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Weekly Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country
of West Texas
Opinion
Friday, October 5, 2007
Sage Views
By Smokey Briggs
Disarming America's Veterans -
at last the Dems, Reps and NRA
can agree on something
Guns again?
I get that response occasionally from folks - even some who like me, but worry that I will pigeonhole myself as a one-horse writer.
There is no denying that the topic of firearms ownership and use comes up in my columns about as regularly as full moons.
But, there is reason to my madness. It is tough to write about something when you feel no passion - or at least it is for me. Maybe a better writer could do better with any old topic. But, I cannot.
Smokey needs a little passion to put a spark between my fingers and the keyboard.
For me there is one topic that overarches all others - Freedom.
Ha, you thought I was going to "guns" didn't you?
Well, I could have, because in this day and age, guns and freedom are synonyms - virtually interchangeable descriptors of the same thing.
Without a firearm and the ability to use it, you are not free. You may enjoy some privileges granted by others; your life may be copasetic and you may be able to do many things - but you are not free.
Your actions are subject solely to someone else's, or something else's allowing you to do them.
A stroke of a bureaucrat's pen, the vote of 51% of your fellow citizens, or a thug's club all stand in the wings ready to modify or deny your "rights."
Well then, if that is the case, what you enjoy are not rights.
Rights are granted to us mortals by God - and nobody else has a right to modify them or take them away.
But what good is a right when you lack the capacity or the backbone or the knowledge to defend it.
This is where guns come in. Guns provide the capacity to defend God-given rights, and ourselves, in a meaningful way - thanks to Col. Sam Colt and his brethren.
A knowledge of history and human nature should provide all the education needed to know why and when.
Backbone has to be self-supplied.
Consider this: with a firearm a man can be free.
Without guns we are so many squished Chinamen at Tiananmen Square, or so many massacred Jews and Slavs roasting in German ovens.
It is a very simple choice.
So, I write about guns often.
Which brings me to the point of this week's column - and why the National Rifle Association will be seeing no more contributions or support from me.
HR2640 passed the House. Supposedly the bill will help "fix" the National Insta-Check system gun buyers have to submit themselves to when buying a gun.
Now, the only fix this system needs is the same fix you apply to a used toilet - a good application of the flush handle.
This fix is the brainstorm of totalitarian socialists Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D -NY) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY).
And the NRA supports it.
What is wrong with this picture?
No two nitwits in history since Hitler and Stalin have so adamantly campaigned to take firearms away from the people they supposedly represent.
And now, the NRA has found common ground with them?
Sorry, Good and Evil do not hold hands. When they do, one is no longer what it holds itself out to be. In this case, I'm pretty sure McCarthy and Schumer are still evil and the NRA has officially crossed over.
While the bill purports to improve the NICs system, what it really does is in nice broad strokes is open the door to even more flagrant abuses of citizens by unelected federal bureaucrats committed to eradicating gun ownership.
The group most specifically in danger from this piece of legislation is veterans - the reason many are calling this the Veterans' Disarmament Bill.
So much for all those quaint yellow ribbons festooning cars and bumper stickers proclaiming to "support the troops."
This legislation has the ability to put anyone who has ever visited with a psychiatrist onto the "you are mentally unstable and cannot be trusted with sharp objects or allowed to buy a gun" list.
That includes people diagnosed (or misdiagnosed) with ADHD when they were in 3rd grade, anyone treated for any type of mental illness, and vets who had a nightmare after their two-day trip back from Nam or Iraq that counts as a "readjustment period" between the front lines and the mall.
Of course the bill leaves a lot up to the discretion of bureaucrats - something gutless politicians like to do so that they do not have to take the blame for evil, ignoble and unconstitutional laws up front.
But, given our Federal Government's history of regulation twisting to fit the current administration's agenda, it is not hard to imagine how it will turn out in the long run if this bill becomes law.
Thankfully, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has blocked the bill and could force a recorded vote.
The words "recorded vote" make all the difference. The slimy creatures that generally inhabit the Senate do not like having light illuminate their actions so that they can be held accountable.
According to a quote from Schumer himself, the prospect of a recorded vote puts the bill in danger of failing.
That ought to tell you something right there. Senators, and anybody else, ought to be proud to have folks know about their actions. When they are not, you know they are up to no-good.
Coburn cannot win this alone and I am ashamed as a citizen of Texas that my senators are not standing with him.
Our senators need to hear from us. And we need to find out if our Congressman voted for this roll of baloney.
If he did, he needs the boot because he either did not bother to read the bill, is too stupid to understand the possible consequences, or worse, he supports it.
In every case, any elected official that supports this bill is exactly why freedom and guns are synonymous. One day, as these slime balls continue to prove, we will need one to preserve the other.
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York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
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