The Purists and The New Orleans Gun Confiscation
By John Longenecker (04/18/06)
Several months ago, I wrote about the New Orleans gun confiscation. Outside the liberty community, few Americans registered that event as blip on their Radar. Today, it should register as a whopper.
As you might recall, during Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Mayor Nagin’s officers and other agents of law enforcement went house to house confiscating guns from law-abiding Citizens. [See And Now, To the Anti-Household Officials, MENS NEWS DAILY, September 9th, 2005. http://mensnewsdaily.com/blog/longenecker/2005/09/and-now-to-anti-household-officials.html]
[From The New York Times, September 9th: Mr. Compass, the police superintendent, said that after a week of near anarchy in the city, no civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns, or other firearms of any kind. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said.]
Many officers called in sick or went AWOL, reportedly, and some believe that they knew they would be ordered to confiscate guns and didn’t want any part of it. If this is the case, then there’s hope. (It is against the Constitution of the United States and of some state constitutions to just take weapons without due process; without any authority, New Orleans operated outside of due process. Some lawmakers are proposing legislation to make it a felony to take weapons from law-abiding in time of disaster.)
The NRA [The Nation’s oldest Civil Rights Organization] and the Second Amendment Foundation filed a lawsuit, where Nagin et al answered that they didn’t have the guns. They later admitted that they did. The Court ordered them returned to their rightful owners.
New Orleans balked and stalled. The City was found in contempt and was then ordered again to return them, at which time they agreed to do so through a process which included new background checks. This is, of course, harassment of lawful owners. As usual, officials like to abuse the law abiding with acts of power which never touch the criminals.
Now, not only do the rightful owners have to jump through hoops, but some of the weapons are turning up lost according to early reports.
Confiscated weapons which are sometimes much more lawfully taken (sometimes as evidence in a crime report) have a way of disappearing or finding a home in the private collections of police officers. Is this the fate of legally owned weapons which were illegally taken? Those weapons have to turn up immediately or the reputation of law enforcement everywhere is stained.
This is where the Purists come in. The Purists of the liberty movement in America have been characterized as extremist, but let’s look at them for a moment. They have warned America of social disaster to come, they have courageously spoken out with details, not vague predictions, and they have been most accurate in their report of history and in making a most reasonable connection to modern current events in worrying about the safety of the nation. The Purists have observed social trends that sound horribly familiar to the known historical fates of doomed nations and show just where we’re headed.
I’m going to join them in reporting this milestone on that road.
The confiscation of weapons is a perfect example of officials who not only break the law with personal leftist agenda and set up a community for further ills, but who defy the law when ordered by a court to restore the plaintiffs and to make it right.
This is a perfect example of how the acts go unpunished, because they’re officials and it would set a horrible precedent (or whatever other reason they’re not punished).
This is where it is a bad blip on your radar now, too: It’s not about guns, it’s about officials who break the law and who use force to do it. It is about citizens who are not as savvy about the fine points of the law or who are not especially clear on official authority – as in the case of police confiscation of cameras and film or videotape, another illegal act under color of authority. It is about individuals who go along with it all and only a minority of officers have conscience not to.
Even when you’re knowledgeable about the technicalities of what the police can and can’t do, they have all the force.
And as long as they foment an environment friendly to violent crime, such as turning back assets at the state line to keep them from improving disaster conditions, and taking weapons so people remain at the mercy of roving thugs, they compel dependency on officials.
America will not be lulled into tyranny or slavery – America will be forced into Dependency.
When it comes to how often self-defense actually saves a life, and by the way invalidates the idea of forced reliance on official agencies for protection, I’m asked, "John, if this is true, then where are the stories?"
That’s easy, they’re out there, but only in local media if at all. After all, how does anyone anywhere in America appraise just how self-defense really works everywhere else in America? How does one in any part of the country evaluate how effective self-defense is when compared to reliance on agencies for protection?
If you’d like to visit a real repository of that kind of story to get the flavor of just how righteous and effective personal self-defense is when compared to agencies, visit www.KeepAndBearArms.com for a daily collection (six days a week) of news items from around the country on one website. Read the comments on each news item for a flavor of what it’s really all about.
In the final analysis, it’s not really all about guns, it’s about liberty and our way of life. It’s what we’re fighting for right now in keeping the fight there and not here. It’s about fighting here what we have to fight here to keep what means the most to us, our way of life.
We’re fighting a war on two fronts.
The Purists are right. As strict and unbending as they might sound at first, it’s now come to a fight just to keep our ground so that we’re not terrorized, so that we’re not at the mercy of thugs in the process of stupid official constraints that never touch criminals and on top of that – having to pay for it all.
The Purists are right for another reason: even though it’s recently found that so-called right wing values are actually mainstream - home, family, privacy, authority, educational content, way of life - the values are one thing and the laws, politics and wrong-headed penalties are another; in short, we have a long way to go just to get back to the middle again.
Toward this then, the Purists would, of course, like to see it positively illegal to confiscate guns ever from the law-aniding. I’d like to see severe penalties added to that. Law-abiding should not be punished when you’re not able to touch the criminals.
Confiscation is not a safety move, it is a political move. And when the police have all the force, then you begin to see just why the Liberty Enthusiasts believe as we do.
When it comes to politics - how we run the country - it is the People who have all the authority, not officials.
Moving from the Left back toward the middle is the objective.
And that’s good for the country.
John Longenecker
Website http://www.TransferOfWealth.net/
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