Oleg Volk has been on something of a roll recently, and a few of his posts deserve attention. First:
Can guns be banned so effectively that they cannot be re-created by motivated people? Yes. It would require destroying all industrial capacity, exterminating anyone with knowledge of weapons or related industries (such as engine making, as firearms are merely heat engines with bullets instead of pistons) and continuing to kill off all new inventors. Such a path isn’t very practical and I hope that anyone in favor of enforcing gun control legislation thinks long and hard about it even being desirable.
(Emphasis in the original.)
And that is the inescapable, unavoidable problem with “gun control” – it will never, ever work. No matter how difficult the anti-rights nuts make it to purchase a firearm, no matter the regulation and restrictions they impose, no matter the punishments levied, they will be completely incapable of stopping someone with a rudimentary machine shop from cranking out firearms in his basement. The firearm djinn is out of the bottle, and no amount of wailing or gnashing of teeth will put it back in.
Confiscation of guns and restrictions on their use all have the effect of reducing safety of those affected. They have a secondary effect described long ago by Niccolo Machiavelli: “among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible“. Lest you think I am overstating the effect, how do TSA agents treat those they disarm? Guns as the defensive subset of personal weapons are a major component of liberty. It is still possible to be dependent while armed, but independence without arms is impossible.
Could the War of Independece have been successful if the Colonists had been disarmed? For that matter, what precipitated the initial battles at Lexington and Concord (among other reasons)? No matter how ineffective or useless the action might prove to be in the end, an armed individual always has the choice of standing up to a totalitarian government and saying, “NO!” with the actual ability to back up that word with actions; an unarmed man has no such choice. Better yet, a ragtag group of armed individuals, when given the appropriate motivation, can found what turned out to be one of the greatest countries in the world (once upon a time), even against superior military forces.
So, really, what does “gun control” hope to achieve, aside from failure and subjugation?
We live in dangerous times indeed…
I’m going to *try* to tie this in, and the only thread on which I can pull to tie it all in is Olegs reference to the TSA.
No, we cannot be disarmed by banning guns, destroying guns, destroying all knowledge of and capacity to make guns, etc…
But, if the TSA isn’t dismantled by Congress, and done in VERY SHORT ORDER, the Transportation Security Administration will reach its paw and claws into *personal* transportation the very next day after a suicide bomber takes a van full of C4, drives it down I-95, and blows it up in the Harbor Tunnel.
When some whackjob does that (be they Muslim, a Militia Member, or a derranged mental hospital escapee), they will *decree* by Administrative fiat that all vehicles and persons entering the highway must stop and be searched for explosives, and all occupants given the *groin-and-boob-squeeze* patdown.
TSA will do this under the protection of their very name…the *Transportation Security* Administration.
They’ll also do it to bus travel, train travel, and when a bicycle messenger blows himself up in Times Square, they will require all bike messengers to stop every 2 blocks at a TSA GRABS station (GRoin And Boob Squeeze) for inspection and patdown in the name of Transportation Security.
It took a bit longer than Orwell thought it would, but we are seeing the beginnings of the world of 1984.
I personally feel that we’re going to witness a shooting war in the near future, with the majority of the sheeple in this country wanting to just willingly submit to a tyrannical gov’t, and a definite minority fighting to preserve what little hope there is for Liberty and Freedom.
Dragon
I am honestly not sure how far the TSA’s charter documents will allow them to stretch… seems they can get away with damned near anything at the airports and ports and whatnot, but I am not sure what control they would have over motorways and the like.
‘Course, leave it to them to either forcibly find out, or… alter the terms of their agreement that they will be able to do whatever they like.
I sincerely hope that this ratchet up was too much heat for us little frogs-in-the-pot to take without reacting appropriately… It does seem as though they overstepped what the American public will consider to be “acceptable”, but I guess the numbers of people who fly this coming week will be an indicator of whether or not my hopes are well-founded or not.
“May you live in interesting times,” is one hell of a curse, is it not?
The timing of this may be just right. (Or wrong, for the tsa.) Lots of people may still fly simply because it’s a bit too late to change around plans enough to drive, Or tickets are already bought. And they’ll all have a common experience to talk about around the turkey or whatever. Plenty of stories about this whole mess from family and relatives who are surely more credible than some guy on TV or the internet who might be exaggerating for his own benefit. And plenty of time to look forward to the now-unavoidable return trip. This might make a much bigger impression on a lot more people than at most other times. Especially in-frequent fliers.
That pretty much describes us – our tickets were already well and purchased for Thanksgiving before this recent idiocy occurred… however, Christmas flights are still up in the air for a lot of people, and I know of a fair number of folks who are going out of their way to drive for that particular holiday.
We will be.
And I know of a lot more folks who are shrinking the world a little, and only going to vacation spots that can be reached by car/RV… I agree, this is going to be a slow process to let the TSA know of the displeasure of the American people, but it is definitely going to be worth it.