, too.

Laws essentially belong to one of two classes. Malum prohibitum laws which are simply those things which are illegal because someone said so, and for no other reason. “Illegal because I said so.” A law making the mere possession — not use or abuse — of a firearm with arbitrary cosmetic features is malum prohibitum, bad simply because some frickin’ moron or high school student asshole said so, not because one actually hurt anyone with said “assault weapon.”

Malum en se laws are things that are illegal because they are bad in and of themselves. Murder — killing a person other than in defense — is usually considered a Bad Thing, although the Nazis thought highly of it. As do those who propose laws whose enforcement potentially includes death.

[No, Brytni; I’m not talking about the death penalty. I’m talking about every law on the books. Take an “assault weapon” ban, for example. (Yes, there’s a reason I keep talking about guns here.)]

Say Massachusetts arbitrarily bans “assault weapons,” without even legislative action — which they did. Say Joe Blow doesn’t turn his in. Police show up to take it (and they know because Mass licenses every lawful gun owner and registers lawful firearms… until they conveniently decided they’re unlawful).

Joe tells the cops to fribble off.

Cops decline to fribble, and bust down his door.

Joe resists, possibly with that “assault weapon.”

Cops kill him. And likely his little dog, too.

At some point, the cops can impose lethal force to enforce any law, no matter how minor. Think “bench warrant” for too many parking tickets; they can kill you if you resist. And go home safely at the end of their shift, while you go to the morgue.

Tough shit if they even think — mistakenly — that you were resisting, like the man accidentally swatted, and killed for coming to the door.

You’re just as dead, and they’re just as safely at home afterwards.

To the cops, there is no difference between malum prohibitum and malum en se. You needn’t have hurt anyone. Ever notice how they’ll even kill suicidal people?

Back to the main thread of thought: Bureaucrats invent new victimless “crime;” maybe it’s guns, maybe your Care Bear is suddenly a symbol of child pornography.


Digression: You want to know how bad things have gotten? I just made that up — flat out invented, off the top of my head — the Care Bear-kiddie porn link. Then searched it. Maybe 30 seconds. Near the top of the results page. If you can imagine it, the authorities have made it suspicious, “probable cause” to assume your guilt… and kill you if you resist.

Think about that.


Congress blows you off when you object; maybe a staffer even uses your contact as an opportunity to practice a little ID theft. Or maybe Congressman Creep will blow you off with a letter totally unrelated to your concern. The powers that be don’t care. We’re just someone for the Coastal Elites to shit on. Even the EPA is cool with that.

But I suspect you’d go to prison for dumping human excrement on NYC.

The courts? We covered that. They aren’t stopping unconstitutional laws.

The police? Covered: If you even survive that encounter, the courts will uphold your “resisting arrest” (for resisting an unlawful act) charge.

Going back to our original example: Bump-fire stocks. Inanimate, passive bits of plastic. Training wheels for folks who have trouble learning how to squeeze a trigger. Perfectly legal.

Until the President told his Attorney General — omnipotent deus malum prohibitum — to call them machineguns, turning thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of people into instant felons. Commenting on the rule is a sick joke. If your comment makes it in, they’ll ignore it. Again.

There is no rule of law on which the people of America can rely. That leaves… what exactly?

[Yes, Delaney? Civil war? Good!

WRONG.]

I know a lot of people are talking up civil war for the when/if of firearms confiscation. South Carolina has a bill -giggle- that proposes secession if the feds start grabbing guns. Please review your notes from lesson 3 to remind yourself why state action is no better than federal, for all the same reasons. It’s the same bunch. The South Carolina bill, at best, is a distraction, a sop thrown to the people to make them think there’s something “states’ rights” can do to protect them…

…from the same bunch. It’s a fake.

Who did their homework on the Whiskey Rebellion, the Civil War, the Bonus Marchers, and the Battle of Athens? Anyone? Bueller?

[Yes, John. I realize there’s no one named Bueller in class. That’s a movie reference which you probably don’t get because it predates smart phones.]

Anyway…

Shay’s Rebellion: Taxation without representation, enforcement of a repealed law, objections. Rebels barely organized. Freaking National Army sent to suppress. Scratch one embryonic revolution.

Civil War: Regardless of what you learned in Flower Ambrosia Smythe’s Revised Social Justice American History class down the hall, it wasn’t about slavery. Lincoln offered to take the slavery issue off the table if the Southern States would agree not to secede; they declined because tariffs and discriminatory laws were the real problem. Look it up.

But this rebellion was organized… because it was a matter of states’ power, not individual citizens, who were suckered in on both sides by propaganda. But it wasn’t organized soon enough to properly equip the South and they lost to the more heavily industrialized — and armed — Union. Scratch another revolution.

Bonus Marchers: Desperation, not organization. No resources but to cry for relief. Basically they were asking for the rule of law…

…and were slaughtered for annoying the powers-that-be. Scratch another revolution.

The Battle of Athens is where things get interesting.

Totally corrupt local government. Armed citizens back from the war can’t get relief through the rule of law (sound familiar?). They organize — easy, since they know and trust one another — which for once is possible because they’re working on the small, local level.

Scratch one local, corrupt government.

And not a one of those examples would apply in what I see coming, if they finish shoving the rule of law into the trash compactor.

Looking at the seemingly inevitable semiautomatic firearms ban masquerading as a “bump-stock ban,” (call it the BS semiauto ban) we will have a rather different situation.

Scenario: The Left and its media has been working hard to convince the country that gun owners are a “small” minority. Laughably, the lowest sorta-semi-kinda-realistic estimate puts the number at a mere 55,000,000. Let’s roll with that, just for said laughs. (Bearing in mind that it is a joke, since it’s based on voluntary ownership disclosures to strangers in a country where ownership is demonized and the threat of confiscation is ever-present — right Justice Stevens?)

The BS semiauto ban goes into effect. A minimum of tens of millions of heavily armed people are suddenly felons. They can’t count on Athenians popular support because they’ve been demonized for decades. They aren’t organized because they’ve been keeping a low profile. They aren’t concentrated in one small town.

Digression that isn’t: When the “3 strikes and you’re out” laws became popular, a lot of cops opposed them because of the risk of low level felons seeing no particular reason to surrender peacefully if they got caught one more time. Georgia began prepping a max security prison just for 3-strikers, and called for volunteers to man it from their correctional officers across the state. Most COs looked at the situation — hundreds of permanently imprisoned felons with no hope of getting out ever for “good behavior,” and said, “No, thanks.”

In our hopefully hypothetical scenario, you just reduced at least 40,000,000 people to that same desperate status malum prohibitum. Some might give up immediately. Some might fold when faced with force.

But if just 1% of that 40,000,000 said, “Fuck it, I’m taking some assholes out with me,” you’ve got 400,000 heavily armed noncompliant sons of bitches (HANSOBs) out for blood.

Whose blood? For starters, the ones they see as immediately responsible for the mass violation of their rights. Then the idiot celebrities, media hairsprayheads, and ignorant useful idiots [yes, Emma, David, Delaney] who pushed it.

Then they’ll look around and think, “I’ve got nothing left to lose now. How ’bout that mother-effer in the Zoning Department who made me tear down my deck after I spent ten grand on it?”

Or county weasels spending millions of dollars on an unapproved spaceport. Or the principal who threw your kid out of school because he got beat up.

Maybe that neighbor who always mows his grass at 11PM on Sunday night. And sprays his clippings on your manicured yard.

Make your own list. Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, as the lady informed us.

In 2016, per the last complete FBI UCR, we had 11,004 murders. Committed by somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 people, mostly (@ 64%) felons. 80-88% of the weapons were stolen.

[Kyle, you’re blanching, yet not surprised. I’m guessing that this isn’t quite the first time the possibilities occurred to you, at least.]

In 2020, on the present course, we’ll see an additional minimum of four hundred thousand freshly minted victimless malum prohibitum felons with a grudge and something better than stolen .22 revolvers.

Show of hands, class. How many of you realized that — up until now — it’s been legal for people to own registered machineguns, mortars, artillery, tanks, and even fighter aircraft? And that people do?

Sure, they’re considered militarily obsolete. Explain that to the bureaucratic and political targets of opportunity who pissed off those owners, as they’re taking fire.

Marvin Heemeyer demolished much of a town with a grudge and an home-armored bulldozer. He specifically targeted the mayor and the town hall. He worked alone. One guy.

Multiply by 400,000. Or 40,000,000.

Maybe even 120,000,000 fresh felons. With nothing left to lose. Go, Janice!

No. We wouldn’t have a civil war. The victim disarming cowards should be so lucky. That would controlled, coordinated, focused. The goal would be restoring a constitutional republic. (The reality might well differ. Civil war is not something I recommend.)

What you “repeal the Second Amendment and take all the guns” types are doing is declaring an open hunting season.

On yourselves.

After decades of law abiding gunowners playing your game, accepting “compromises” which amount to nothing but “we’ll only fuck you now, but next time we leave off the lube,” getting the shaft — with the NRA providing the grease…

[Sit down. You’ve used “NRA” as some sort of shorthand for “all gun owners” for years. It’s what your media uses to focus hatred. The actual NRA only represents — at most — 9% of gun owners. 5% tops is more likely, and most of those don’t realize that the NRA is your ally in disarmament. Look. It. Up.]

Honest gun owners are tired of compromising themselves into criminals. Of losing allegedly constitutionally protected rights to an “interest of the state” that appears nowhere in said constitution; invented out whole cloth by the courts… which conveniently are part of the same government.

Just a wild guess, but I would not be surprised, when you inadvertently declare our own little Purge, if several hardcore gun owners — with nothing left to lose — come knocking at the doors of Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox: You know, the NRA guys who pushed for a bureaucratic ban on BS semi-auto in the first place.

Tonight, you get to choose your homework assignments. The options are:

1. Think about what you’ve wrought, and the consequences. Especially to yourselves. Consider your own little email/phone call campaign to tell your Moms and socialist politicians to reconsider this course of action. Fill sand bags, just in case.

2. Revel in what you’ve wrought. Start sharpening blades and stuffing magazines… Oh. Right. You’re the helpless disarmed-by-choice. Sucks to be you. Maybe you should buy ballistic vests. And sand bags. Stuff those plastic backpacks with books!

[Moi, Sara? I don’t have a dog in this fight. I tend towards the libertarian attitude that one should not initiate force — Don’t start shit, but be prepared to end it. Permanently. — and I have no desire to go hunting. For the most part, the folks I’ve pissed off are unarmed, confused millenials who think making kids who didn’t do it wear plastic backpacks is worse than stealing property from millions of gun owners who didn’t do it. And reporters and politicians who can’t tell the difference between nonexistent “assault weapons” and assault rifles, and think pieces of inert plastic are machine guns.

Sure, they may say they want me dead, but what are they going to do about it, with no tools?

Nor a need, as thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of others are likely to take out the trash. I prep for natural disasters, so I’m good on food, water, shelter, sanitation, and communications for a while.

I plan to hunker down with several pounds of popcorn and defensive tools and enjoy “The Statist-Hunting Show.”]