REASONABLE POSITIONS GUN OWNERS TAKE AS THEY GIVE UP OUR RIGHTS by Stuart Hutchings and Larry Kahhan "We have met the enemy and he is us!"....Pogo. Many gun owners must feel intellectually inferior to the anti-gun crowd. Intimidated by Ivy-league jargon and connections to the Eastern Establishment, or star-struck and flattered by association with celebrity politicians or their hand picked law enforcement "experts," the average gun owner, hunter, or gun store owner will directly violate his gut instinct not to compromise on a fundamental rights issue and accept, in fact offer, a "reasonable compromise" of his rights. This fear of being accused of being "crazy," or "lunatic," or "unreasonable," or "uncompromising" by a Liberal media who can make the label stick is apparently so frightening to some gun owners that the will not only come to a bargaining table--where we should not be to begin with--but they will buy their seat at the table with an immediate concession. It is at this instant that the erosion of rights begins. No longer do we wonder if our rights will be violated; it is simply a matter of how badly will we be hurt this time. What are some of these seemingly benign, harmless concessions offered up so that gun owners will not be labeled, ostracized, and shunned as radicals? We will give some examples and demonstrate how each results in the gun owner shooting himself in the foot. First, there is always someone who will say that an honest, law abiding citizen shouldn't mind waiting for a gun or submitting to a background check. This shows both a tremendous naivete about how power can be abused and a failure to have mastered an understanding of the Constitution and how it came about. Our Bill of Rights was created to protect the innocent, law abiding citizen from governmental abuse. Just because we only hear about it when it seems to protect criminals, that doesn't mean that it is not functioning in the manner it was intended. To give up any or all of this protection and claim "innocence" as a defense against potential tyranny is not only stupid but a betrayal of the work and sacrifice of those who gave us that protection and the good faith of the innocent yet to come. We simply do not have the right to bargain it away; to do so for social reasons would simply be a failure of moral fitness. Tyranny occurs when criminals take control of governments and bureaucracies; when have you ever heard of a criminal respecting innocence? To institute the bureaucracy and machinery to have a waiting period and or a background check is to hand over to the government all they need to instantly deny all and any attempts to exercise the God given right to keep and bear arms; exactly what the Constitution forbids the government from doing. No matter if the waiting period is 30 days or 30 seconds, the machinery is in place. No matter if the background check is through the FBI or simply looking you up in the phone book, you are being asked to prove your innocence. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "A right delayed is a right denied." We agree. If you truly have a right, no one has the authority to deny you or to delay you. Regarding the so-called instant background checks and instant waiting periods, just because its fast doesn't make it constitutional. From a practical standpoint, waiting periods can cost as many lives as they might save. For every crime there is both a victim and a perpetrator. If a person is threatened, he should not have to wait to acquire a means of defense. If he or she is a gun owner and his or her guns are stolen, he or she should be able to immediately replace them so the criminal who stole the guns in the first place will not be able to assume that he can come back later to find an unarmed victim. If a firearm is used in self-defense and is taken by the police as evidence pending resolution, it should be possible to instantly replace the weapon so that the individual who was saved by his gun in the first place does not fall victim to friends and associates of the original perpetrator who know that he has been disarmed. If not having a waiting period can save just one life, let's not have waiting periods. Why should we concede the background/waiting period issue just to avoid being branded "radical?" If they mean to take our rights away, let the fight begin here! Another weak point in the epistemology of the gun owner is the concept of mandatory sentencing of people convicted of using a gun in a crime. Again, in an attempt to appear reasonable, a gun owner will say, "Don't take the guns away from honest, law abiding citizens but if someone uses a gun in a crime, make it an automatic mandatory additional 5 or 10 years." This is a dumb position. First, it prejudices the judicial system against guns and, thus, gun owners. A crime is a crime. Should someone really get an extra 5 years for shooting someone to death while someone who tortures someone else to death with, say, a chain saw, gets out five years sooner? How about an extra sentence for using a semi-automatic pistol rather than a double-action revolver? If you think that is stupid, you should know that it is supported and backed by President Bush. In fact, he favors it so strongly that he promises that if Congress will pass his "Crime Control" Bill of which this is a part, he will sign the Brady Bill and the "assault weapon" ban for them. Likewise, if you use a gun in self defense and a less than enlightened jury finds you guilty of something and the judge decides that it is a stupid verdict and wants to suspend the sentence(s), do you want him not to have the option of suspending the mandatory firearms provisions? To prejudice the system this way is to de facto criminalize gun ownership and legitimate uses. Will you grant the anti-gun faction this issue just so they can't say that you are "unreasonable?" Some gun owners will take the position, in an attempt to appear reasonable, that no one needs a high capacity magazine, or no one needs an "assault" rifle. When HCI attacks any gun, they are attacking all guns. If you grant them their position on any one class of guns, they will take what you give and attack another class. After all, it was Handgun Control Inc. who launched the attack on "assault" rifles. Ignoring, for the moment, the fact that the Constitution recognizes and protects your right to have military weapons, the point here is that the anti-gunners will first take what they can get then try to get more. "I don't believe in waiting periods, but a plan like they have in Virginia, well, I wouldn't mind that." Sadder words were never spoken. What right thinking citizens would ever have invented the so- called Virginia Instant Background Check if they weren't grasping for a compromise after feeling the social heat from HCI and Sarah Brady. To quote Senator Joe Biden, from The Congressional Record, January 10, 1991, page S121, "As the Supreme Court Has written, 'The fact that a given procedure is efficient, convenient, and useful in facilitating the functions of the Government will not save it if it is contrary to the Constitution. Convenience and efficiency are not the primary objectives--or the hallmark--of a democratic government.'" Just because it's fast doesn't mean its constitutional. The Virginia Plan, its many technical problems aside, constitutes prior restraint and an infringement of our Second Amendment Rights. Yet, many so-called pro-gun people cling to it not because it's a good idea, but to save them from a worse plan like the Brady Bill. Would they throw their support behind the Brady Bill if the people who are pushing the Brady Bill were instead asking us at the point of their guns to turn in ours? Probably. This shows that the anti-gunners have the initiative and we are losing. We will continue to lose until we have either lost it all or started believing in ourselves and our cause. NO Compromise, EVER. No Deals. No "reasonable meeting of minds between reasonable people." When they ask for a seven day waiting period, we should respond by introducing legislation for NATIONAL PREEMPTION. When they ask for a ban on a particular class of weapons, we ask for FEDERAL CARRY PERMITS, issued without having to show cause, as an "important first step" towards restoring our already badly infringed 2nd Amendment rights. Perhaps, in the kinder, gentler New World Order, it has been decided that there is no place for a unique nation with the unique quality of universal gun ownership. Maybe our entire bill of rights is an embarrassment to other nations and their trans-national superstructures. Perhaps in order to be brought in line with the New Order we must be somehow equalized so that envious peoples throughout the world striving for freedom won't be able to point to us and say, "Americans are armed, why can't we be?" The fury and desperation with which our Second Amendment Right is being attacked indicates a higher agenda than simple "public good." It is no longer enough to be "for guns." The enemy is too subtle and seductive in its arguments for that. We must each be intellectually able to engage and destroy every single spin they can put on the issue. But more importantly, like the original framers of the Constitution, we must have the faith in our cause and ourselves to risk being labeled by the media, shunned, or socially ostracized while overwhelming forces seem mustered against us. Stuart Hutchings is the 9th District Director of the Georgia Sport Shooting Association. Larry Kahhan is the Research Director of Citizens for Safe Government, Inc., an Atlanta based Civil Rights organization.