Op-Ed: In The United States, There Is No Such Thing As An Illegal Gun

This the first of a three part series to be featured at Buckeyefirearms.org.

By John Longenecker

I think we need to get on this.

Think about it for a minute. Guns in America are a civil right. Stopping guns everywhere makes about as much moral sense as punishing the Los Angeles Times just because some people defame others, falsely advertise, commit mail fraud or lie under oath.

Is the Second Amendment absolute? Yes, whereas the First Amendment is not absolute. Who would benefit and who would lose if citizens carried handguns a lot, lot more than they do? Citizens would gain, criminals would lose, and demagogic officials would lose.

Immense industries depending on violence would lose.

A lot of people who rightly should lose would lose. Sometimes, for our country to win, some must lose, as part of our national mistake has been to make everyone a winner no matter what. This intimidation has been made to stick and now non-gun owner households are beginning to feel what liberty enthusiasts had predicted: gun control changes the entire complexion of American freedom to the detriment of all Americans, including non-gun owners.

Click on 'Read More' for the entire op-ed.

One of the forces which changes the complexion of American freedom for the worse is the anti-violence movement. As I’d mentioned in an earlier article on this subject of trafficking and registration of guns, officials do not need to know where the guns are. It doesn’t really fight crime, because that is not where crime is fought. [I am opposed to felons owning weapons, but the purpose of this is not served by operating on the premise that guns are illegal. It’s not the corpus or the subject which is illegal, but the individual and their conduct, otherwise you sweep up a lot of innocents in the law. Wait a minute.. That’s what we’re objecting to!!]

Second, personal guns right down to the so-called Saturday Night Special play a vitally important role in self-defense, one of the best kept secrets in the media, and one not especially shared by law enforcement.

[You can find many stories of self-defense and violent crime simply by visiting sites such as KeepAndBearArms.com. That world-read site features a compendium of such news items gathered from volunteers around the country who turn in daily video and print news reports of self-defense. Some make national coverage as you might have noticed, but most don’t reach beyond their own locale and are noticed and picked up by volunteers who send them in to KABA. Please visit that website regularly for further details on just how many people defend themselves, and then understand that many others may not even be reported.]

For the head of a household, this kind of information might be very helpful.

Part of the problem in comprehending how guns play a role in our national defense is in the belief that somehow our defense is limited to being along the coastlines engaging a hostile navy or along our borders stopping illegals where personal weapons might be insufficient anyway. Though these are likely, what is already here is the idea of individual crime breaking the spirit of the American, genuine justice frustrated in the courts, mistakes made which hurt innocent persons, the debate over racial preference or bias, and the debate over incarceration crowding - all related to violence, and all punishing the innocent in the process.

To further crush that spirit is lousy sentencing for crimes of abduction, various three-strike stories of non-violent nature, and other excursions into stupidity which appeared to respond to public demand, but which led into further detriment totally against our values system.

It’s not the weapon nor the crime which is discouraged, but the spirit which is being discouraged in this country. What with all the disconcerting reports of internationalism, pending pandemics, nation of laws rubbed in our faces and other subtle warnings, we’re simply being groomed for absorption.

And as best evidence, saving the best for last amid all of this is the foundational value and truth that there is no such thing as an illegal gun. The anti-violence idea of blocking so-called illegal gun trafficking is a morally mistaken one, because the mission will not stop the violence the anti-violence claim to want to stop. It has always been a political, rhetorical trap from the beginning to soothe personal anxiety at the expense of everybody – and I mean everybody – else. And it doesn’t even work!

From the U.S. Newswire of 9/14/06, speaking for The Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort, Jeri Bonavia complains that anti-gun-trafficking measures are going to be quashed. She reportedly turned in in her release, The crime trace data is absolutely essential for law enforcement agencies working to stop illegal trafficking. They use the data to find out where illegal guns are coming from and to break up those illegal channels.

Begging your pardon, Ms. Bonavia, but guns were not even deemed to be illegal in this country until two generations ago, and little by little since then, innocent persons have been disarmed and crime has grown in so-called gun-free zones – such as California, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C. perhaps even Milwaukee.

You have to know – you just have to know, Madam – that tying the hands of only those who will obey a law will only tether the lamb for the wolf, the criminals who do not obey the law. I find your entire mission hostile to the United States’ value of freedom.

All gun laws should be repealed because in this country, there is no such thing as an illegal gun to begin with. The key is to begin by repealing all of them — cleaning house so to speak — then clearly rebuilding what is crime by defining criminal acts of aggression, robbery, rape, mayhems, intimidation, unjust use of force, illegal possession and only a handful of others.

There is no such thing as illegal trafficking, because it’s illegal to write laws against a civil right where the language of the Constitution says shall not be infringed. Guess what: you’re infringing, and you have no legal or moral right to do it. The left lies, a disarmed populace dies.

I know there’s a downside to this – what with a lot of guns in the wrong hands, and there is such a thing – but this is the price we pay for liberty, and Ms. Bonavia, you do not have the right under our system to aggravate the conditions and unwind another’s right any more than I could claim any moral ground for silencing you. I can debate you, but I would not silence you. I may dislike what you say, but I would not silence you – I wouldn’t even try to label your speech as blather trafficking – merely because of some personal pain. As an American, I am bound by my values system to stand behind your right to speak, no matter how much I disagree. I argue with you, but I would not disarm you by taking your computer merely because we disagreed or worse, because others abused their right to a free press.

Knowing where the guns are among the honest will never stop criminals, and the only way you’ll ever know where they are is by the honest complying with laws alleged to stop crooks!

Make sense? Look at the moral right to self-defense and at the results of states where right-to-carry is respected. Emphasis on respected.

Jeri Bonavia went on to say, “He’s [Sensenbrenner, who is sponsoring the idea] not on the side of law enforcement. And, he sure isn’t on the side of young victims of gun violence, such as 13-year-old, honor student Candace Moss, who was tragically killed by a stray bullet.”

Jeri, you need to ask law enforcement whose side they are on. Sensenbrenner is on the side of law enforcement. You haven’t found what liberty enthusiasts have found: that most rank and file officers are on the side of the citizen, and speak to the issue of concealed carry for the citizen. They are in favor of it, since many officers mention that the citizen is the first line of defense, another one of the better kept secrets in the media.

Also, Madam, you need to work on your anxiety: crimes of violence are not committed by honest non-violent, but by violent criminals; these are individuals beyond the reach of whatever legislation you write. If you are really against violence as you say you are, then please permit the citizen to meet it and perhaps de-escalate it. I don’t know if you know this, but citizens possess that authority, otherwise police wouldn’t have it delegated them. Where do you think their authority comes from? Until then, your view is to make it all an entirely one-sided aggression often, as you pointed out, with tragic results.

Stray bullet, you say? We are not served by attacking stray bullets and guns, Ms. Bonavia, we are best served by attacking criminals, criminals who shoot and furnish those stray bullets. But like most attacks from the unrighteously angry Left, you yourself take aim at crime and wind up hitting innocent bystanders, the people who didn’t do the shooting, the very people you’re claiming to protect.

The Newswire finishes with Ms. Bonavia’s last lines, “Who among us hasn’t felt grief-stricken by the death of Candice Moss and all the other young, innocent victims of gun violence? ..”

This dispute isn’t about the loss of innocent people – let me calmly point out that your mission is hurting a lot more innocent people, and you don’t give a damn. You can never say with credibility that you give a damn about innocent people killed when you work to disarm those who have the guts to resist violence at the moment it strikes. People who rightly employ their civil rights just to protect their loved ones and to protect other civil rights protecting persons from being murdered, raped or beaten to death. These are the real heroes in protecting their community, not the anti-violent who want fellow citizens to be at the mercy of criminals unarmed.

Under our Constitution, there is no such thing as an illegal gun.

But so-called anti-violence groups cultivate violence by making all the force in a crime of violence one-sided – one-sided on the side of the aggressor when they know that police are not available. And that is important, Ms. Bonavia: when police are not going to be available.

You fail or refuse to acknowledge that one has the right to self-defense in the absence of police, and the right to use up to lethal force if in their reasonable belief it is necessary at that moment. You ignore this on the morally impaired feeling that the iron is to blame and not the free will of the criminal.

By the hundreds of thousands across America, disarmed persons who believe in you pay a horrible price for believing in your mission. You strive to disarm the innocent when you know so very well that you cannot disarm the criminal beforehand.

No one will, not even you.

Illegal gun trafficking, you say? Violence prevails when aggression is unanswered. One cannot be against violence when one endorses tying the hands of the victim. You honestly believe that to meet violence is to make violence?

Gun control changes the entire complexion of American safety and liberty to the detriment of the nation and to the gain of officials. You are part of this.

There is no such thing as an illegal gun, Ms. Bonavia, and that is as it should be, because it is good for the country. It always has been.