Click here to download the catalog as a PDF file. To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. John Connor GUNCRANKDIARIES TM EXCUSES, ALIBIS, PITHY OBSERVATIONS & GENERAL EPHUS Dark Moon rising ’ve never paid much attention to astrology; all that business about Venus kissin’ Mars an’ Jupiter making you walk in front of a bus. But if I were into astrology, I’d tell you this: It seems to me certain pale planets are linin’ up like a bad break on a snooker table, and I see a dark moon rising. Check these planets: Never before in history has the election, succession or appointment of a chief executive triggered as big a nationwide record-smashing run on sales of firearms and ammunition. Notably, the greatest demand has been for defensive — fighting — firearms and ordnance. Clearly, millions of people expect their new government to severely tax, restrict or prohibit such arms and ammunition. Many — again, with good reason — fully expect their government to ultimately, unlawfully and forcefully confiscate those weapons. Yeah, kinda like the British attempted to do at a place called Concord. The government’s declaration — such actions must be taken “for the safety of the people; a crime-reducing measure” — is such a blatant lie only a government could utter it without prompting laughter. Consider this: there has never been a serious, concerted national effort to disarm convicted felons! But they are not a threat to entrenched powers. Armed free peasants are. Rifle-bearing riff-raff are. We are not a “crime problem” — unless we become criminalized by government fiat. Where are the credible records to indicate, in any way, the past “Assault Weapons Ban” reduced crime? Having failed that challenge, the White House and Congress are now saying weapons sold in America are threatening the government of Mexico! To even suggest this is so stupid I fully expect millions to believe and embrace it … after a media massage. Brainwashing is so much easier when your “clients” only need a light rinse. i ment. This produced a superficially split ruling which, while salving some proponents of individual rights, allows “interpretation” and bureaucratic blockade to the exercise of that right. It has worked. Following the Supreme Court’s Heller decision, Adam Winkler, a professor at the UCLA School of Law, tracked gun-control law cases being heard in the lower federal courts. As of January 2, 2009, 60 of those cases closed. In all 60 — every last one — those gun-control laws were upheld as though Heller had never happened. “Reasonable restrictions,” you know … by unreasonable people. Over decades our federal judiciary has become divided between prisoners of precedent, handcuffed by “case law,” or radicalized and activist, selected for their social agendas rather than constitutional scholarship. So, if not the federal courts, who will defend and honor the Constitution? Our Senate? The House? That’s laughable, isn’t it? One might hope that having just orchestrated the greatest raid on any national treasury in history, seizing fortunes yet unearned by grandchildren unborn, they might fall into a pork-induced food coma, but no; no luck there. Are our founding fathers’ greatest fears — of an all-powerful, malignant federal government — being played out? The other side The great Divide Some share my opinion that Americans today are profoundly polarized, deeply divided politically and philosophically — and perhaps irrevocably. That thought alone should bring chills: irrevocably? In my view, that division essentially exists between self-reliant citizens who cherish freedom above all else; who grudgingly consent to be governed; who believe they are the most effective defenders of their own lives, their loved ones and properties — and those who would freely surrender certain rights in exchange for promises of security from those who cannot provide it, unearned shares from the redistribution of other peoples’ assets, and relief from any burden of decision-making, ceding to a presumably wise and kindly government. Last year, the highest court in the land hesitantly agreed to examine a case requiring interpretation of the Second Amend- Interestingly, several states are now considering resolutions to warn Congress they have exceeded their constitutional authority as defined in the Tenth Amendment, to wit: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Congressional excesses — wielding power like a mead-soaked berserker with a broadsword — are nothing new. Congress has shown no reluctance to routinely overstep their authority simply because — who would stop them? No; this newfound interest in limiting federal power is apparently a wary — if not outright shaken and scared — reaction to the reigning government’s plans. Among them, to make the entire country as “safe” as, get this — Chicago? Even more interesting, some scholarly folks have noted the federal government’s authority to enact national firearms laws is enabled by the interstate commerce clause, presuming all firearms and ammo travel in interstate commerce. Well … not if they are manufactured entirely within a state, and remain within that state. The feds would then have no legal authority to regulate those arms. Hmm … Oh, there’s a whole ’nother rack of these snooker balls to consider; galaxies of planets lining up, and that foreboding dark moon rising. The question is, where do we stand? I’ll get back to you on that. Connor OUT. WWW.AMERICANHANDGUNNER.COM • JULY/AUGUST 2009 * 32