We have had this conversation before...

The Tenth Amendment Center has put together a three part series based on David Kopel's paper entitled The Great Gun Control War of the Twentieth Century Part III can be found here It provides links to the other two parts. I recommend you read all three parts, and Mr. Kopel's original piece.

I sometimes forget (imagine that!) that I am now an old fart.  I can remember back to the late 1950s and the 1960s.  So, much of this history is not new to me.  But for young people, it may be.  I can remember a while back a young man saying something like "We've never had a conversation about guns.  We need a conversation, that's all."  The truth is we HAVE had a conversation, over the course of the Twentieth Century, and his side lost.  But, if we forget history, we will be doomed to repeat it.  In part Two, especially, the real goals of the gun grabbers were on display during the early phases when they thought they might win quickly and easily.

The Massachusetts referendum revealed the true objective of gun-grabbers no matter what jurisdiction they’re operating in. As the election drew near, it became apparent that the initiative was aimed at disarming law-abiding citizens, not criminals. At an anti-gun rally the week before the vote, Kopel writes, Senator Edward Kennedy admitted, “We won’t keep guns out of the hands of criminals.”

This revealing statement about the futility of gun control as a means of keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals would later be substantiated in a 1982 document published by the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, a part of the Judiciary Committee. The document found, among other things, that an astounding 75 percent of ATF gun prosecutions were “aimed at ordinary citizens who had neither criminal intent nor knowledge, but were enticed by agents into unknowing technical violations,” according to Kopel.

After the Massachusetts election, an official with the League of Women Voters who had vigorously supported the ban said, “I think a lot of voters have the idea this was designed to get guns away from the criminals. That’s not the real purpose.”

The real purpose, then and now, has been to take away guns from the law abiding, in order that the average citizen would not be able to oppose the government in any meaningful way. So, what is the lesson, if any? Why are we still fighting this battle? Well, first of all, the gun grabbers never give up. There is no settled law if the Left is against it.  The other thing we must realize is that the gun grabbers are not arguing in good faith, and never have.  Therefore it behooves us to call them out on their bad faith arguments.  When they say "We don't want to take away your guns, we just..." don't believe them, and don't debate on their terms.  They DO want to take away your guns: make no mistake about it.

A vital lesson from this gun control war is that the unless action is taken in the states themselves to nullify and resist unconstitutional federal gun laws, the threat will exist perpetually. Gun rights activists no doubt fought with the best of intentions and attempted to thwart gun grabbers at every turn, but their strategy demonstrated that despite victory after victory at a federal level, and even at a state level, the enemy eventually recuperates and makes another attempted assault on our right to keep and bear arms. The only way to neutralize the threat is by getting states to pass Second Amendment Preservation Acts.

Had such laws been passed from the very beginning when gun control war first began, we might not be having to fight it today.