[TheForge] The most effort for the least results

[Andrew Vida]

On 12/24/2012 8:46 AM, Ries Niemi wrote:
> A similar crisis occurred in 1934.
> there had been repeated public machine gun murders, battles on city
> streets, and massacres, and the public was just fed up.
> Hence, the National Firearms Act of 1934.
>
> Interestingly enough, they did not attempt to seize or confiscate firearms.
> Instead, they declared that law abiding owners of machine guns, and a
> couple of other categories of weapons, could register their existing
> guns, keep them, and then would be required to pay a transfer tax upon
> selling them, and the sale would be tracked.
> In 68, they modified this law to allow no more new guns to enter the
> "transfer" pool.

I don't think that was in GCA68, but rather the legislation that came 
into effect in 86.


> If they did something similar with specific, well defined weapons-
> legalized existing ones, restricted sales of future ones- do you really
> think 200-300 million firearms currently in circulation is too few?

Too many/few is not a valid issue.  The right to possession is the key 
point.  I have not heard of too many calls to limit the number of 
Ferraris out there, save perhaps from those who don't care for them in 
preference to Aston Martins and so forth.

The number of weapons is wholly irrelevant.  I know people with 
hundreds.  When I was a child I knew a man who had a full score of 
double- and express rifles.  Who needs that many?  Irrelevant.  He had 
the means of procuring them and, just as is the case with every other 
living human being on the planet, he held the natural and fundamental 
praxeological right to acquire them, possess them, and bear them upon 
his person as he saw fit.
>
> Regardless of rumors, current actual homicides with ILLEGAL full auto
> weapons are almost non-existent,

There is EXACTLY ONE recorded incident of a full auto weapon EVER having 
been used in the manner described and, ironically, it was by a rogue 
cop.  I do not have a cite handy, but you should be able to find the 
case easily enough.  ONE.  COP.  HELLO. :)


> So the law actually works-

Oh... d00d, catastrophic logic FAIL.    This is logically equivalent to 
asserting that a claim that God wears a giant codpiece the world will 
not come to an end on 12.21.2012.  The world did not come to an end, 
therefore God's mighty codpiece is proven.   Ouch...

The law almost certainly has NOTHING to do with the conditions in 
question.  The Volstead Act, however, had everything to do with the 
eruption of violence during the prohibition era.  Even so, machinegun 
wars were few and far between.

> it
> keeps the vast majority of fully automatic weapons out of the hands of
> criminals,

What is your evidence of this?  The more informed position suggests that 
even criminals, whose ability to get their hands on full-auto weapons is 
greater than my ability to get my self shot in south-central Los 
Angeles, are smart enough to know that full auto weaponry is not well 
suited to the sorts of applications for which they secure firearms to 
themselves.


> and yet allows legal ownership, depending, of course, on
> State laws- I think five States prohibit full auto ownership.

NFA34 is unconstitutional.  A fundamental right directly implies the 
right to exercise of that right.  The right to exercise directly implies 
the right to the means thereto.  Otherwise, the right would be utterly 
devoid of any meaning.  I hold the right to defend myself, others, 
property, community, and nation, such as the latter may be.  That right 
brings with it the right to possess the means of exercise, be that a 
club, my fists, teeth, knives, guns, artillery, or what have you.  And 
please let us not devolve into the "can you have nuclear weapons" deal 
because it has been treated a million times and is a waste of everyone's 
time.

>
> I cant see similar laws not working for fifty caliber sniper rifles,
> high capacity semi-auto shotguns like the russian Saiga 12 ( an AK
> looking gun with an 8 round banana clip of 12 gage shells- not exactly
> common for duck hunting), or, yes, even AR's.

Your premises are flawed, and from that premise arises your terribly 
mistaken conclusions.  One such premise is that the possession of 
weapons is restricted to hunting and other "sporting" uses.  This, of 
course, is completely false.  As with any other object, the fundamental 
basis of possession is the desire to do so pursuant to praxeological 
right.  BTW, praxeology is the study of human action.  I mention it here 
because it is not a commonly used term, though perhaps it ought to be.

The position that a great plurality of people hold with respect to 
firearms is seated in the most hopelessly flawed and irrational 
"reasoning" imaginable.  The prohibitionist arguments as well as those 
in favor of other restrictions have been neatly demolished in countless 
fashions.  The "facts" of the pro-restriction contingent constitute a 
great raft of distortions and outright lies, all clued into a huge hot 
mess with logic so tragically corrupted as to defy credulity that anyone 
of nominal intelligence would be able to accept the least shred of it.

We have all the law that we need as represented by those prohibiting 
murder, assault, battery, and kidnapping.  Nothing else is required as 
law by its very nature can NEVER be proactive, but only reactive.  Were 
this not the case, the simple existence of such laws would eliminate all 
crime.  It does not.  Therefore, the only rightful thing that men can do 
is to respond to the acts that have already been committed.  Anything of 
a presumptive nature and acting as a prior restraint fails in all cases 
because it NEVER stops someone determined to commit an act and ALWAYS 
unjustly restricts free men from acting in accord with the dictates of 
their consciences.  This is monumental FAIL.  It is ALWAYS wrong and 
morally despicable and it is NEVER right.  This truth is woven into the 
very fabric of the reality it creates.