Roland C. Eyears

Privacy, Guns, and Liberty

A 21-year-old man is visiting his elderly mother. Two men in stocking masks shatter the door jam, burst in, shouting and waving handguns. Mom runs in one direction, her son in another. When a robber screams that he'll kill everybody who hides, the son comes out of a bedroom with his handgun. He kills one and sets the other running.

A car salesman has a prospective buyer point a gun at him and demand money. When the salesman pulls his own handgun, the bad guy takes a never mind attitude and flees. Police ID the suspect and connect him to a 10-hour-old murder.

There was considerable TV coverage of police relieving law-abiding Americans of their firearms in post-Katrina New Orleans. That left them completely defense-less against roaming bands of thieves, rapists, and murderers. Since then, legislators in over 10 states have been working to enact laws specifically prohibiting such seizures in the wake of natural disasters. Last October the Emergency Protection Act became federal law, prohibiting federal agents from confiscating firearms during a declared emergency. Although this is good, it's sad that another bill that essentially says, "Obey the Constitution" had to placed on the books.

Some individuals need personal protection. Horse sense tells them the scumbag who's stalking them isn't likely to wait until a police officer is present before pouncing. Do the potential victims go out and buy a butcher knife or ball bat? That would be ridiculous. They buy a gun - as is their right - even their duty.

How many have died waiting? If you need to obtain protection on one of the several days each year the computer in West Virginia is malfunctioning or shut down on purpose (They promised this would never happen.), you may be subject to death. Top FBI officials brag about the number of sales the Brady Check system has blocked. More quietly, some will admit that the vast percentage of rejections by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) are over bad data or for inconsequential reasons and that they are unable to link any of this to a reduction in crime. How many real criminals have been prosecuted for Brady violations? At my last count - 9.

Last fall the Brady bunch began pushing the Federal Election Commission to launch an investigation into the Gun Owners of America's practice of posting candidates' ratings on it website. This freedom of speech issue further demonstrates that gun control is not about guns. It never was. It's all about control. That requires keeping people ignorant.

In 2006 Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), a member of the U.S. House of Lords, sponsored a bill based on a 2002 position paper by the virulently anti-gun group Americans for Gun Safety titled "How America's Faulty Background Check System Allows Criminals to Get Guns." This fits the liberal mindset. When a massive, grotesquely expensive system is doing no good or worse, they insist that any failure means we are not doing enough of what is failing.

H.R. 297 would greatly expand the reach of the unconstitutional Lautenberg Amendment to the Omnibus Spending Act of 1996. That was the year Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), who currently holds his high office illegally, conspired with fellow gun-hating, anti-constitution senators Kennedy and Feinstein to deny firearms to anyone with a conviction for violence or a domestic violence incident.

Example: Thirty years ago Betsy yelled at Tom and called him a wuss. Being a wuss, he called the police and caused her to be charged with DV. The charge was pled down to disorderly conduct, and a $50 fine was paid. Case closed? Not exactly. Since the charge was not dismissed but was pled down, the feds can read that as DV. Tom's Constitutional right to own and bear arms is gone for life. In the event of a home invasion, Tom has no effective way to protect his wife and himself. Death by government.

H.R. 297 would accomplish its overreach by 3 mechanisms. First, the states would be forced to submit electronic records of all indicted persons to the giant federal computer. Guilt and conviction are no longer factors in the land of the Patriot Act. This mandate would be lubricated with $1 billion in grants. There's nothing like making victims pay for their own subjugation.

Second, physician-patient confidentiality would be gone. Mental health records on all of us would be fed into the central database. Go to a grief counselor following the death of a loved one - loose your gun rights for life. What are the puppet masters planning for our future? Four years ago a subcommittee of the Presidents New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, writing on "emotional disorders in children" stated, "20% of all children are affected - and it seems to be growing." Mental health professionals, strongly anti-gun as a group, are licking their chops.

The third, perhaps the cruelest cut, is already happening. The percentage of veterans who needed psychiatric care or at least counseling following Viet Nam, our first teen-aged war, was significant. Out of Iraq, the number appears north of 20 percent. These are not slobbering fiends who prowl at night with Randall knives and AK-47s. They are good Americans whose government used them up. Some sought help on their own hook. Others had a family member say, "Son, you saw a lot of bad stuff. You need to talk to somebody." For answering their country's call and paying a price, their names are fed into that central database. Their gun rights will be gone for life. A few months ago the major media reported that the VA had turned over records on more than 90,000 veterans for inclusion into the NCIS. Why didn't Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson, a West Pointer, refuse the demand? Just 2 weeks ago this presidential lackey stated that the VA is doing an outstanding job and that, yes, vets with horrific brain injuries can get excellent care after they go home to small town America. He doesn't even respect the public enough to bother telling credible lies.

"What's the big deal about my information, Eyears? I haven't done anything wrong," one may say. The big deal is that the essence of personal liberty is privacy. The government always, always expands, perverts, and abuses its access to information. Didn't the FBI just apologize for peeking at thousands of people's records without warrants? Don't think for a moment that they'll stop. What data banks will the government raid next in the name of national security?

Meanwhile, lower profile attacks on our freedoms continue. Over last year's Independence Day weekend, the UN held another gun control conference. By treaty and executive agreements, this corrupt body seeks to subvert Americans' rights.

Last year the BATF, always struggling to justify its existence, raided KT Ordinance of Montana, makers of legal gun kit parts. By carting off his inventory and moving to take it by forfeiture, the agency has put KT out of business. Criminal charges? None.

Someone once asked me, following a rant, when I thought the war on the Constitution started. My reply was, "As the ink was drying." During recent decades, our march toward totalitarianism has accelerated. The Bush regime has taken it to warp speed.

Many good Americans have called for the repeal of the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Lautenburg Amendment, the Brady Check system, etc. I disagree, because that would acknowledge their validity. In any case, repeal is a pipe dream. Our congress contains scarcely half a handful of decent public servants, rendered impotent by their numbers. They can do nothing.

In a better time these odious, unconstitutional laws would be recognized as null and void on arrival, defied, struck down by the courts, and the legislators who supported them would be fired in the next elections. In a much better time those who sponsored and/or voted to enact these affronts to the Constitution would be impeached for violating their sacred oaths and removed from office. In the best of times, removal for just cause would be followed by swift and fair trials for treason and by hangings.