Tough Love

No. 1 - The 2nd Amendment

This is, hopefully, the first in a series of articles solely intended to smack you across the face, hard, and administer a full dose of cold, unmitigated reality, strictly for your own good; hence the title Tough Love. Today’s topic is the 2^nd Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The inspiration for this series was a remark I heard the other day. It was someone attempting to justify their inaction as far as doing anything to support their rights. Others were suggesting that Congressional types, both state and Federal, need constant reminders of what we think and how we feel. One pompous barracks lawyer felt the need to grace everyone with his opinion regarding the topic. His infinite wisdom was expressed in this manner:

“My rights weren’t given to me by my government so my government can’t take them away. My rights came from God and God will protect them for me just the same as he protects me from all evil.”

He followed that up with a truly insulting statement that I won’t repeat in polite company.

Let’s examine the facts behind our right to keep and bear arms. Bear in mind that, throughout this piece, I’m going to speak from the point of view of what can and will happen in, hopefully, a worst-case scenario.

Before I go on, I’d like to establish I’m an ardent supporter of our duly elected President, Donald J. Trump and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather see in the Oval Office, however, I was given a brain and was taught to use it. I don’t blindly support or follow any man. I feel he was dead wrong in the issue I’m about to describe. I’ll speak my mind regarding any issue I have pertaining to the man, and that in no means diminishes my support in any substantial way.

There is no doubt that our right to keep and bear arms is under heavy attack, as we speak. Many of us, including myself, expected this to happen during the Obama years but, somehow, we were spared. Then, out of the blue, our newly elected POTUS, Donald J. Trump, came out in favor of “red flag” laws. He supported the seizure of firearms from individuals deemed, by God only knows who, a threat to themselves or others. Any smidgen of “due process” was missing from his equation. The avoidance of due process is the end of our Constitutional Republic, as we know it.

If you’ve been paying attention you may have noticed that a great deal of anti-2^nd Amendment action has been at the local or state level. This is where they’ll disarm us; not on a Federal level. Do not forget your government is not bound by its own laws. It can, and often will, do as it damned well pleases… think “No Fly” list, but you already know that. Here’s your first dose of tough love:

Your 2^nd Amendment rights are, in effect, meaningless.

Before you start calling this abrasive little Asian chick nasty names let me explain by walking you through just one of many possible scenarios that prove my point. You may come to believe, just as I have, that scenarios of this type will become possible if not probable.

1. On any particular day, completely unbeknownst to you, deep in the fetid bowels of some obscure government building, in a squalid cubicle, smelling of the rotting remains of yesterday’s lunch, some disgruntled, un-educated, improperly motivated, surly, bitchy excuse of a human being checks, on some unknown government form, the box beside your name, and by doing so turns yours, and your entire family’s life into a living Hell.

2. Additionally, don’t believe for a second that all those ATF Form 4473s that you’ve filled out actually Cinderella away like you’ve been promised. If you live in a totalitarian state, such as the People’s Republik of Michiganistan, some of your firearms are actually registered. In Michigan pistols are, by law, registered. Yes, I know what I’m talking about. I own more pistols than the average woman owns pairs of shoes. The point is that it’s well known, in the right circles, where the guns are.

In paragraph one, directly above, we covered the “lawful order” to seize your weapons for one cockamamie, contrived reason or another. “Red flag” laws will become extremely popular because of the total lack of due process required to administer them. Think of them as a FISA warrants for the common folk. In paragraph two, we’ve covered how the authorities know you’re armed. Now, all that’s left is the actual execution… of the warrant.

Heavily armed thugs, think of those raiding Roger Stone’s home, will, in the middle of the night, utilize their no-knock warrant, break down your door, and kill your dog if it appears threatening. Then you, and every family member, regardless of their age or infirmity, will be physically dragged from their beds while other members of the crew destroy your gun safe in order to gain access to your firearms. Your firearms will be, for all intents and purposes, destroyed between your safe and the dump truck they will be thrown into. The only exceptions will be those that the thugs want to add to their personal collections. At this point it would behoove you to hire the best lawyer you can afford. The 2^nd Amendment has failed you and your recourse is the court system.

If you survive the initial encounter, you will be given a date to appear in court. Here is an opportunity for government to get creative. This is not my imagination at work. This dodge was actually used against Randy Weaver in Idaho in 1992. They’ll provide you with official paperwork listing the date and time of your scheduled court appearance. In actuality, the real hearing will be held a week or two prior to the date you were given. What they’ve done is create a failure to appear charge because you were under the impression that your appearance was a week later than it actually was. You will be arrested when you appear at the time you were told… which is late.

If the government doesn’t invent an opportunity to kill part of your family, as was done at the Weaver residence in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, you will be shuffled around for anywhere from months to years while it’s determined whether or not you should have been disarmed. The meter on your legal team will be running the entire time. That $100,000.00 you’d scrimped and saved will be sitting in your lawyer’s driveway. You will have mortgaged your home and still you will have amassed another $1,500,000.00 in legal fees but, have no fear, the lawyers will work up a payment plan for you.

Eventually you’ll be called into court again. The judge will find in your favor. He will rule that you were wronged and that your firearms be returned to you post haste. Two, rusted, broken and ancient Daisy BB guns, that you had never seen before, will be placed on a table in front of you. It will be explained that in the years between today and the date you were raided there was a fire at the storage facility and that these two pieces were all that survived.

When you protest, they will pretend to have no idea what you’re talking about. After more months of dealing with the government, and your lawyers, a judgement will be issued in your favor. The government will admit that you were wronged and that you deserve restitution… just as soon as you produce receipts for every firearm you claim was seized. Suddenly, it will occur to you that all your receipts were in the cache of documents seized along with your firearms… the ones that were also destroyed in the fire at the storage facility.

Another fifteen months will pass during which time your legal team will be charging you for their time spent planning how to spend your money. You’ll be ordered to appear in court again where you’ll be offered a settlement that represents 14¢ on the dollar for your confiscated firearms. You settle for that because you have no fight left in you. You watch the judges and the lawyers joking, laughing, and pointing at you as you leave the courtroom.

When you get home, you take an accounting. Your firearms collection, that was originally valued at $19,500.00 and included the Union Switch Signal 1911A1 that your grandfather carried in North Africa, Italy and eventually France, and was, to your family, priceless, is gone forever. In their place you have a government check in the amount of $2,730.00. Your life savings and your home are gone, and you owe your legal team $1,500,000.00 but they’re gracious enough that they’ll accept $8,000.00 per month for the next 30 years.

Early the next morning you take the government check, in the amount of $2,730, to your bank and cash it. The next stop is at your favorite gun shop where you attempt to purchase the least expensive .38 Special revolver they have… and you ask if you can purchase one round rather than an entire box. After a thirty-minute wait, they inform you that you failed to pass the background check. All you can determine is that it probably has something to do with that failure to appear charge.

Welcome to the America we’ll all live in if we don’t do something very soon.