Ed, the Prof and Quando already covered this – but since it’s near and dear to my heart, I had to touch on it.
Dan Simpson, a “retired diplomat” writing in the Toledo Blade, calls for roving gun confiscation squads. Read his piece and, in between bits and pieces of extraconstitutional totalitarian fantasymongering, find the standard-issue gun-controller Potemkin statements (because they’re almost always there):
The likely underestimate of how many guns are wandering around America runs at 240 million in a population of about 300 million. What was clear last week is that at least two of those guns were in the wrong hands.
Unmentioned; none of them were in the right hands.
Had they been – as they have in several other attempted massacres over the years – and had Virginia Tech not been a “gun free zone”, things might have turned out differently.
Cue Potemkin watch:
Because I have little or no power to influence the “if” part of the issue, I will stick with the “how.” And before anyone starts to hyperventilate and think I’m a crazed liberal zealot wanting to take his gun from his cold, dead hands, let me share my experience of guns.
As a child I played cowboys and Indians with cap guns. I had a Daisy Red Ryder B-B gun. My father had in his bedside table drawer an old pistol which I examined surreptitiously from time to time. When assigned to the American embassy in Beirut during the war in Lebanon, I sometimes carried a .357 Magnum, which I could fire accurately. I also learned to handle and fire a variety of weapons while I was there, including Uzis and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.I don’t have any problem with hunting, although blowing away animals with high-powered weapons seems a pointless, no-contest affair to me. I suppose I would enjoy the fellowship of the experience with other friends who are hunters.
Now, how would one disarm the American population? First of all, federal or state laws would need to make it a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and one year in prison per weapon to possess a firearm. The population would then be given three months to turn in their guns, without penalty.
Hunters would be able to deposit their hunting weapons in a centrally located arsenal, heavily guarded, from which they would be able to withdraw them each hunting season upon presentation of a valid hunting license. The weapons would be required to be redeposited at the end of the season on pain of arrest. When hunters submit a request for their weapons, federal, state, and local checks would be made to establish that they had not been convicted of a violent crime since the last time they withdrew their weapons. In the process, arsenal staff would take at least a quick look at each hunter to try to affirm that he was not obviously unhinged.
All antique or interesting non-hunting weapons would be required to be delivered to a local or regional museum, also to be under strict 24-hour-a-day guard. There they would be on display, if the owner desired, as part of an interesting exhibit of antique American weapons, as family heirlooms from proud wars past or as part of collections.
Here comes the fun part:
The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.
Clearly, since such sweeps could not take place all across the country at the same time. But fairly quickly there would begin to be gun-swept, gun-free areas where there should be no firearms.
If there were, those carrying them would be subject to quick confiscation and prosecution. On the streets it would be a question of stop-and-search of anyone, even grandma with her walker, with the same penalties for “carrying.”
The “gun lobby” would no doubt try to head off in the courts the new laws and the actions to implement them. They might succeed in doing so, although the new approach would undoubtedly prompt new, vigorous debate on the subject. In any case, some jurisdictions would undoubtedly take the opportunity of the chronic slowness of the courts to begin implementing the new approach.
America’s long land and sea borders present another kind of problem. It is easy to imagine mega-gun dealerships installing themselves in Mexico, and perhaps in more remote parts of the Canadian border area, to funnel guns into the United States. That would constitute a problem for American immigration authorities and the U.S. Coast Guard, but not an insurmountable one over time.
There could conceivably also be a rash of score-settling during hunting season as people drew out their weapons, ostensibly to shoot squirrels and deer, and began eliminating various of their perceived two-footed enemies. Given the general nature of hunting weapons and the fact that such killings are frequently time-sensitive, that seems a lesser sort of issue.
That is my idea of how it could be done. The desire to do so on the part of the American people is another question altogether, but one clearly raised again by the Blacksburg tragedy.
My greatest consolation? Knowing that even the loopiest liberals are, if nothing else, too pragmatic to be this moronic and deluded.
Good. Lord. Alive.
My son is in law enforcement and he would not (and neither would most of the force in these parts) participate in de-arming the general populace. There will be war if it ever comes to anything close to this…criminy. Are people really this stupid (oh, why do I ask…)?
Scary Colleen wants to turn her one-horse town into the Wild West.
Just practicing. Someone’s got to fill in for Sarcasticlown next week.
Unbelievable.
Y’know, I’d like to think this would turn into war and in isolated incidents, it probably would. Unfortunately, the American populace has proved time and time again that just like all other human beings, unless something effects them directly, they tend to ignore it and let it happen.
Did you know we’re arresting people, holding them without charges, in some cases torturing them and then releasing them? I seriously thought we’d have riots over that.
Yet, I went to work today and yesterday and the day before and for some reason just let this crap happen because I’m just one person, what can I do? Even if I were to “snap” and get ten people or a hundred people, we’d just get killed or locked up and its over. Chances are, I’d never get past the organizing phase.
So, Yeah, my initial reaction to this proposal is to say “I’ll fight them in the streets” and if miraculously, enough other people were to get out their as well, I’m pretty sure I would join them. I think about it some days but every time I come against the fact that the people I’d actually be fighting aren’t the policy makers, they’re just people who took jobs to keep the peace in the best interest of society. I’m not even sure if the “villains” have a face or if their just the societal product of mass paranoia.
So I don’t ever get out there to fight it and neither does anyone else.
Something has diluted the blood of our forefathers, I fear. We are not the nation we should be.
All that said, my reaction to Dan Simpson is simply this:
“You can take my guns when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.”
grr. grammar police: “their” should be “they’re”
No, this is not satire. Ace of Spades covered this also:
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/224379.php#224379
Here’s the pertinent quote:No Punking: Slublog has produced a welter of cites in the comments (just skim for the red text, morons) proving conclusively this guy is a dyed-in-the-organic-wool moonbat of the highest order. There is no Swiftian Modest Proposal thing going on here.
This lunatic means this stuff.Ace, a lawyer, also noted this about ‘patting down’ the general populace, how the cops could avoid tripping over the 4th Amendment in those ‘warrantless searches’:
Whoops, this is the quote below, since blockquote tags didn’t work:
No Punking: Slublog has produced a welter of cites in the comments (just skim for the red text, morons) proving conclusively this guy is a dyed-in-the-organic-wool moonbat of the highest order. There is no Swiftian Modest Proposal thing going on here.
This lunatic means this stuff.
Thanks, Kermit-what would a day be like without hearing I’m “scary”? If I’m scary, I don’t know how clowny manages in a place like NYC….
Phaedrus: that was a good point you made. Words are cheap (real cheap nowadays). I guess we’ll have to wait and see, but yes, lots of things have gone right by and we’ve let it. Most of us anyway. Gordon Kahl didn’t sit back and take it, but he was vilified….and killed. I know that he is a sore spot with many people that post on here (and Mitch), but still.
I shall go down to the nearest institution of higher learning immediately to investigate the legal consequences of attempting the “Terry Frisk” on young coeds.
Maybe we should help this guy get a ticket to North Korea. He would feel much safer there.
No Prob, SC. Us ignant yokels gots to stick together. Someday we’ll invade New York and ransack it. They’ll all wet their metrosexual khakis.
No, Kermit. Let the lunatics keep their asylum. If da yokels ransacked the joint, then the lunatics would be forced among us; just ask the longtime residents of Arizona and Colorado how they feel about their influx of Californians. It’s better if they’re kept isolated and feeding each other their own demented versions of reality.
Doggone Californians. They’ve been moving into East Hawaii big time. They buy a house in a distant subdivsion knowing there’s no county water, and no nearby school, hospital, fire or police dept. Then they whine about having no county water, and no nearby school, hospital, fire or police department. Of course they don’t want their property taxes raised from the current $1000/yr or so to pay for building and staffing a nearby school, hospital, fire or police dept. Other people should pay for that.
When pressed they whine about how it was done differently on the mainland, when, of course, they moved here because they didn’t like the way things were done on the mainland.
There’s a popular bumper sticker here: “Slow Down, This Ain’t the Mainland.” Locals don’t put this on their cars, and for the most part kama’aina’s don’t put this on their cars. Molohini Californians put it on their bumper as a message to other, more aggressive molohini Californians.
At this rate the whole damn place will look like Maui in a couple of decades.
Big Kahuna Terry is complaining about the immigrants. You big whiner! Imagine how the Native Americans (the political party) felt about all those dirty, smelly Irish crawling off boats back in the 1830s. In New York. The only place that is really smart, hip. intelligent and…hip. The Talking Heads came from here!
You Wingnuts is all just crazy. Bush is dumb too. Now sputter impotently while I congratulate myself on the genius of my superiority.
Posted by angrykermit
angrykermit-
Imagine the indigenes complaining about dirt and smell!
I think that’s called ‘authenticity’ these days.
Given the local media’s fascination with brown skinned folk who are, maybe, 1/64th Hawaiian I’ve been thinking of changing my SITD nic to “unapologetic colonist”
I think you should go with Frankie Avalon. Or Moondoggy.
The NARN segment on this was pretty good, Mitch. I think you caught the essence of Mr. Simpson. It’s rather odious.
It’s nice to read posts and chuckle…..
Watch the NRA’s video on Hurricaine Katrina’s aftermath. The Police and National Guard did exactly what the Loony Lib in the column wanted them to do. They searched door to door for firearms confiscating them whenever they found them sometimes destroying them on the spot.
They did it because they were ordered to. By the Govenor and the Mayor. They didn’t resist those orders even though they were not lawful.
No mini revolts took place.
So do not trust the person who says if they come to take my guns I will fight. Especially if that person is doing nothing to protect their Right to bear arms now.
The most annoying part of that guy’s rant is his potshot at the NRA.
Let’s try an experiment: let’s send a bunch of cops to stop and frisk everybody in high crime areas between, say, 9:00 p.m. and dawn, Friday and Saturday nights. (Frogtown in St. Paul; Nordeast in Minneapolis; insert-your-own-local-high-crime-area-here). Look for illegally carried guns, arrest people carrying without a permit, confiscate any other contraband you find (drugs, etc).
Let’s see who hyperventilates on TV first: NRA, ACLU, or NAACP (or their Reverend adjuncts, Jackson and Sharpton).
But he doesn’t insult the other groups. Hmmm, wonder why not?
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On the other hand, if it’s now acceptable to talk about ignoring the Constitution to rid the land of a great scourge, maybe we could adopt these methods to find and deport illegal aliens?
Obviously he doesn’t consider sheer numbers to be a problem (there are FAR more guns than illegals). And he has no issue with warrantless search-and-seizure. Let’s start in the Sanctuary Cities and go door to door, cellar to cellar, attic to attic, looking for guns AND illegals. Chuck the owner/harborer in the klink.
Oh, and incandescent light bulbs. And gasoline engines. And porn. Seize ’em all.
What objection could be raised to implementing my pet project using the same methodology as he uses for his pet project? Sauce for the goose . . ..
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Nice thing about the blogosphere now is you don’t have to create your own strawman argument to start a fish-in-a-barrel self-righteous screed: You can find someone who already did it! Or let someone else find it for you, then just cut and paste and act indignant. Discourse, bah!
At least half the comments had some thought behind them, and Kermit is 2 steps ahead of everyone except P (3 in that case).