Bane & Obama: Common Sense Gun Laws We Can All Get Behind

DRTV Weekly: Obama’s Op-Ed | Down Range TV

Michael Bane puts on his Goofy Hat to talk about "Common Sense Gun Laws" which President Obama last week suggested that we can "all get behind".

Here is ONE comment from The Prez:

But I have more faith in the American people than that. Most gun-control advocates know that most gun owners are responsible citizens. Most gun owners know that the word "commonsense" isn't a code word for "confiscation." And none of us should be willing to remain passive in the face of violence or resigned to watching helplessly as another rampage unfolds on television.

This sounds good .. VERY good.

Except that OUR experience is that the concept he emphasizes (see italicized sentence) just hasn't worked out all that well for us.

In our actual experience, "REGISTRATION" is EXACTLY EQUIVALENT to "CONFISCATION".

See Tanya Metaska's article on "First Registration, Then Confiscation" on Front Sight Magazine, which provides only the very simplest exposition of the sequence of events which occurred in California in 1998 - 2001.


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The story from California is convoluted, but believable according to Front Sight Magazine. and Gun Owners of America. California Attorney General Dan Lundgren essentially required that owners of "assault weapons" (including the SKS rifle, which was not capable of "full-automatic" fire), register their firearms. The understanding was that this was only a cautionary act.

When Democrat Bill Lockyear, an avowed (Democratic) gun prohibitionist, became Attorney General in 1999, he decided unilaterally ... with perhaps some no small encouragement from Handguns, Incorporated (HCI) [see BRADY, relating to OBAMA] ... that this kind of firearm might be considered an "assault weapon" similar to that which was used in the Stockton School-yard Massacre. The SKS was immediately defined as such by Lockyear, and this new AG decided that all SKS rifles should be confiscated.

Fortunately (for Lockyear and HCI), the Great State of California already had a list of SKS rifles, which you may recall had be registered as required by the former Attorney General.

Thus all SKS rifles in California were perforce confiscated. Again, easy to do: they had already been registered, by legitimate law-abiding citizens who believed the original assurance by then-AG Lundgren that "Registration Does Not Equate To Confiscation".


The lesson here is that any drive for "no-fault Registration" will not survive a change in administration. There are no 'administrative' rulings (such as "Registration does not equal Confiscation") which are guaranteed ... nay promised [you know what a Politician's promise is worth; take that amount, and divide it by any number you wish] to survive longer than it takes to print up a set of governmental rules.

Let me say this again, in more clear language:
The legislation must pass laws to change the status of ... anything. It can do that, but there are some delays built in, and the changes must pass a vote of elected officials.

The bureaucracy, on the other hand, does not live by laws; it lives by "codes". They are not necessarily elected officials, nor are they necessarily bound by laws, except by strict interpretation.

If they can re-interpret laws to suit their own personal prejudices, the bureaucracy can require ANYTHING ... including the translation from "registration" to "confiscation".
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So the next time we are reassured by Legislators that whatever law they pass in reference to collection and maintenance of firearms ownership (and especially if they specifically say "Registration doesn't mean Confiscation") ... we shouldn't necissarily accept this on face value.

Instead, we should instantly reject this.

You can tell when bureaucrats are lying; if their lips are moving, they're lying.