Posted on 11/02/2001 12:26:38 AM PST by Aerial
By John G. Lankford
Some on Capitol Hill believe the first order of business in time of war is to disarm the American citizenry. That raises a serious question as to whose side they're on.
As National Guard units are activated and assigned to guard airports and other endangered locations, those legislators connive to liquidate many private citizens' means of defending their own homes and communities against terrorist zealots, other fanatics, and ordinary criminals drooling over the prospect.
Now moving through Congress is the indispensable and popular National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002, S. 1438. Unlike the version passed by the House of Representatives and sent over, H.R. 2896, it includes Section 1062, "Authority to Ensure Demilitarization of Significant Military Equipment Formerly Owned by the Department of Defense." That section would make it a crime to possess "significant military equipment formerly owned by the Department of Defense" unless in the process of surrendering it for demilitarization, or demilitarizing it pursuant to Department authority.
"Significant military equipment" is either such equipment as appears on the United States Munitions List, or whatever else the Secretary of Defense decides to include. The Munitions List, originally generated to implement export-reimport restrictions under 22 United States Code Section 2778, "Control of Arms Exports and Imports", includes "[n]onautomatic, semiautomatic and fully automatic firearms to caliber .50 inclusive, and all components and parts for such firearms" as well as "[i]nsurgency-counterinsurgency type firearms or other weapons having a special military application (e.g. close assault weapons systems) regardless of caliber and all components and parts therefor." "Demilitarization", of course, means rendering the object ineffective as a weapon beyond the degree of rock or club.
The alibi given outraged questioners is that the pusillanimous section is intended and will be used only to neutralize larger and more dangerous armaments that may have found their ways into civilian hands, that the Secretary of Defense of course will not designate small arms "significant military equipment" for that purpose.
He doesn't have to. The trail of specific statutory inclusions, what lawyers call incorporations-by-reference, leads directly from the prohibition to such ordinary household armaments as M1911A1 .45-cal. (semi) automatic pistols, semiautomatic AR 15 .223-cal. light rifles, M14A1 7.62-mm. semiautomatic rifles, M-1 Garand .30-cal. semiautomatic rifles, and even the venerable bolt-action .30-cal. Springfield M1903A3 rifle and old cavalry horse-pistol revolvers. It would also supersede the rights of federally licensed holders of such items as the .45 cal. Thompson submachine gun. If the Secretary judiciously declined to begin confiscating such, he could be charged with nonfeasance in office, dereliction of duty, for failure to carry out specific statutory provisions.
In wartime, soldiers become proficient with and even fond of such weapons, learning how to operate, maintain, and depend on them. Once discharged, they often buy the same arms for sport and home defense, and thus equip themselves as inactive reserve or unorganized, but accessible, militia. Due to wartime mass production, such firearms, designed, tested, and combat-proven, are high-quality bargains for people of modest means.
If the protested exclusion of such arms from a demilitarization provision that is, in any case, curious in the face of an enemy that relies on infiltration and surprise strikes on civilian targets were in good faith, the exclusion would have been incorporated in the offending section.
Citizens cherishing their property, their natural right of armed self-and-property-defense, and the security of their country have to insist that the House of Representatives unequivocally refuse to pass any such measure without that exclusion, or at all. Letters to Congress members, letters to publications, and call-ins and e-mails to audience-participation radio and television programs are all eminently called for, now.
Afterwards, it would be appropriate to determine just who concocted this anti-American stunt, and re-examine the perpetrators' qualifications for national service.
And I still want my stinger. I'll bet someone at the Pentagon wishes they had had one on September 11.
The demilitarization idea is part and parcel of the One World Government idea of having a large population of dependant serfs lorded over by a Samuri class of police and military loyal to the elite rulers. It has no place in America.
Pretty cool stuff.
http://popularmechanics.com/science/military/2001/9/ultimate_firepower/
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