A bit of miltary wisdom has it that
you should never give an order you know won’t be obeyed. Issuing
such an order accomplishes nothing except to undermine your
authority and expose the extent to which, no matter what
enforcement mechanisms are in place, you rely upon voluntary
compliance. But now that Connecticut’s resident class of
politically employed cretins has awoken to the fact that, in their
state, like everywhere else, people overwhelmingly disobey orders
to register their weapons, they’re acting like this is a shocking
revelation. They’re also promising to make those who tried to
comply, but missed the deadline regret the effort (proving the
point of the openly defiant). And the politicians’ enablers in the
press are screaming for the prosecution of “scores of thousands” of
state residents who, quite predictably, flipped the bird at the
government.
Three years ago, the Connecticut legislature estimated
there were 372,000 rifles in the state of the sort that might be
classified as “assault weapons,” and two million plus high-capacity
magazines. Many more have been sold in the gun-buying boom since
then. But by the close of registration at the end of 2013, state
officials received around 50,000 applications for “assault weapon”
registrations, and 38,000 applications for magazines.
Some people actually tried to comply with the registration law,
but missed the deadline. The state’s official position is that it
will accept applications notarized on or before January 1, 2014 and
postmarked by January 4. But, says Dora Schriro, Commissioner of
the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, in a
letter to lawmakers, anybody sufficiently law-abiding but
foolish enough to miss that slightly extended grace period will
have to surrender or otherwise get rid of their guns.
This, of course, is the
eternally fulfilled fear of those who oppose registration of things
governments don’t like—that allowing the government to know
about them will result in their eventual confiscation. Such
confiscation, despite assurances to the contrary, occurred in New
York, California, and elsewhere. Connecticut has acomplished
something special, though, by making “eventual” a synonym for
“right now.”
You know who won’t have to surrender their weapons? People who
quietly told the state to fuck off.
This successful example of mass defiance horrifies the editorial
board of the Hartford Courant, which shudders at the sight
of the masses not obeying an order that, history, tells us, never
had a shot at wide compliance.
According to them:
It’s estimated that perhaps scores of thousands of Connecticut
residents failed to register their military-style assault weapons
with state police by Dec. 31….…the bottom line is that the state must try to enforce the
law. Authorities should use the background check database as a way
to find assault weapon purchasers who might not have registered
those guns in compliance with the new law.A Class D felony calls for a maximum sentence of five years in
prison and a $5,000 fine. Even much lesser penalties or probation
would mar a heretofore clean record and could adversely affect,
say, the ability to have a pistol permit.If you want to disobey the law, you should be prepared to face
the consequences.
Such shock! Such astonishment!
But compliance with gun registration would have been a
historical aberration. Gun restrictions of all sorts
breed defiance everywhere they’re introduced. About 25 percent
of Illinois handgun owners actually complied when that state’s
registration law was introduced in the 1970s, according to Don B.
Kates, a criminologist and civil liberties attorney, writing in the
December 1977 issue of Inquiry. Then, when California
began registering “assault weapons” in 1990, The New York
Times
reported after the registration period came to a close that
“only about 7,000 weapons of an estimated 300,000 in private hands
in the state have been registered.”
Similar defiance occurred in Australia, Canada, and many
European countries. People, unsurprisingly, seem to think that
being armed is not a bad thing, and that governments can’t be
trusted.
Can’t imagine why.
Here’s the thing: Laws rely, almost entirely, on
voluntary compliance, with enforcement efforts sufficient
for a tiny, noncompliant minority. If a large number of people to
whom a law applies find the law repugnant—and a majority of a
group, consisting of scores of thousands of people, constitutes a
large number—than the law is unenforceable, no matter how many
politicians and newspaper editorial writers think it’s a swell
idea. Governments that try enforcement, anyway, will be stuck in a
pattern of escalating brutality and declining legitimacy.
Gun registration, let alone confiscation has, always and
everywhere, fallen into that “unenforceable” category. We saw the
same phenomenon with Prohibition, and we’ve also seen it with
drugs.
To insist, now, that Connecticut authorities try to chase down
“scores of thousands” of gun owners (using background check records
that don’t actually prove they still own the forbidden firearms)
displays wild ignorance of the limits of government power. It also
expresses disgusting deference to authority at the expense of any
respect for liberty—an
immature morality that sees no good beyond obedience to rules.
And, it’s sheer lunacy.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1e4tJeG
via IFTTT