Resistance is not futile

Many months before the 2020 election, the Biden campaign published its plan to “end our gun violence epidemic.”

It was and remains a wish list of the gun prohibition lobby, complete with gun and magazine bans, registration and so-called “universal background checks.” There is a “safe storage” requirement (the constitutionality of which is questionable under the 2008 Heller ruling), and a one-gun-per-month purchase limit. It also bans the online sale of firearms, ammunition, kits and gun parts.

Grasping At Air

“It’s within our grasp,” says this plan, “to end our gun violence epidemic and respect the Second Amendment, which is limited.”

The Second Amendment is limited only if we allow it to be so. These “limits” exist only in the imagination of the extremist left, the same people who rioted, looted and burned last summer.

The Biden plan would regulate ownership of semiautomatic Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) and their original capacity magazines under the National Firearms Act (NFA). Each would be subject to a $200 tax, same as full-auto machine guns. Rough estimates are this would cost law-abiding American gun owners at least $34 billion.
Or, you can sell them “back” to the government, which never owned them in the first place.

The Biden plan is to “reinstate the Obama-Biden policy to keep guns out of the hands of certain people unable to manage their affairs for mental reasons.” This could boil down to being unable to balance your checkbook, and the Social Security Administration would be required to supply its records to the NICS system to help make this happen.

The Biden plan is to “incentivize state ‘extreme risk’ laws.” This is the Red Flag provision to disarm as many people as possible by giving states the funds to implement such laws and enforce them.

The Biden plan will offer “incentives” to the states to set up gun licensing programs. This is a part of the effort to turn the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms into a tightly regulated privilege. Under this part of the scheme, citizens would be required to “obtain a license prior to purchasing a gun.”
What’s to stop this outrage? You are.

Who Are They?

While New York State and the establishment media have been concentrating on dismembering the National Rifle Association as a lobbying powerhouse, anti-gunners have allowed their flanks to be attacked.

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), which specializes in education and litigation, has emerged as a legal powerhouse. SAF brought the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago to the Supreme Court and has used this victory to open the floodgates for challenges to local gun laws. Only because of concerns Chief Justice John Roberts might lean liberal, several SAF cases were not granted review last year. The situation has now changed with the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her replacement by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Now, there is a sure conservative majority on the high court that bodes well for review of cases currently winding their way through the lower federal courts. Those cases touch on the right to bear arms outside the home and whether MSRs and their magazines are protected by the Second Amendment.

SAF has partnered with the NRA on a number of cases already, striking down gun bans in Seattle park facilities, a proposed gun ban in San Francisco, and the confiscation of firearms after Hurricane Katrina, for example. They are currently working to undo a gun control measure passed in Washington State in 2018.

Under the SAF umbrella you will find Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership and the Police Society Podcast. All are now projects of SAF (SAF.org).

The Firearms Policy Coalition, a California-based organization, is a rising legal star, often joining with SAF in legal challenges and occasionally launching its own cases with other groups.

FPC puts social media to good use and they will likely carve some significant legal notches over the next few years (FirearmsPolicy.org).

Don’t overlook Gun Owners of America, an organization founded in 1976 — they can be scrappy and have a devoted following.

They work in congressional and legislative halls and call themselves the “only no-compromise” gun rights organization (GunOwners.org).

To be sure, the NRA is hardly out of the game. NRA fights best from behind circled wagons and the organization numbers in the millions, with training programs, lobbying expertise and the strength and loyalty of its members. The NRA is not a big building in Fairfax, Va., but millions of men and women who believe there are 10 Amendments in the Bill of Rights.

Unlike Joe Biden, those citizens do not see the Second Amendment as “limited” (NRA.org).

There are state organizations worthy of support who can harass the flanks, groups such as the Virginia Citizens Defense League, Oregon Firearms Federation, California Rifle & Pistol Association, Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts, The Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, Illinois State Rifle Association, New Jersey Second Amendment Society, Gun Owners Action League of Washington, Oregon Firearms Federation and so many more it is impossible to mention them all.

They’re the skirmishers — the grassroots activists who will hold the line while a flood of legal actions work through the federal court playing field leveled under Trump.

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