Opinion
USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- I have had conversations with gun owners from time to time who don’t want to get involved in the gun rights movement. Two reasons stand out from my interaction with them. One is lethargy, often associated with the notion that “they are not after my kind of gun.” The other is a fear of being a target of radical gun prohibitionists enforcing some sort of gun ban. I will address each of these here, pointing out possible flaws with each position.
My Gun Is Safe
Adherents to this notion have believed that the gun grabbers were not interested in their particular type of firearms hardware. Gun owners have historically been divided into several groups, with often overlapping edges. You have hunters, target shooters, plinkers, and defensive carriers; each group with their own interests. Hunters may only fire a handful of shots each year, a few sighting in shots at the beginning of the season, and then what’s necessary to take their chosen game. This group has been derogatorily labeled by some as Fudd’s after Elmer Fudd, of Looney Toons fame.
Well now, we’ve all heard that Elmer has had his gun banned. Instead, he is left with the Grim Reaper’s scythe. So maybe your double barrel is not safe, nor that old bolt action. After all, bolt action rifles are the “sniper’s weapon of choice“.
They are not after your hunting gun now, but maybe later. These Goldilocks gun grabbers can never find a gun that is just right (for you to keep).
Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind
Others adhere to the notion that if they keep a low profile, they are safe from the gun grabbers. Let’s explore this low profile idea.
In many jurisdictions, private sales are perfectly legal. Some gun owners are very careful to only purchase their firearms this way, in an attempt to stay away from the purview of officialdom. Maybe that’ll work, maybe not?
Your papers, please.
So you don’t want to register your guns; and although NICS records are purported to be destroyed after the transaction, who knows for sure? If you have bought them all in private sales, you may be safe to a point. But are you a registered gun owner? Have you unwittingly gotten on a list?
Here are six (6) actions that will (or may) put you on one.
- Do you have a state-issued handgun permit? You’re on a list.
- Do you get any firearms-related publications? Informed Delivery may not be your friend.
- Do you order any parts or accessories online? There’s a record.
- Do you use a debit or credit card to buy ammo? Hmm… we have seen how pro-gun banks can be.
- Do your FedEx or UPS ammo deliveries have HAZMAT labels? Everybody knows what’s under the plain brown wrapper.
- Do you shop locally and pay with cash, but your dealer has video surveillance?
How difficult would it be for a rogue gun-grabbing government agency to build a dossier on you?
So, unless you live further off the grid than Randy Weaver did, staying on the down-low just may not work.
Get Up, Get Going
The thing to do is fight for your rights while you can. For if the situation deteriorates to the level that Alfred Flatow experienced, it will be too late.
So now is the time to welcome new shooters to the fold, get after your elected representatives, and be proactive in advancing the Second Amendment. As Ole Ben Franklin is quoted as saying, “ WE MUST HANG TOGETHER OR SURELY WE SHALL HANG SEPARATELY
About Liston Matthews
Liston Matthews has been involved in the gun rights movement since 1971. He was involved in the passage of the Tennessee carry law, and its improvements. He has testified before local legislative bodies. He has contacted politicians and had numerous editorial letters published. He believes that politicians must be carefully vetted at the local level because few change their positions when they move to higher office.
Liston writes his own blog Good Hill Press is an AmmoLand News contributor, and formerly wrote at Examiner.com.
USA, you can call names and ramble on about sheep, but here is a simple truth for you: Many of us whom you are trying to shame are just worn out. We have stood up and fought to the best of our abilities for 50, 60, 70 years, all while still trying to earn a living and make some sort of life for ourselves and our families, and all we’ve seen is everything we fought for and believed in eroded, trashed, disrespected, and devalued. At this point, with things deteriorating almost too rapidly to keep up with, we’re TIRED. I… Read more »
I was in the Nam too. I also get to run around in an electric wheelchair. HOWEVER, I still am fully in compliance with gun control and WILL hit that person, place or thing at which I am aiming. Should this amazing, wonderful country turn communist, I, for one won’t be around to see it. I spent 20 years in the Air Force and the Army so I guess I can be called a militant, and I’ll be damned if I’ll go quietly. I am a firm believer in the old saying, “Better dead than red.”
In the case of rogue government at any level that would go to this extreme to subvert our natural rights the best defense, the only defense is a strong offense. Simply being a hard target does not get you off the target list. At some point you have to go on the offensive to avoid being pecked to death over time.
We already have been picked to death if you took all the liberties in one stroke of a pen that they have taken over the last 40 years it would have started a civil war. There will be no end until there is a fight, soon someone will be saying “at least I can still throw a rock at the bad guy” and then they will take our rocks.
Only one way to stop TYRANTS!!! Voting doesn’t work, writing and calling doesn’t work and litigation doesn’t work. Only one way to restore our Freedoms.
You want the truth? The reason, whites won’t stick together like the other races do. Call me racist or what, I don’t care, I am 77 years old and close to dieing so I will never see the total failure of this nation.
How about instead of worrying about being on a list we take a lesson from John Hancock.
Won’t work. Hancock had men around him willing to fight back. Today’s gun owner isn’t willing to fight back.
Case in point; Turkey federation won’t support the Friends of NRA. In my county we could not get more than 100 people to attend a friends of NRA event, but when the Turkey hunters federation has a banquet it is an over flow attendance. They fall in the first category and the second also. We had over 800 NRA members in our small county and you can’t even get support from half of them. Makes me sick that “WE THE PEOPLE ” won’t stand and fight.
After the McCloskey FUBAR in St. Louis, MO I tried to get all of my ‘gun friends’ in our upper-middle class neighbor to at least organize into a contact group in case such an incident happened here. We did have a ‘peaceful protest’ only 5 miles from our neighborhood! Not a SINGLE PERSON would commit, who are retired LEO & VETS, with only one suggesting to have our HOA install a ‘gate’ at the entrance to our community!! And YES, my wife & I are moving!!
Is the Federation supporting the right arms and not the NRA?
Off the grid? Not in California, as a resident from birth, I have witnessed infringement after infringement perpetrated on the law abiding, by liberals who can only control the compliant portion of the populace. I had this discussion on this forum with naive believers that their freestate would never maintain a database of legally acquired firearms and their owners. Maybe that could be true, newspaper incidents regarding published names and addresses of ccw holder’s in states other than CA prove otherwise. Here in Golden state they are as blatant as it gets when a legal firearm is sold, making the… Read more »
No offense meant to the author, but the Randy Weaver case is a poor example in this context. It IS a great example of what happens when governments are allowed to instigate crime through entrapment though. But it’s a poor example of trying to stay unnoticed. The Weaver’s didn’t get noticed by the feds until their neighbors compained about gas missing from their tractor, which was admitted to on the Congressional record by a visitor named Kevin Harris. If they had watched their visitors closer, they could have remained unnoticed. But the feds couldn’t have cared less about the neighbors.… Read more »
And here we go with another vote and protest will save us pile of nonsense.
YOU WILL BE VOTING AND PROTESTING WHILE DNC/ANTIFA TERRORISTS HERD YOU FROM THE CATTLE CARS INTO THE SHOWERS…… Snap out of it and start fighting back.
I build 80% rifles. Not because I am under the delusion that I am not being tracked, but because 1. they are fun to mill out, 2. I can have everything shipped to my door, and 3. its cheaper to buy 80% than buy a completed, pay for shipping, and then the ffl. Local gun shop in spokane has 80%s for $50. If I saw a completed for a comparable price I might get it. Especially a PSA meme lower.
Let’s pray we never have to physically fight for our God given right for personal protection. But it seems inevitable since Evil is growing exponentially with each passing year. I fear we are witness to the Last American President.
There is at least 6 ways to search and confirm firearm ownership. The governing deny rights to individual ‘free’ citizens establishing a disarmed underclass; a class the governing desires all private citizens. As the suppression of the right to arms progresses, citizens will have to prove they do not and will not posses arms.
USA: One can tell how foolish the sheeple are by the promises they believe in. 53 virgins when they blow themselves up? That’s not a reward. That’s a punishment!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3iCcRlX9FM
the joke is on them, too. The arabic word they use which is loosely translated into “virgin” in english is “houri”, the root word for your english term for a streetwalker, seller of her body, etc, one syllable word that sound like “door”. And they hold this to be a reward? They “win the prize” by blowinig exloding their own bodies, then have to endure dealing with seventy two “doors”?
Nah. I’ll take the promises from the God who made the universe. HE only gives GOOD things to His children
Strange. A recent translation mentioned that is isn’t 72 virgins but one, 72-year-old virgin they’ll shack up with. I guess it’s ALL in the translation.
Of course. It matters not what we say. The sheep don’t listen. Only “baaahhhh”
But I have to agree with Billy Connolly (another Glasgow native… 🙂 ), “give me two fire-breathin’ whores any day!
USA: That’s a good’n. Must be from that same speech about asking what we can do, and not for what we want, from our Country.
Very like that Jordan Peterson saying: “Pick up the heaviest load you can, and carry it as far as you can”. IOW’s take some responsibility, and don’t be an infant forever.
But all the sheep can hear is; “bahhhhh”. 🙂
I don’t recall a promise that the virgins would be females. Anyway Muslims I know are like the rest of us, trying to make a living. They’re not all wackos and Christians are not all sane.
The USPS takes pictures of your mail even if you don’t use their Informed Delivery service. They scan it so it can be automatically sorted by machines. Now whether they keep those pictures for long or track the information OCR’d from that mail is another matter…