You would think that leftist ideology would take a breather during these times when the country is facing a falling economy owing to government controls. But you would be wrong. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representative Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) are the co-sponsors of perhaps the most extreme anti-gun rights bill to ever be introduced in the U.S. Congress.
What would this bill do, if enacted? H.R. 5717/ S. 3254 would create a national permit requirement to buy a gun, establish a national gun registry, institute a national “Red Flag Gun Seizures” law, ban virtually every semi-automatic rifle in private hands in the country, make it a felony to purchase a “high capacity” magazine, tax firearms at 30 percent and ammunition at 50 percent, provide for jail time for anyone who buys more than one gun in a one-month period, force gun owners to lock up their guns at all times, criminalize the sale of any firearm to a person under 21 (despite a person being considered an adult at 18), ban the sale of suppressors, and make it a crime to construct a gun in one’s own home.
Both H.R. 5717 and S. 3254 indentical and 260-pages long each.
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The ban on sales to persons under 21 demonstrates the sheer hypocrisy of the gun-grabbing leftists such as Warren and Johnson who are pushing this bill. A person at 18 is considered an adult, not a child. A person at 18 can vote in every state (and many leftists are now pushing to lower the voting age even lower than 18 so they can harvest more votes, one presumes) and can join any branch of the armed forces and be trained to use firearms in combat. Think about that. A person is mature enough to join the army, sign contracts, get married, and vote, but the same person is too immature to own a gun?
One could easily challenge other provisions of this proposal as hypocritical, ill-advised, and unconstitutional as well. There is no provision of the Constitution that gives Congress an enumerated power to require a national permit to buy a gun (though one could argue that there already exists a “national permit” to buy a gun — it’s called the Second Amendment). Neither is there any enumerated power for Congress to establish a national gun registry, nor to do any of the other things proposed in the bill.
Since one of the principal reasons for an individual to have a gun is self-defense, it is nonsensical to require gun owners to lock up their guns at all times. As it stands now, when a person needs help in seconds, the police are minutes away. A person with a firearm can protect himself instantly from, say, a home invasion, if he has a readily available firearm. But if the gun is locked up, that delay could be deadly for the homeowner or apartment dweller.
Home invasion is already a criminal act, so it is unlikely that a home invader would enter the house with his own gun locked up, just because it is against federal law.
As the old saying goes, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Those intent on using a firearm to commit murder, robbery, or mayhem are not going to care that it is against the law to have an unregistered gun, and anyone who would obey these laws is probably not going to be using guns to commit violent crimes, either.
So what we have are several illogical proposals. It is also illogical to think that these proposals are going to pass either House of Congress, and it is unlikely that they will even get out of committee. But it does illustrate the mind-set of those on the Left.
It almost makes one think that they want such laws in place, basically intended to disarm the American people, because they have other proposals that, once implemented, could lead to resistance. Before Adolf Hitler sent the Jews to the gas chambers, he first took their guns away. This does not mean that Warren or Johnson intend on sending anyone to the gas chamber, but when James Madison wrote the Second Amendment, his intention was not to protect deer hunting or sport shooting. In the Federalist Papers, he argued that we do not have to fear the new federal government being created by the Constitution because Americans have a right to keep and bear arms.
Today, we should fear those who fear American citizens with guns.
Steve Byas is a university instructor in history and government, and the author of History’s Greatest Libels. He may be contacted at [email protected].
