According to CNN and other news agencies, the Trump administration “plans to announce” a ban on “bump stocks “in the coming days,” but while it may be a victory for the gun prohibition lobby, could it turn into their Waterloo?
Social media has been fired up over this allegedly looming ban, which reports indicate would amount to a “taking” by the government because owners of the devices—which speed up the cycling rate of a semiautomatic rifle—would be required to turn them in or destroy them within 90 days of enactment, reports say. But already, many people, including nationally syndicated Armed America radio host Mark Walters, have vowed non-compliance.
Before the horror in Las Vegas—the only time one of these previously obscure devices was ever used in a crime—very few people, including gun owners, even knew they existed or paid much attention. But banning them might have unintended consequences for a president who is trying to reshape and level the federal courts, and may need gun owners to win re-election.
The reason is simple. This announcement has turned a synthetic shooting accessory of questionable usefulness into a symbol. And symbols are powerful political weapons in what one member of an Evergreen State firearms forum called “a war on our very culture” in a private message to this column Thursday.
“I know, we have lost (on Initiative 1639),” wrote “Ace”, “but I think now is the time to put forth a new effort against these people who want to erode our rights. Our problem so far is that we (sic) being a poor reactionary force when it comes to the initiative process, and we have been so good at the legislative end. We must go on the offensive and it’s clear to me that numbers are not in our favor. While we work to incorporate the next generation and hopefully bolster our numbers, I believe if we can somehow surround and isolate Seattle’s insane politics and turn the rest of the state red, we can actually turn our state around.”
“Ace” closed his message by noting that “the state I grew up in is not the state that I recognize now.”
It may not be the same country you grew up in, Ace.
Earlier Friday, another social media post dubbed anti-gunners as “Rights Deniers.” They aren’t merely people intent on preventing the exercise of Second Amendment rights. They don’t believe there is an individual right to keep and bear arms. They stubbornly refuse to accept two recent Supreme Court rulings that affirm this right.
Second Amendment activists are suddenly becoming savvy to the semantics games played by the Left. City officials in Republic, the Ferry County seat in north-central Washington, appear on the verge of making their community a “Second Amendment sanctuary city” as a means of protesting passage of I-1639, the sweeping gun control measure passed by voters Nov. 6. Or, should that say, passed by voters in 11 of the state’s 39 counties? Ferry County voters rejected the anti-rights measure by 73 percent.
Already, anti-gunners are calling upon liberal Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson to take action, but that may be problem because of Ferguson’s inaction against the cities of Seattle, Edmonds and Everett, and King County, for adopting gun control ordinances in open violation of the state preemption law. The initiative hasn’t taken effect, yet, while the preemption statute has been on the books for 35 years, and upheld by the courts when Seattle tried to ban firearms in city park facilities.
There are lots of people like “Ace” out there who are just now waking up to the reality that gun prohibitionists don’t stop with passage of an initiative, they are merely emboldened to carry their crusade elsewhere. The next battleground appears to be Florida, where they aren’t simply trying to regulate so-called “assault weapons,” they will try to amend the state constitution in 2020 to ban such firearms. And here’s how those “weapons” are defined:
a) Assault Weapons – For purposes of this subsection, any semiautomatic rifle or shotgun capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition at once, either in a fixed or detachable magazine, or any other ammunition feeding device. This subsection does not apply to handguns.
b) Semiautomatic – For purposes of this subsection, any weapon which fires a single projectile or a number of ball shots through a rifled or smooth bore for each single function of the trigger without further manual action required.
If anyone seriously thinks the gun prohibition movement can be placated by surrendering bump stocks, or giving up modern sporting rifles, people like “Ace” are ready to educate you.
