Dakota Beacon

Predictably, in the aftermath of the shootings at El Paso and Dayton, interest in so-called “Red Flag” laws has been renewed, with Sen. Lindsay Graham promoting a version where the federal government will financially support state efforts to enact these laws, circumventing the U.S. Constitution.  He claims that President Trump will sign such an act. Using state legislatures as a cat’s paw to do what is not allowed to the federal government is both unconstitutional and unethical and should not be countenanced. 

Meanwhile, last February,  the House passed H.R.8, calling for universal gun registry - the “Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019”.  It still awaits action by the Senate. This bill is first of all, unconstitutional. Americans have the absolute right under our Bill of Rights to own and use firearms.  Exceptions should be made when a person has lost his rights as a convicted felon, just as he forfeits the right to vote, for example.  Obviously someone whose competency is compromised due to particular situations such as mental illness or substance abuse, may lose a right.  But there are no provisions for “registration” in our Constitution and Bill of Rights and there are many reasons to oppose this bill.

Congressman Steve Scalise (R-GA) said, “This bill turns law abiding citizens into criminals and it’s one more step towards federalized gun registration and ultimately gun confiscation. That’s been the intention of many of the people bringing this bill for a long time. They want true gun control and this is the first step and surely not the last.”  Scalese is aware of the grim history of gun registration.  Where guns have been registered, it has been only a matter of time before they are confiscated (“step two”).  Our founders did not have hunters and skeet shooters in mind when they drafted the Second Amendment. They had two things in mind:  1) defense against a tyrannical government or army; and 2) self defense against an individual aggressor or attack by, say, Indians or French or English freelancers. Guns were also needed to supply food through hunting.  Sports were far from their concern. And by the way, a “militia” circa 1789 was a group of self-armed citizens assembled to defend the community, state or nation. That’s why they didn’t call it the “army”. The farmers who confronted the British Army in Lexington, Massachusetts, brought their own muskets to the field.  They were a “militia”, self-organized to defend themselves and their families and property. Americans’ right to arms has been a cornerstone of our freedom and the reason political leaders have maintained any respect for their constituents.

Experience has informed Scalise well.  Again and again tyrants have taken advantage of well-meant gun registration to round up the guns later.  It is nothing but a road map to our guns.  

This proposed law would force application of the Brady “NICS” background check.  Who would this impact? Probably veterans. It would be unlikely to sift out any future mass murderers - the recent perpetrators have passed background checks.  But it will not allow for someone lending a hunting rifle or pistol range gun to another without the red tape. To take your son to the firing range for a little practice with you in gun safety would make you a criminal unless you had him put through the NICS check.  You and your cousin couldn’t just use his guns to go hunting on the weekend. It is one more opportunity to do what big government likes best - to get bigger and to get deeper into our private lives.  

There are many who are willing to trade their freedom for what they wrongly perceive as greater safety.  It might well result in a person finding himself unarmed in a dangerous situation - which could cost his life. It will reduce the number of legally owned guns in the population.  This might be the most dangerous effect of all.  Two years ago, a University of Pittsburgh study found that 8 of 10 “gun crimes” were committed with illegally obtained guns [https://www.nraila.org/articles/20160728/icymi-more-gun-control-laws-will-not-reduce-crime]  A study in 2013 by Harvard, in fact, showed that gun regulation in other countries was tied to increased gun crime. [https://www.guns.com/news/2013/08/30/harvard-study-concludes-gun-control-prevent-murders-violent-crime]

Experience has shown that there are several necessary elements in any mass shooting:  a deranged or fanatic actor, a gun, and the right time and place to act out. We cannot outlaw  insanity or fanatics. Guns are in the world and we cannot remove them all. However, we can do much to make it harder for such a person to act out a fantasy of mass murder.

The best deterrent to a bad guy with a gun actually is a good guy with a gun.  When an unarmed malefactor walked into a store in Salt Lake City, picked up a kitchen knife from the shelf, screamed, “You killed my people!” and began slashing shoppers, he seriously injured two but was stopped by a citizen who happened to be armed.  He told the attacker to drop the knife and he did. No one died. An armed police woman stopped Nidal Hassan at Ft. Hood. At the Clackamas Mall in Portland, Oregon, an armed citizen stopped a shooter after he had shot three people, thus saving dozens of lives.  On the other hand, every time there has been mass shooting with a high number of victims it has occurred where the other people were defenseless - in schools, on college campuses, in a church or a theater or other “gun-free” zone. At the recent Garlic Festival shooting many lives were saved due to an armed policeman who stopped the shooter, but the shooter would likely not have attempted this had the location not been advertised as a “gun-free zone”. 

Here is an exercise:  Look at it from the point of view of a shooter.  How would you choose your arena? Would you rather get your headlines in a gun-free zone or would you rather take your chances where people might be armed?  Would you turn in your guns if a law is passed requiring you to do so?  

Now imagine you are a power-hungry tyrant.  You’d like to institute a police state with you at the head.  What would be in your way? Widespread gun ownership, perhaps?  So what would you do about it? I know that if I were bent on stripping you of your right to own a gun I would first institute “gun-free” zones - in schools, malls, coffee shops, discount stores, private and public property.  Then I would sit back and let nature take its course. Eventually somewhere someone would decide to become tonight’s six-o’clock news. When a shooting occurs I would say, “See? We need gun control.” (Which means taking your guns away.)  If people were not ready to come around yet I would say, “Let’s at least ban guns in more places so that we are safer.” More virtue-signaling places would line up to be gun-free. More opportunities for shootings will lead to either more gun-free zones or go straight to the objective - gun control.  This is not random or accidental - it is planned.  

If we are really more interested in the safety of citizens than d in stripping them of their guns, it would make more sense to promote concealed carry efforts rather than gun registration or confiscation.  We can’t get all of the guns. Only law-abiding citizens will hand over their legally owned guns. Criminals won’t - leaving guns in the hands of only the military, the police and the criminals. It makes sense for the rest of us that the person who wants to make headlines via mass murder knows he can’t because someone he can’t identify in advance will stop him.  Instead of making schools gun-free we should train and arm classroom teachers. This is exactly what the commission reporting on the Parkland shooting advised. While an armed guard can be easily identified and taken out first, a general population that is randomly armed cannot.

One avenue to combat mass murder would be to examine another common element among the perpetrators:  a lifetime of psychotropic drug use. The Dayton shooter was using antidepressants. Unless jihad is a factor, most shooters have taken either anti-depressants or ADHD drugs over extended periods of time.  These drugs have known side effects leading in some cases to violent behavior. We should rather fund some studies on this and perhaps work toward extreme caution in prescribing these drugs. At the moment, in many states it is legal even for nurse practitioners to prescribe them.  Perhaps states should be urged to consider stopping this.

We do know that gun confiscation is unconstitutional.  The methods now under consideration of using the state governments to do what the federal government doesn’t want to dirty its hands with - namely, to thwart the Second Amendment through financial support of “Red Flag” laws, are duplicitous and unethical.  What the federal government is prohibited from doing should not be accomplished through a back door. Whether we allow our state legislatures to do this and allow our federal government to help fund it, or whether the federal government comes out from behind the curtain and does it directly, it remains unconstitutional and will not help the problem it purports to solve and it will lead first to uneven and capricious enforcement and confiscation, and ultimately to disarming of law-abiding citizens and the world will be less safe than before. 

The current House Bill 8 would be a disaster.  It has little or nothing to do, actually, with public safety.  It has everything to do with developing a heavy-handed government more interested in surveillance of law-abiding citizens than in preventing crime.  Hitler knew what to do once guns were registered (under the previous government). Stalin knew what to do. He observed, “We don’t let them have ideas.  Why would we let them have guns?”  

Both the Red Flag concept and H.R.8 of our firearms must be resisted.  Other factors are far more pertinent in preventing mass murders.  

We need to question whether this is the end sought by the left.  In fact, these proposals further efforts to promote a leftist agenda.  Gun confiscation activist Sarah Brady said:   "Our main agenda is to have ALL guns banned. We must use whatever means possible. It doesn't matter if you have to distort facts or even lie. Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed."