Happy New Year! Now hand over all your guns

“Never allow a tragedy to go to waste!” — Rahm Emanuel.

Thus spake one of Barack Obama’s leading flacks, once upon a time. He’s now the mayor of Chicago, the world’s biggest shooting gallery (over 500 murders last year; more than 30 in just four days of 2013) — a city which is also very hard on law-abiding people who want to own their own firearms to protect themselves from the well-armed riffraff on the streets.

The liberals who have always hated guns, and who also hate and can’t comprehend Americans’ long-standing devotion to their weapons, are seizing on the tragedy of 20 small children killed in Newtown, Connecticut, the victims of a deranged madman, to try to persuade us to hand over our guns peaceably — or else. Or else they’ll raise taxes on ammunition higher than a Chicago politician on a winning election night. Or else they’ll put great pressure on the states to make owning a gun more difficult than resuscitating the last dodo bird.

I can hear them now: “We’ll withhold your federal highway funds, you provincial, racist gun nuts!  We’ll show you what happens to yokels who try to defy The People Who Know What’s Best For Us. That is to say, the liberal establishment in Washington, New York City, and San Francisco. You don’t need those guns, you paranoid hayseeds! We, the government, and the police, will furnish all the protection you need!”

Well, now. Such thinking betrays a total — I might add, “willful” — misunderstanding of America’s historical DNA. Owning guns is something that is almost literally born into many Americans — especially those from smaller towns and rural areas. Many American boys, especially, have learned hunting from a young age. In colonial days, the days of the frontier, and the Old West, it was an absolute necessity. Game had to be killed to feed a family. Isolated settlers had no one to protect them from wandering ruffians, or savage Indians, except themselves.

Guns expanded the frontier, in pursuit of Manifest Destiny. Guns helped subdue the Indians. Yes, I know: “We stole the Indians’ land.” Well, similar things have happened throughout history, when a more technologically advanced, better-armed invading force clashed with a less advanced, lighter armed indigenous population. White Americans were simply the latest in a long line of conquerers who took land and were strong enough to hold it.

Americans’ devotion to our guns was marked in three of our favorite film genres: Westerns; war movies (think: John Wayne) and gangster films, especially those depicting the 1930s gang wars. You didn’t hear people howling about “senseless violence” and of the need for “stricter gun controls” in those days. The liberals hadn’t hit on that idea — yet.

And why are they so hot to trot for gun confiscation now? Because, despite all their denials, that’s their ultimate goal. It can’t be stated so baldly by those wanting “gun control,” of course. That would let the cat out of the bag. It would get our — huh, defenses — up, pronto. No, we must be gradually lulled to sleep with talk of  “protecting America” and “assuring that a tragedy like Newtown never happens again,” and so forth. It’s like the live lobster who is placed into a pot of room-temperature water. The lobster is comfortable; he splashes around in the water; he doesn’t suspect anything is wrong. The person turns the heat up under the pot, gradually, gradually — and by the time the lobster looks around and says, “Whew! It’s getting warm in here!”, he’s already cooked.

We’re that lobster, Mr. and Ms. American Law-Abiding Gun Owner. We’ll be reassured about how those owning properly-registered guns have nothing to fear from the Obama regime — while the Mulatto Messiah’s hand slowly and cleverly turns up that heat. Because, you see, the liberals think the only “heat” that should be possessed in this country, should be that held by the government, and the police.

Oh, yes; and the criminals, of course. Because no one has ever figured out a way to keep them from getting guns.

Of course, banning something, as we’re so fond of doing in this country, has never worked well. Look at Prohibition. When it went into effect, on Jan. 17, 1920, Americans didn’t obediently throw away all their whiskey and beer bottles, and become Bible-thumping teetotalers. No; they decided that, hey, if the government is telling us we can’t drink this hooch any more, there must be something pretty good about it. The result: Tens of thousands of “speakeasies;” urban gang wars over the turf where each gang would provide illegal booze to those speakeasies; many, many deaths from those gang wars; many more deaths when people were poisoned by drinking carelessly-made illegal liquor. And a drastic drop in the public’s respect for government, on all levels.

Gun confiscation was put into effect a few years ago in Britain, after a similar, horrendous massacre of kindergarten youngsters by a deranged gunman. Has it worked there? Well, sort of, in a way. But British society had far fewer guns, much less of a gun culture, per capita, than America has ever had. Most British police officers don’t carry firearms, for instance. Can you imagine that in any American jurisdiction?

According to Ed Chenel, an Australian police officer, a new law in that country enabled the government to confiscate and destroy 640,381 personal firearms 12 months ago (this is in a nation of 20 million people). The cost to Australian taxpayers? More than $500 million.

A year later, homicides in Australia are up 6.2 percent; assaults have risen 9.6 percent, Chenel said. In the state of Victoria, homicides with firearms jumped by 300 percent!

How could this be? Well, it’s not too hard to figure out: Law-abiding Australian gun owners handed in their weapons; criminals didn’t.

Does anyone think that national gun confiscation in the U.S. would have any different result? As a matter of fact, gun confiscation would mean that many previously law-abiding citizens would become instant criminals. Guns would be hidden, squirreled away from the feds’ prying eyes. Some guns purchased since the recent Newtown tragedy might never be registered, out of fear of the owner’s becoming a target of confiscation agents of the federal government at some future date.

Sadly, some gun owners — heretofore law-abiding — might resist violently any federal attempt to take away their guns. Is this really what we want? Potentially losing lives in order to — theoretically — save some over time?

As a matter of fact, one big reason that the Founding Fathers passed the Second Amendment to the constitution, was their own memories of the tyranny of King George III over the American colonies. They wanted us to not only be able to hunt to obtain food, to defend our property from criminals, or to help advance the frontier. They wanted any future U.S. government to be forced to think twice — or three or four times — before re-imposing tyranny on the American people.