In the first week of January of this new year, our King/President has conspired with U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to issue and have implemented some new gun-control provisions via executive order. To wit, first, mandating the reporting to the BATFE of any gun that is stolen from the possession of its lawful owner, and, second, expanding the scope of gun enthusiasts who are required to acquire a Federal Firearms License (FFL) to sell guns. Currently, only those who are “engaged in the business” of selling firearms with the “principal objective of livelihood and profit” must first pay a fee, complete a rigorous and invasive application process that includes a photograph and fingerprints, and undergo background checks. Under Obama’s expansive new directive, those mandates would extend to anyone selling more than 25 guns a year, selling any gun in its original packaging, hoarding more than a certain number of firearms, or selling a gun within 30 days of the original purchase. The number of FFL holders would skyrocket as a result. And, after the BATFE had granted its approvals, each new licensee would then be required to perform a background check on every person to whom s/he sells a gun. Further, s/he would be subject to audits of his or her paperwork by BATFE agents dropping in for a visit without any prior announcement.

Meek, subservient people will likely comply with such strictures, but that is not an accurate characterization of most, if not all, American firearm enthusiasts. Most, if not all, understand that this latest gambit to erode and dismantle all Americans’ innate, guaranteed right to keep and bear arms for personal, state, and national defense is just another oblique means by which wannabe rulers can find out who has guns, what kinds they are, and where they are located, so that some eventual wholesale confiscation of all of them can be more easily effected. As in, because of some declared “national emergency.” Students of history will recall the famous pretext of the German Reichstag fire of February 1933, used by the Nazis to ramrod the promulgation of their dictatorial Enabling Act, effectively ending all civil liberties in Germany.

So, if many thousands of Americans refuse to bow down and behave as subjects/vassals rather than as free citizens of a constitutional republic, what then? For starters, predictably, a new and perhaps massive underground economy born of massive willful civil disobedience. And next, what if there are federal arrests and prosecutions of selected offenders? Will there be resistance, both personal and communally from sympathetic fellow citizens animated by their devotion to Americans’ constitutionally guaranteed civil rights and liberties? Will we see a new edition of the April 2014 standoff at the Cliven Bundy ranch in Nevada where many hundreds of private citizens showed up in defiant support of a fees-delinquent rancher apparently being victimized by arbitrary federal action to appropriate his cattle from leased grazing fields? And, if that were to happen in some staunchly firearms-freedom-protecting state such as Wyoming, would state peace officers there act to arrest and detain the federal agents attempting to enforce the new licensing mandates (as they are empowered to do in certain circumstances per state statute)? Just how far will Obama & Co. go to set the stage for an overt drive towards a wholesale disarmament of American citizens?

Are the Essential Liberty lessons of Lexington and Concord from 1775 so fully excised from the sensibilities of those who would “transform” America that they would risk nationwide civilian upset and even chaos in this pivotal presidential election year? To echo Patrick Henry’s famous appeal over two centuries ago in another pending crisis: “Forbid it, Almighty God!” Really now, for the sake of everyone in America.

William Pippin
The Rational Empiricist