This article was printed from KeepAndBearArms.com.
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By: David Neilson
Possibly the biggest con job in history has been convincing
Americans they can stop the erosion of their constitutionally
protected rights by working within the system. At the heart of
this scam is the concept that we have nothing to complain about
if we don't work real hard to try and elect "honest" politicians
who won't legislate away more of our freedom. When we find that
neither candidate even remotely fits that description, and the
only option on the ballot is some hustler who claims he won't
steal our liberty quite as fast as his shark bait opposition, we
are told we get the government we deserve.
The Constitution is the law the government is supposed to abide
by. But nearly every law passed by our congresscritters is
outside the bounds of the Constitution, and almost every activity
engaged in by the federal government is prohibited by it. In
blatant defiance of the Constitution, the stickup artists in
Congress frantically churn out laws that illegally intrude on
every aspect of our lives, strangling our unalienable rights and
extorting our property from us. The utter genius of this bunco
game is that Americans have been flimflammed into believing they
are obliged to obey the bogus edicts these snake oil salesmen
pawn off on us until they can be repealed or overturned in court.
But the fix is in. There is a better chance Bill Clinton will
inadvertently tell the truth than there is a law will be repealed
once it is on the books. And the carpetbaggers spew out new laws
orders of magnitude faster than the courts overturn them. In
1990, the Democrat controlled Congress passed a law creating gun
free school zones. The Supreme Court struck it down in 1995
stating it violated the Constitution’s commerce clause. Less than
a year later the Republican controlled Congress fiddled with he
wording a little bit and sent it right back to us. The Supremes
hasn't even heard a case based on the Second Amendment since
1939.
The Constitution is the highest law in the land. But very little
of it applies to us as individuals. The Constitution is primarily
a law the federal government is bound to obey. The body of the
Constitution details the activities the federal government is
authorized to engage in, and the Tenth Amendment reserves all
other powers to the States and the people. Amendments One through
Nine list certain our individual rights, and they prohibit the
federal government from infringing on any of our individual
rights, regardless of whether or not they were specifically
listed. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the States from
depriving us of our rights and liberty.
In 1803, when Americans enjoyed considerably more freedom than
they do today, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall’s
opinion in the case of Marbury v. Madison stated, "a law
repugnant to the constitution is void." The Sixteenth American
Jurisprudence says, "No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional
law and courts are not bound to enforce it." The country’s
founding fathers believed our rights come to us from our Creator.
They considered our rights to be unalienable, and that they would
belong to us even if they were not protected by the Amendments to
the Constitution.
If anyone should obey the law, it is the people who make and
enforce the laws. But what we have today is a situation where
government officials at all levels blithely ignore their oaths to
obey and uphold the Constitution as they steal our property, and
kill or imprison people for exercising certain of their rights,
all the while perpetuating the illusion that responsible
Americans need only exercise their right to vote, and to call or
write their legislators to fix what is wrong with the system.
The brilliance and audacity of this hoax is that working within
the system actually helps the government gangsters pick our
pockets and steal our liberty. Our Republic has been perverted
from the rule of law to rule by intimidation and disinformation.
And the confidence game will continue until we refuse to be marks
who can be fleeced at will. We will not reclaim our rights and
our liberty until we refuse to participate in their rigged game.
The Declaration of Independence says governments derive their
power from the consent of the governed. It is long past time for
Americans to withdraw their consent to be governed at the whim of
political scofflaws.
If we can't regain our rights and liberty through the political
system, is there any way to do so short of a bloody revolution?
Hopefully there is. We may be able to reclaim our freedom the
same way it was lost and continues to be taken from us: in
incremental steps. Freedom lovers need to target key laws
violating their rights, and begin to openly defy and disregard
them in a clear and public statement that we're not going to take
it any more.
Will it be easy? No way. Our government crime syndicate has had
abundant practice ruling by intimidation. Their storm trooper
enforcers are trained to pounce on and eliminate the first signs
of resistance.
Can it be done? Absolutely. The Bureau of Justice reported that
in 1996 there were approximately 75,000 federal and 665,000 state
and local law enforcement officers. Estimates on the number of
firearms owners run between 60 million and 85 million. Retired
Colonel David Hackworth wrote a column in 1997 complaining that
of the nation’s 1.4 million active duty military personnel, only
29,000 were qualified rifle shooters. It is no doubt safe to
assume that a much a higher percentage of the 14 million American
deer hunters are competent with their arms.
Have Americans had enough? The Internal Revenue Service reports
that 25 million to 40 million Americans refuse to file income tax
returns. That is huge number of people already defying a very
scary extortion racket. And it is just one instance where
individuals risk going to jail to protect their property and
exercise their rights.
How do we begin? There are 22,000 gun control laws in this
country, every one of which are null and void. The same goes for
each of the thousands of other laws that violate our privacy, or
restrict or prohibit our liberty to do anything we please with
our lives and your property as long as our activities don't
infringe on the rights of anyone else to do the same.
Since firearms are both the tools and the symbols of liberty,
targeting laws restricting or prohibiting owning or carrying
guns is a logical starting point. Chairman Mao said, "Power comes
from the barrel of a gun." To paraphrase the current
administration’s role model, _Rights_ come out of the barrel of a
gun. If they get our guns we will have no other rights. Not only
are the anti-gunners continuing to stump for more victim
disarmament laws, the National Rifle Association and politicians
who supposedly support the Second Amendment are pushing for
strenuous enforcement of the illegal gun control laws that will
put nonviolent gun owners in prison for years. We have no allies.
If we want freedom, we have to secure it for ourselves.
Why focus on guns? Only free individuals can keep and bear arms.
One of the characteristics of slaves is they are denied access to
all weapons. Handguns are ideal symbols of freedom and
sovereignty for the same reasons they are such effective
defensive tools: they are small enough to be easily carried at
all times. Openly carrying handguns needs to be elevated to the
status of a First Amendment protected statement that we are free
sovereign individuals.
What is the first step? That is the hardest part. To be
successful, a campaign of individuals peacefully, but openly
exercising a particular right in defiance of the law would
require a large number people to begin doing it all at the same
time. Publishing inflammatory propaganda like this is still
protected speech, but conspiring to break the law is a crime they
will put you in prison for. So organizing a civil disobedience
movement is not a viable option. But individuals who are
determined to be free can be extremely resourceful. If the timing
is right, freedom lovers will latch on to this idea, and they
will discuss and develop the concept until one day in the not too
distant future we will see a million or so sovereign individuals
spontaneously rally in the streets exercising their rights and
declaring this is once again the land of the free.
David Neilson is the author of "The Liberty Incident Command System," a guide to help freedom lovers work together to protect their liberty. |
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