Just Say "NO" to Gun Registration By Chuck Hawks

In the name of anti-terrorism, craven gun control advocates in Congress such as Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, John Conyers, Tom ("Puff") Daschle, Diane Feinstein, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Charles Schumer, Charlie Wrangle, et al are trying to attach riders to Homeland Security and other bills that would ban gun shows, make it illegal for private citizens to sell their guns directly to other private citizens, and register all of the privately owned firearms in the USA.

Obviously, such intrusive measures will add nothing to our homeland security, and would in fact impede citizens attempting to protect themselves from terrorists. But the anti-Second Amendment legislators clearly are not interested in actual security concerns or combating terrorism, anymore than they were interested in preventing crime when they passed the Brady Bill. They are only interested in using the horrific events of September 11, 2001 to advance their anti-gun agenda and their continuing assault on the Bill of Rights, which stands foursquare in the way of their nefarious political agenda.

Gun registration, followed by gun confiscation and the final destruction of the Second Amendment, is but the first part of an orchestrated campaign to ultimately strip the American people of the protection afforded by the Bill of Rights. The subversive members of Congress who would perpetrate this crime fully realize that law abiding gun owners are the single biggest obstacle to their ultimate plan for a socialist-democratic government (in which, of course, they personally will gain immensely in power and influence while the people they were elected to represent suffer).

Although all individuals everywhere have inalienable rights, it has been repeatedly proven throughout history that only those who are armed can ultimately defend their rights against governments and politicians who seek to abrogate them. So it follows that politicians with subversive objectives must disarm a free people before they can usurp the rest of their freedoms.

That is the clear intention behind their current gun registration scheme, an intention they have admitted in private, although they deny it publicly. Lying to the public, disseminating falsehoods, and "spinning" the truth so that it seems to support their political agenda when in fact it does not are the acknowledged tools of socialist politicians everywhere. Remember that these are people who believe that the ends justify the means, and that there is no objective truth, only whatever "truth" serves their political purposes. It is a viewpoint and tactic practiced and polished to its present perfection in the 20th Century by the Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) movements and parties.

Our Founding Fathers were coming at the issue from the other side: their goal was to protect the individual freedoms they had risked so much to secure. They realized that only an armed populace could guarantee the continuation of a free society. They had the foresight to see that someday the Federal Government that they were reluctantly creating might itself threaten the very freedoms it was established to protect. That is why they guaranteed in the Second Amendment the individual right of the people to maintain (own) and bear (carry) arms (guns).

It is no accident that the Fathers placed the right to maintain and bear arms (which became the Second Amendment) right after the First Amendment (which guarantees the most basic human rights), and before the other eight Amendments in the Bill of Rights. They regarded it as the second most important right, the guarantor of all other rights.

This is clear to anyone who has read the Federalist Papers (written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison). The Second Amendment was primarily intended to guarantee that the people could defend the First and all subsequent Amendments in the Bill of Rights against the intrusion of the federal government, should it ever become necessary. That is a responsibility that still rests upon the shoulders of all law abiding gun owners today.

Now a group of amoral socialists and venal intellectual lightweights in Congress want to destroy the work of intellectual giants like John Adams, Sam Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and the others who framed the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution (including the Bill of Rights). These socialists don't accept that you have "an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The words "Inalienable right" mean a right not subject to the whim of government, a right with which you are born and from which you cannot be separated. They think all rights are subject to their interpretation, and usually claim that "the people" (which means everyone not in the ruling cabal) must sacrifice their rights for the "greater good" (which invariably turns out to mean what is good for the politicians in the ruling cabal).

It isn't only the Second Amendment that the socialists (that is what they are, regardless of their party affiliation) despise, they have also repeatedly assaulted the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments in their ongoing struggle to "break" the Bill of Rights. (WAKE UP MAINSTREAM AMERICA, IT ISN'T JUST LAW ABIDING GUN OWNERS WHO ARE UNDER ASSAULT HERE, IT IS YOU WHO ARE IN DANGER OF LOSING YOUR BILL OF RIGHTS.)

Ultimately we must answer to an authority higher than the political power brokers inside the Beltway who currently run the Federal Government. This is particularly true at a time when so many individuals of corrupt morality, questionable ethics, and unsavory motives populate the US Congress. Individuals who have a proven record of foolish (and sometimes criminal) behavior, lying to their constituents, and undermining the Constitution they have sworn to protect. In a just and moral government the Senators and Representatives named at the beginning of this essay and their cohorts would be removed from office for violating their oath of office. (They promised to uphold and protect the Constitution when they were sworn in as Senators and Representatives.) Their subversive actions, in the main, are not legally treasonous (the legal requirements for treason are very difficult to fulfil), but they amount to the same thing.

It is this age old tendency of government to become elitist and encroach on the rights of its own citizens, well understood by the Founding Fathers, that we as citizens of the United States must find a way to resist today. And because it is the gun owners of America who must bear the brunt of the initial assaults on the rights of all the people of the United States, it is we who own guns who must first take a stand. We must somehow draw a figurative line in the sand. The practical question becomes, how shall we do so?

My proposal is that we gun owners adopt a policy popularized (in a different context, to be sure) by Nancy Reagan when she was First Lady. I suggest that we "Just say NO." NO to gun registration, and NO to gun confiscation. If the majority of the 65 million law abiding gun owners in the United States take the moral high ground and say NO, the government will be powerless to enforce its anti-gun laws on a widespread scale.

I do not suggest such a course lightly as I am a working class guy, a veteran who volunteered to serve in the armed forces of his country and emerged with an Honorable Discharge, and a citizen who gripes about, but does not cheat on, his taxes. I support my local police and I have never been arrested for any crime (let alone charged or convicted). I like to think of myself as being a reasonably moral person (but, God knows, far from perfect), and (although not a jingoist) as patriotic as the next guy. These things do not by any means make me exceptional, in fact they make me ordinary. I mention them merely to show that I am not by inclination or experience a criminal.

I realize that I am openly advocating breaking the law, should gun registration (for instance) become law. But I reason that such a law is immoral as well as unconstitutional. And it is the duty of every citizen to refuse to obey immoral laws, just as it is the duty of every soldier to refuse to obey immoral orders, whatever the personal cost. It now falls to us to put our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor on the line, following the example of the brave and noble men who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Admittedly, those in government charged with enforcing these abhorrent laws will arrest a few visible individuals who advocate just saying NO (perhaps including me) to make "examples" of them. But they simply lack the resources to arrest the biggest part of 65 million otherwise law-abiding citizens. And should they try, I have to believe that the majority of mainstream America will finally see and understand what is happening and rise to our defense by electing different politicians who will repeal the anti-gun laws and free those who were arrested for refusing to register or surrender their guns.

In urging all gun owners to "Just Say NO" to gun registration and confiscation, I am advocating a form of civil disobedience that I hope will become so widespread and visible that it will cause the opponents of freedom to pause. Make them realize that their own political demise will be the inevitable result of their actions. Perhaps if the gun owners of America take this stand it will ultimately save the Second Amendment, and the entire Bill of Rights, from those who seek to destroy it. I am hoping that word of this proposal spreads rapidly to, and finds acceptance with, the majority of gun owners in every corner of this land.

Understand, I am not suggesting or advocating initiating violence or the use of force against anyone. In my view force, and particularly lethal force, should properly be used only to protect and defend one's life or property (or the life and property of another innocent person).

In any case, speaking only for myself, I have benefited from living in a free country for my entire life, some 57 years as I write these words. Because of that freedom I have been able to vote, run a small business, hunt, fish, travel to foreign lands, and do many things that would have been impossible for a working class person in a society without the freedoms protected by the Constitution of the United States of America and its Bill of Rights. If it is now necessary to stand up for freedom, to take a risk, even to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to help give succeeding generations their chance to live in a free country, so be it.

I am pledging on my sacred honor to say "NO" to gun registration and/or confiscation. I humbly ask you, gentle reader, after serious consideration and in full realization of the potential consequences, to make the same pledge. And to pass the idea along to all of the gun owners (and other freedom loving citizens) you know. As Ben Franklin said in 1776 when he signed the Declaration of Independence, "We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

-Chuck Hawks, 26 February 2002.

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