I hope someone in the District will bring a suit against the government there that will make these thugs pay for the destroyed property ! Their actions just give more credence to the belief that citizens need arms in order to prevent governmental tyranny. Many naively assume that “it couldn’t happen here. but actions like this prove that many in government will do anything they please at the expense of the freedom of the people !

Georg J. Dagis

Yeah, this is a bit over the top. I’m not for warrantless searches and seizures either, but this post presents some fictions and contradictions to a dizzying effect. While it is correct to say that a Constitutional right has been violated, to speak in such general terms is to ignore the much greater issue of gun control and gun violence as well as the context in which this mandate has been made. If you can make certain exceptions to privacy laws—such as with wiretapping or the innumerable home invasions we have made abroad—why is this such a hard one to make regarding the gun problem we have here at home? There’s a contradiction.

Here’s a fiction: “this move can be likened to a losing nation putting to death every POW in their possession as the enemy is entering the city gates.” Hardly so. Confiscating a gun is not ending a human life. I understand Huston’s point, that it’s futile to continue fighting a lost cause. But Huston is concocting fear propaganda with a bogus analogy, using language that compares gun confiscation to murder. This reminds me of an email recently circulated by “journalist” Doug Patton. It compares Obama’s link to Jeremiah Wright to a hypothetical(!) link between George W. Bush and KKK leader David Duke. These writers use clever words to mislead readers first into believing these are legitimate comparisons and secondly that the subject in question must therefore be equal in its evil. Jeremiah Wright is hardly David Duke just as gun confiscation is hardly murder. Yet this sort of writing does the trick, readers are left with this feeling of their innocence having been stolen by evil political leaders. Consider the first reader comment here: “this just gives more credence to the belief that citizens need arms in order to prevent governmental tyranny.” What tyranny? We are not living in China. The United States is not going to turn into China if it were to ban guns.

So, I guess we can conclude that this is not really about search and seizure as much as this is about gun rights. Americans obssess over their guns. There are two arguments that gun proponents typically make to support gun rights. First they say our country’s founders laid down the second amendment and therefore we should treat it as holy writ. Excuse the cliché, but times have changed. Our founding fathers did not live under circumstances analogous to ours. Access to guns was important two centuries ago when wars were fought with guns but that is no longer the case. We are not fighting off marauding Indians, plundering pirates, or oppressive “redcoats.” A man with a gun is no longer a resourceful patriot. At present a man with a gun, unless it is a law enforcement officer, is often a thug or a criminal. We now have more guns than ever, more access to guns than ever, and more violent crimes than ever. There is more strife among the poor communities, complex race relations and tensions, far greater material wealth in general and desire for materialism than when William Lambert penned the Second Amendment. Those living in poverty here in the U.S. number in the tens of millions. Gangs, gang warfare, drugs, and all the violence that this entails did not plague America in its infancy as it plagues us in the present. Guns serve a different purpose now, which is violent retribution and personal gain. So when the issue of gun control arises and gun proponents expound rhetoric like Huston’s in this post, I am always astounded by this suggestion that the government is whom we should fear. But really, whom do you fear more, the government or the local drug gangs? We have a different enemy than our founding fathers and the enemy is not a tyrannical government, it is the lunatics living among us that have the guns.

We should have the right to bear arms in this country.Gun control only effects Law abiding people.Criminals are the ones who committ crime. They are the ones with total disregard for any laws. Why should good Americans be penalized for a criminal actions.If we take guns away from good citizens then the only people with firearms will be Criminals as in D.C. The crime rate would be a lot lower there if they could prtect them selves. Criminals would have to worry about if the person they were going to rob is armed.Look what happen to Australia when they took away the peoples right to own firearms.The only people that had firearms were criminals. And yes the Murder rate increased 300% in one year thats right 300%.A lot of people dont know this but you can legally own Machine Guns and Silencers in the United States. Although they are very expensive and there are over 250,000 of them there have only been 2 crimes committed with them over several years.In WWII Japan thought about invading the US but did not try because they knew that most US citizens were armed.

BTW my comment was directed at the long-winded Rothel, I couldn’t type a reply when I first read it as I had to step away. The fact that there are people who think like him taking advantage of the freedom of speech is perplexing to me. What will he say when they want to rescend that right? How will he fight for it?