Posted on 04/30/2002 12:11:21 AM PDT by Mini-14
Imagine the new laws 'they' would churnout in that event...
The challenge eventually had to be made. Question is, would you rather have "death to gunowners" Reno defend it or "NRA life member" Ashcroft?
The Atty. Gen. may be responsible for defending all laws, but nothing requires him to do it well. All the Govt. had to do was show up in court and say it was a stupid law and they didn't like it either.
So9
Well, I know that *I* couldn't imagine that politicians could change their colors like chameleons, just to further an anti-freedom agenda. /sarcasm
Guys, the Second Amendment does NOT "grant" the right to keep and bear arms to the people. It MANDATES that government NEVER take away from the people, the right to keep and bear "ARMS". "Arms" are, have been, and most likely always will be implements of war. NOT "hunting and sporting" weapons. As ugly as some might consider it, that is stone cold fact.
Is this the NRA acting in concert with federal bureaucrats and judges as accomplices to set the ban "in concrete"?? The NRA HAS been known to help the feds with onerous legislation at times. Peace and love, George.
As usual, politics is a perverse game at best. It's difficult to know what exactly to make of this. I find ctdonath2's remarks to be most germane -- Ashcroft does strike me as a man of his word and a man of honor for the most part, so these events dovetail with his statements about enforcing the laws on the books, even those he doesn't like. Like it or not, his is the position which must take up the stance, even when anti. Of course, how staunchly that defense will be, only time will tell.
And this is coming from one who has repeatedly stated that the gun owners would be the first bone thrown to the Libs. I was wrong on that, as the CFR showed us that the 1A was the first to go, not the 2A.
(Dang it feels funny to defend this administration!)
Your wording casts the Feds and Ashcroft and the NRA in a bad light. It appears they have made a 'deal' in a room full of anti-Second Ammendment smoke.
I'm waiting to see how the NRA will keep its members when the compromise is exposed and the members wake up to what's going on.
Thanks for picking up on that bit of false reporting. I was wondering how we got to 30 replies before that was pointed out.
Is the latter actually fighting to uphold it? or just going through the motions and taking a fall? Since there is no Constitutional basis for the AWB, Ashcroft cannot present a viable argument supporting it; Reno, on the other hand, would have presented any obfuscated legalise verbage necessary to confuse, derail, and rationalize away the plantiffs.
Sorry, but your "take" seems like wishful thinking to me. What do you base it on?
The long-used technique of the "Devil's Advocate": believers may designate someone to represent the other side, for the purpose of analyzing the opposition's arguments for weaknesses, to strengthen the believer's arguments, and to present a viable yet ultimately rebuttable argument in court.
Expect Ashcroft to present the pro-AWB position in such a way that all the supporting points are made, yet cannot stand up to anti-AWB (i.e.: pro-RKBA) scrutiny. This way, Metzenbaum & Co.'s arguments are systematically and completely presented and destroyed in high federal court, leaving nothing for AWB supporters to argue with. Contrast that with either Ashcroft just folding and AWB supporters legitimately claiming their arguments were never viably presented (just as we complain about inadequate defense in US vs. Miller), or Reno presenting a strong case of mutated facts and misapplied law (which obfuscates the issue enough that it cannot be adequately rebutted in limited court time).
Of course, another option is Ashcroft actually betraying us via creative legal/factual obfuscation & mumbo-jumbo. Yet another option is that we are in fact wrong and the AWB is indeed Constitutional (though I firmly believe not) and the AWB is ultimately and righteously upheld (highly unlikely). As we are stuck with Ashcroft in this case right now, let us assume he plays Devil's Advocate, hope for the best, read his arguments carefully, and evaluate the results when they come.
Don't you realize the liberals would have an absolute field day excoriating him for a half-assed effort? You have to know the GOP can't fight its way out of a wet paper sack, let alone best the worst of the Dems....they get all tongue-tied or usually just roll over and take the screwing.
Sadly, most of the time what we want in our leaders NEVER comes into the arena....the bastards are all too willing to compromise and give away the ship everyone seems so damn worried about whether its gonna turn around or not!
Imagine the new laws 'they' would churnout in that event...
For any new freepers who don't know, I am writing a novel about the federal government's assault on the 2nd amendment which follows a scenario which could be put into action at almost any time in this era of the "Patriot Act". I think my novel will be more accessible than John Ross' fine novel "Unintended Consequences", (certainly it will be shorter, at under 400 pages, and it will not be gratuitously, needlessly sexual).
The novel starts in an NFL stadium when bullets begin to fly into an upper deck, which causes a panic stampede for the exits. The bullets continue to hit spectators, all this is on television of course since it is an NFL game, this adds to the panic. The crush of people high in the stadium fleeing down to the ramps causes the spectators near the upper deck rails to be pushed right over the edge to drop to the lower decks, all filmed on television by a dozen cameras. More people die in jams in the narrow ramps and exits; the total death count is over 1000. That is how the novel opens.
The shooter is found and killed outside of the stadium by a SWAT sniper in a police helicopter, a semi automatic so-called "assault rifle" at his side. He turns out to be an unemployed Desert Storm vet with a history of mental and physical problems attributed to "Gulf War Syndrome". This scrawny loser is soon connected to a group of hunters and shooters in Tidewater Virginia. Literature is found near his body in Arabic taking credit for the massacre in the name of an Islamic terrorist group. The "obvious" intent of the shooter was to blame arab American moslems for the massacre, but "luckily he was killed and the evil plan revealed". That is what the media and the sheeple believe. They are led to believe the shooting was "actually" planned and carried out by white yahoo rednecks from Virginia, trying to stir up hatred against muslims in America. The motive is "obvious", all the evidence points to that conclusion. In fact, the shooter is a patsy dredged out of a VA hospital.
The massacre is predictably blamed on the easy access to high capacity "assault rifles", even by lunatics fresh out of the loony bin. On Monday following the stadium massacre both houses of congress pass an emergency bill in record time outlawing the private possession of all centerfire semi-auto rifles, with a one-week turn in period and no buy-back. The few pro 2nd Amendment congressmen willing to speak are shouted into silence, the bill is passed and signed by the president, public opinion polls show overwhelming support for it.
The next Friday night there is a "gun store kristallnacht" in SE Virginia as "mobs of outraged citizens" in the dead patsy's home town torch them with gasoline bombs. The mobs are actually gang bangers on parole recruited by the actual organizers of the stadium massacre, who are two deranged and power mad BATF officials. They hope by creating a massacre blamed on easy access to high capacity "assault rifles" to become the leaders of a new anti gun federal law enforcement division with sweeping powers and unlimited funding.
A decorated Viet Nam green beret is killed with a bomb secretly placed in his car, then it is leaked to the media that he was on his way to blow up a federal building when "his bomb went off prematurely". Other "false flag" black operations of this sort lead to a public climate of fear and hysteria over "right wing militia terrorism". The aim of the plotters is to have the president secretly authorize the creation of a special covert federal unit which will be permitted to act outside the constitution to pro-actively terminate "suspected terrorists" using Phoenix Program death squad tactics on American soil during "the emergency". Since federal SWAT teams are already made up to a great extent by former Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and others used to fighting terrorism overseas by "any means necessary", it is no problem putting together a secret domestic anti-terrorism unit which will combat our own "right wing terrorists" by the same extra-legal methods.
That is just the beginning, but as you can imagine, the plot does not exactly go according to plan. A new division of the BATF is secretly named the "lead agency" in the repression of "gun nuts and militia fanatics", when actually it was a rogue BATF senior official who orchestrated the stadium massacre in order to increase his power and his budget in the predictable reaction to the "right wing militia massacre and bombings". In fact, this official had conveniently already written contingency plans for this type of new counter terrorism unit, and is (as he planned) named the first chief of the new covert unit.
Anyway, the situation evolves into a sub rosa "dirty war" of secret arrests, covert "interrogation centers", "disappearances", assassinations and counter assassinations, with the JBTs using the latest computer, GPS, wireless, and digital face imaging technology, and the other side using the "ten million scoped deer rifles" one shot at a time against anti Bill of Rights politicians. Running throughout the book is the race to solve the mystery of the stadium shooter: was he truly, as reported, a deranged former Marine, or just a hapless patsy? Did he even fire a shot? If he is a patsy, who put him there with the rifle?
Needless to say, ABCNNBCBS has one opinion (the anti gun govt. line) while the internet forums are a hotbed of opposing theories. A website called FreeAmerica.Com plays a major role in revealing the details of the plot, the truth and the outcome is left up in the air until the very end, as some of the targeted "right wing gun nuts" take the dirty war back to the secret government death squad unit. The full truth about the stadium massacre and aftermath is readied for airing on one new major news network, while the secret government death squad races to stop the story from airing by all the means at its disposal, including bombings and assassinations.
Post 9-11 I lost a couple of months of writing time, wondering if my novel would have any more relevance or would even be sellable. Current events convince me that my story is more relevant than ever. I have been redirecting some of the plot line slightly to take into account legitimate fears of arab muslim terrorism, which have had the side effect of prodding most Americans to accept ever greater restrictions on their civil liberties. And as we see, we have a federal law enforcement apparatus which seems ever more willing to adopt gestapo tactics in the name of combating terrorism, and would like nothing more than to find domestic "right wing militia terrorist groups" to turn their new powers against.
And if the JBTs (Jack Booted Thugs, federal SWAT teams) cannot find actual "right wing militia terrorists", it may prove very tempting to some in the "anti terrorism industry" to create them. It would really be simple to do: it would only take a few arranged massacres blamed on "right wing gun nuts" to create the proper atmosphere of hysteria. The FBI's budget grew from 2 to 4 billion dollars per year during the 1990s in the "war on terrorism", and this was before 9-11. You can only imagine the kind of money being directed against terrorism now, and the temptation that kind of money might provide to the unscrupulous who will direct and control that cash flow, and the federal law enforcement promotions which will be handed out as new departments are created and manpower rolls swell with new recruits.
But almost all of the new funding is going to the FBI in its battle against foreign born islamic terrorists. The BATF is again being left on the sidelines.... until in my novel the evil high ranking BATF official figures out a way to jump start a "war on right wing domestic terrorism" with his bogus stadium massacre, a massacre blamed on too easy access to "assault rifles". This puts the BATF center stage, and directs the money flow to this rogue BATF official, as he had planned.
Here is a one chapter excerpt I posted as "The Raid: New Fiction from the War On Domestic Terrorism."
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